Another Walking Adventure

We were still walking on Universal Drive. “Maybe we should try to hitch-hike. We are not going to make it to the second group presentation. That’s for sure.” I told Lauren. “Hitch-hike?” Lauren asked. “Yeah, just like in the movies. You extend your arm towards the road and point your thumb up. Someone might stop and offer us a free ride.” I explained. “Really? I’ll try.” Immediately Lauren extended her right arm. Typical Lauren, no sooner said than done. Cars passed us without hesitation. Nobody stopped. “Maybe they would stop if you were in your belly dance dress. Come on, let’s keep walking.” We had already walked for almost 2 hours.

It all started at noon when we decided to go to T.J. Max to return Lauren’s suitcase. When we finished, it’s only 3 o’clock PM. We were expected to support Lily and her teammates at 6:30 PM, so we still got time to shop around. Lauren and I both wanted a Mac Book. There is an Apple store on campus but the price tags are not inviting. According to Siggy’s hand drawn map, a Bestbuy is just around the corner, but we couldn’t find it. So we went in a store and asked for the nearest Bestbuy. The manager was kind enough to google for us and told us the direction. He just assumed we had a car, otherwise he wouldn’t tell us in such an easy manner like “...just go down the Skiff, turn left on the State street, then turn right at first crossing and do that again, you will find yourself on the Universal drive...” I took a picture of the map and followed his instruction to the letter. It didn’t look far on the map but I forgot to check the scale of the map!

After 15 minutes’ walking, I sensed something must be wrong because we already went out of the shopping plaza and walked into a quiet village. It’s a beautiful neighborhood. Houses and gardens are well-maintained. People hang floral hoops on their front doors. We enjoyed the walk so much that we didn’t stop to question the route. 10 minutes later, we passed across the Whitney Ave. This familiar name eased us from panicking. Another 15 minutes, we began to worry. Maybe we should have turned back from there, but for some reason we didn’t. When finally on the State street, we found ourselves in a dilemma. Because it’s been almost 1 hour and we were only half way there...

Walk, walk, walk.

We were walking on the Universal Drive, when a sign of Bestbuy appeared out of blue. We almost screamed. Actually we did scream because the second thing we saw was a restaurant called “Red Lobster”. “We’ve been here! The Target trip!”we shouted at the same time. Yes, we’ve been there two weeks ago on the Target trip. That evening we talked about whether we should have dinner together at the “Red Lobster” , but it was already after 7 pm so we went to the Bestbuy instead. Wait! That Target is in North Haven.What?! We walked from Hamden to North Haven!

One day trip to Boston

One day trip to Boston

      We planned this trip so late that no affordable hotel rooms are available for us. Shall we give up the trip to Boston? No! There is a will there is a way. As a city, Boston is not so big. If we can get there in the morning then we can make it! So we turned in very early the night before and got up 4:00 in the morning to catch the first Amtrak train to Boston. For some reason our credit cards failed to pay for the tickets on the machine in the station, but the conductor was so nice and helped us to buy the tickets on the train.

     When arrived at Boston, it’s 8 o’clock in the morning. First stop, Harvard. To be honest, Harvard is not as impressive as I imagined, and MIT is very modern. Yale stands alone in terms of grandeur and magnificence.

     After the campus tour, we had a nice lunch at a popular restaurant called “Legal Sea Food”. Boston Lobsters really lived up to their reputation. Everything was DILICIOUS!

      Next stop, Boston Common Park. We still got time and it was a nice day, so we took a nap on the lawn.

    Tourists can hardly get lost in Boston because we just need to follow the red line that nice Boston people drawn for us with red bricks along the street. We went to Charles River, Bunker’s Hill, and the Long Wharf. It's a beautiful city.

4th of July, we are here to buy!

4th of July, we are here to buy!

     We’ve heard so much about this outlets mall near Clinton both from Carrie and colleagues who were here last summer. And we were expecting a huge sale on the Independence Day. So the decision was made, we’re going to Clinton! Because it’s holiday and apparently there is no train going to Clinton in the morning, we could only be there in the afternoon. After shopping we only have two choices to go back to New Haven. One is to catch the 8:30 train in Westbrook, but it’s going to be tricky because we need to catch a train arrives at Westbrook at 8:28. There is only a 2-minute gap for us to run to another platform if the first train is on time. The other choice left is the last train of the day at 10:46.

    You can imagine, everybody went crazy when we found out each item in the outlets is much cheaper than it is in China. We even came up with the slogan:“Buy more, save more!” When it’s time to go to the train station, everyone was loaded with bags and we still need to walk for 20 minutes with them.

  

 Unfortunately, the train that brought us to Westbrook was not on time therefore we missed 8:30 train to New Haven. We were waiting in the station when Lauren and 2 other girls went to a cafe nearby to see if there is any food because we were starving. Suddenly, a voice came from a speaker “Train is approaching!” We thought the 8:30 train was also late and that would be a blessing for us. But 3 of our team members were still in the cafe! We screamed like hell to draw their attention. They finally heard us and got back but it turned out to be a passing-by train. We’v got stuck in the station for more than 2 hours! Sliver-lining was that everybody was excited about their shopping experience, so we had a lot to talk about which made waiting less boring. “Check out what I got...”

Day 3: An Awesome Planetarium Trip

We finally met Carrie and Siggy! It didn’t feel like a first meeting, because we'v heard so much about them.. They arranged a busy schedule with miscellaneous activities. Everybody was excited and couldn’t wait to embark on this wonderful adventure. As for me, it’s pretty exciting that the very first  activity is a Planetarium tour. I’ve always loved the stars and constellations. It was a long walk to the planetarium, but we enjoyed it. Because every and each building along the way look like a castle in a fairy tale. We Chinese are well known for a long history but sadly there are only cement jungles to be seen in most of the cities nowadays.

  In the planetarium, we watched an awesome show on a dome ceiling. And I picked up few tricks to recognize those constellations. Unfortunately, it’s a little cloudy that night otherwise we can observe the sky through this telescope built in 1871.

Settling In

   It was a long journey. Everybody was exhausted when dragging those heavy giant suitcases out of the Union Station in New Haven. There was a Yale shuttle bus right there in front of us, so we took it without thinking or asking questions. Fortunately, the driver was super nice, and explained to us there are different lines and how we took the wrong one. Then I overheard him speaking to his colleagues through a radio device about our situation. “They have huge suit cases........I’ll drop them at medical school”......Then he did. Half minute after that another bus picked us up and dropped us right in front of our apartment! And it’s totally FREE!

Home,sweet home!

Thanks to the internet, we had our apartment ready back in early June. Dear Loren who arrived a couple of days earlier has already cleaned it and bought some groceries. It’s a cosy little apartment and will be our home for 6 weeks!