So I'm sitting in class right now...

and to say that I'm paying attention wouldn't quite be an accurate statement, but this is a good thing and I'll tell you all why. This is good because it means that, for the time being, I have a handle on the information flow and am therefore able to engage in other, more tasty activities. Projects currently germinating:
a community service project involving baking
sculpture classes in florence
medic work in germany
the construction of an adobe oven in my back yard
fly fishing
coffee roasting
mushroom hunting
beer brewing
guitar lessons

and yesterday I made a fiercely delicious sourdough loaf using my newborn belgian beer starter.
up things are looking

belated trip updates

View Larger Map

and Wacken photos are up on Flickr!

Address

in response to a contact information request:

Address:

895 Five Corners Road
Thetford, VT 05075

phone number is still 251-421-1041 but service is patchy

Photos

I have now uploaded all 368 photos from the month of June between my trip to Scotland and H and I's riot night in COlogne after the German soccer win.

http://flickr.com/photos/10612096@N07/?saved=1

The End of the Beginning of the Beginning

In approximately 17 hours I will begin Medical School, off the blocks and into Cardiovascular and Respiratory Physiology at 8am tomorrow. Am ever so slightly apprehensive of the workload but very excited to begin.

Other news: I have created a Flickr account for sharing/back up all of my photos from the trip and other adventures. Unfortunately I forgot to bring a charger with me to the library so the pics won't be live until tomorrow, but I will post the link here when they are.

That's about it for now. What am I doing with my last day of freedom? Probably running errands and cooking lentil stew. Maybe Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if I'll have enough time...

Mooseilauke [sic]

I have just returned from an event filled overnight trip with the DMS clas of 2012 in the woods of northern vermont. Apparently there is a large, huge even, cabin owned by the college, and although it was told to me on at least half a dozen occasions that we were going, I was completely unprepared for the expedition. No sleeping bag, tooth brush, changes of clothes etc. But that, if anything, made it more fun. We arrived on a rickety old yellow school bus that was clearly Un-magical as it almost died topping the hill to the cabin, about 20 miles from Hanover. After dropping our things in the bunk houses, we grouped in the humongous timbered lodge featuring a moose head, stuffed cougar in a cooking apron, and other pieces of Dartmouth Outdoor Club's twisted sense of humor, for further orientation. We then played group games ostensibly intended to foster group feeling through participation, that in reality fostered group feeling through sarcasm. The I joined a pick-up kickball game, which was beautiful. After a banquet style rustic dinner of split pea soup, salad with apples and feta, black bean casserole, and carrot cake slathered with maple syrup icing (all chased with deliciously cold water), we returned to the cabins to change clothes then congregate while eating cheese puffs and drinking cheap beer. An acoustic guitar appeared, followed by more and more empty cans, the eventual result of which was a midnight, spontaneous alpine stream swimming adventure. Afterwards I collapsed into my surprisingly comfortable bed.

This morning we were awoken to the sound of cooking pots being beaten with spoons for a quick breakfast before the hike up Mt. Moose-whatever. Around 40 of us set out at 9, reaching the summit after an hour and a half where we were granted a 360 panoramic view of the clouds and mountains of NH and VT. We returned at noon, having passed about 1100 distinct kinds of extraterrestrial looking mushrooms. The fatigue in my legs became full on pain, the good-spent ache of exertion, as I boarded the bus to sleep away the miles between there and here. And here I am, happy, but badly in need of a shower.

My classmates seem absolutely wonderful. Already they have far surpassed any expectations I had in terms of personality, interesting backgrounds, etc. 77 characters and me, the one normal guy*. (being facetious) I can't wait to know them more deeply, but the brief to intermediate encounters we've had have been just dandy. There's not a one that I get even a single bad vibration from. An auspicious beginning.

A New Home

Have just endured my first day of orientation as a Dartmouth med student. Lots of quick introductory talks about curriculum, parking etc., a quick lunch, a few breaks, a hammy video comparing (unfavorably) the system of human medical treatment with its veterinary counterpart, fittings for white coats, and some great faculty introductions and anecdotes. In a few minutes there will be a picnic, indoors because as the brits say "it's pissing outside".

Last night Nikki and I swung into Hanover around 4pm after a 5 hour drive through Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont. We unpacked my boxes of junk and finally met my room mates: Tivon, a 3rd year DMS student, his girlfriend Katie, and a grad student named Kasey. The house is even better than I had remembered. It has a barn with stables, shed, potter's wheel, super spacious kitchen with dishwasher, pool table, kegerator, covered porch with hammocks, and is encompassed by acres of wooded yard cleft by a stream that I can hear when next to any window on the east side of the house. I'm anxious to actually move into my room on Sept. 1st when my lease technically starts. Right now I'm sleeping on a very comfortable couch, which I have no problems with after the hostels, tents, train seats, and benches of the Euro Trip.

Home

is where I am.

Counterintuitively, Heaven and Hell combined in more or less equal parts, is still Heaven.

Greatest weekend of my life. Was it technically on a weekend? I actually don't know, or care, what day of the week it is. H and I are at our wonderful hostel on Amsterdam's main drag by the baroque trainstation and canal cruise ships. We have survived, and thrived, in Wacken. It was the essence of Halloween and the 4th of July intertwined. There was smoke, rain, black earth, bones, bottles, leather, beer, armor, inflatable instruments, beer, beards, naked canadians, mud torrents, a wasteland of ramshackle tents, 3 gigantic stages, and 80,000 plus maniacs. We met or saw people from 24 different countries. We shared our tent with a stranded half hungarian Londoner and an incomprehensible Brazilian. Next door a Peruvian professional juggler shared a tent with a Colombian school teacher. I clearly and lovingly recall lifting a middle aged, balding, and kilted scotsman over my head during a concert. We hugged total strangers from Scandinavia, lifted the Irish after knocking them to the ground, saw and endless sea of heads simoultaneously nodding ''ýes'' to the same insane musical question. We high fived people in speedoes wearing viking helmets, towing inflated rafts filled with beer bottles. Never, not once, did we witness a fight, even a verbal altercation, and nowhere to be seen were swastikas, skin heads, or other scumbags. The youngest person I saw was maybe 6 and the oldest over 60. The tide of camraderie, the energy, the beautiful, strangely elegant quasi violence, all unbelievable and incommunicable.

So after 72 almost consecutive hours of lethally loud music, Harison and I are showered and in possession of a bed. I am less than a week from home, and we are both Beat-ific, bruised, sun scorced, and oh so happy.

Wacken!!!

We are here. There. Right now. It is incredible. I´m in an internet tent in a sea of mud that until 2 days ago was a farmers cornfield. Can´t hear a thing and the nearest stage is 200 yards away. Wonderful place. Gotta run.