Grad School Orientation

As soon as we got back to Boston from Louisville, we fell straight into the chaos that is grad school orientation. Since Chuck and the other LGOs have been in school since June, it seemed weird that they were going through orientation a second time.  But this time instead of 48 of them, there are hundreds of them. All of the grad students are on campus now as well as the undergrads and the atmosphere is much different than the summer. Immediately when we came back, Chuck was busy all day long with activities and classes, I was busy with work, and then almost every night there was some sort of gathering, outing, dinner, etc etc etc. I can't tell you how many events we've gone to in the last two weeks that had free food and free alcohol for the grad students and their SOs, and I know Chuck has been to even more events without me where there was more of the same.

Here are some of the things we've done since we got back to Boston.

- Slowly but surely we've settled in to our Married apartment. (Blog on that coming soon.)
- Tuesday after Labor Day we went on a boat cruise in the harbor with all of the "Sloanies" (nickname here for the MIT MBA students because they go to the Sloan Business School.)  There were so many of us we had to take two boats, the Spirit of Boston and the Odyssey.  Our boat was the Odyssey. Typically on a Tuesday night, a dinner cruise on this boat is around $91.90 per person. We paid $15! The food was amazing, and though I got a little seasick at one point, we had a blast cutting a rug on the dance floor with all the LGOs.

I called my mom while on the boat to wish her a happy birthday. I told her I was on a boat and her response was "Are you wearing a life jacket?" That question was really funny to me considering I was on a huge dinner cruise wearing a dress and heels and my mom was probably picturing me on some sort of tiny sailboat in a t-shirt.

 
- One night Chuck and the Sloanies had some sort of candle walk down the Charles River, followed by, of course, free food and drinks at the Sloan building to welcome them officially as Sloanies, while at the same time I hit up a Sloan SOs event at a local restaurant called Mead Hall where there was, yep you guessed it, free food.
- It wouldn't be a complete week at MIT without some Thursday evening karaoke at The Thirsty Ear. The girl that runs karaoke now knows Chuck by name. Though he doesn't want to admit it, he's building quite a fanbase at The Thirsty Ear.

- We went to our first Red Sox game, for free! We keep hearing that the Sox are really bad this year and we got to see why. At some points I felt like we were watching a Little League game. Or the Cubs. Same thing. (I'm a Cubs fan so I can make that joke.)

 A lot about Boston and Cambridge is different now that school is back in session for colleges all over the city. Campus is packed, there are young people all over the place in Boston, the train is packed, everyone is back in their routines, and according to the weather lately, we may have seen the last of our hot summer days. I'm excited though for the newness of it all. Except for the packed train thing. I could do without that.