MIT Culture Shock by Laura N. '09

So I’m back in the US, and it’s weird. The first thing I noticed as I stepped out of Logan International Airport Saturday night was, “whoa, air can hold moisture, I’d totally forgotten about that!” It was quite a shock, even for someone from New Jersey, which is pretty humid as well. It’s weird to realize how easily you can immerse yourself in something, and not even realize how strikingly different it is from what you consider normal until you bring the experience full circle. It wasn’t until Monday morning that I realized that I hadn’t seen clouds in three months. I called Adelaide and when I told her, “Hey, I’m about to get to Mass Ave, I’m at Building 9 right now, maybe we can meet at Kresge?” I realized that there was a whole segment of my vocabulary that had lain on a shelf this summer. Well, most of my vocabulary (the English vocabulary, that is) did that…so there have definitely been a few moments of searching my brain for English words hidden behind the obvious Spanish ones.

Anyway, I don’t really have time to sleep lately, let alone blog, but I just thought I’d give a quick update to say that I made it safely back to Boston after 20 hours in transit (mostly spent reading blogger applications, and oh my God was that YouTube video question the sharpest double-edged sword of all time). I’m absolutely swamped with field hockey- this week it consumes my entire day, not to mention that I’m attempting to paint my room and plan for REX and all that good stuff…Tuesday and Wednesday nights I was asleep before 10 PM, which was glorious in a way, but just meant that I got far less sleep last night as I scrambled to put together some last minute stuff for REX and find time to read even more blogger applications. I feel like an Admissions Officer, it’s weird. So this is what the power feels like. Mwahaha!

That’s it from me, practice starts in 20 minutes. Thankfully, as every athlete knows, Day 3 of getting back into shape is by far the most painful, so I’m on the downhill now. If I can just make it through Orientation, I might be able to start sleeping again.

Right.