I did have every intention to write a comment about yesterday. Right before going out to eat. I just needed a little nap first, long day and all. So here I am, twelve hours later and a long nap richer (and hungry!).
MIT: Yesterday was the big MIT day for me. I had to meet up with the program I’m enrolled in for briefing. The weather wasn’t half bad and I decided to walk. I estimated the walk to 20 minutes tops. Halfway, when waiting for a blinking man to tell me when to cross the street, I simply saw one dark cloud behind me in the direction I came from. Ok, if I hurry I might make it before that horrible weather reaches me. Two minutes later I was soaking wet. I did buy an umbrella the day before to prepare myself for this very situation. But here as in Bergen, the rain falls horizontally and there’s really nothing you can do about it. Soaking wet I missed of course my building, walked around the block a few times before I met up at the office ten minutes too late. But no harm done apparently.

Here I met my first fellow visiting felllow from Seoul, Korea. Together with our counselor we had a small chat and got plenty of information about the program and MIT before we hustled off to across campus (huge campus by the way) to make it to the Internation Student Office. Here we got a chance to show our paperworks once again. I’m going to be brief for the rest of it: in the following order, I got my MIT student card, lunch at Subway, my athletic training card (so I can go free to the gym), I got my American bank checking account so I can pay my US bills, delivered my medical forms at the medical center, had a little discussion with the insurance people whether I needed the extended (expensive) MIT insurance (yes I did. If anything bad happens to me I’m triple covered now). By the end of it all I was pretty exhausted.

Going shopping: considering my luggage hasn’t arrived, I took my credit card for shopping - covered by my travel insurance. I checked up in my little book “top ten shopping places in Boston” and decided to take the red line to “downtown crossing”. I entered a somewhat expensive store, got greeted by a clerk, and said “you know what, my luggage got delayed so my travel insurance covers some emergency shopping. Can you help me out?”. I never made friends that fast before. I walk out of there with a pretty decent set of new clothes. However, none of it I can use on daily basis. So luckily Macys was just around the corner. On my way back to Cambridge I went by an AT&T store and picked up a “pay as you go” (kontantkort) sim card that I can plug and play into my Norwegian cell phone. Now I’m all set with a US carrier. But that may be the very reason why you cannot reach me here in the US on my Norwegian number. My new number is +1 617-599-8314.

Worchester: Today I’m going to Worchester to see my friend Jamie and her husband James, who has a birthday. We’ll be going to a farmer league hockey game to see the Worchester Sharks, a farmer/2nd team for the San Jose Sharks NHL team. After that there’s a party! A nice little thing to know about Worchester: it’s considered a small town in the shadow of larger Boston. But still, if Worchester was in Norway it would’ve been the third largest city! With 175.000 people living there it’s 50.000 people short of Bergen, and that’s just because Bergen is a product of several small towns in order to make it look big! The trip to worchester takes about an hour with a bus. Gives me time to read up on the area. I’m staying there for the night. Tomorrow sunday is a big day: at 3PM ET / 21:00 CET (CET thats you back home), the San Diego Chargers comes into town to play the New England Patriots for the AFC Championship game. I’m very excited! My pal Kassim Osgood, who played half a season for Cal Poly Mustangs when I coached there, is now a Charger and also a special teams Pro Bowl selection. I just have a hard time convincing anyone I meet, who barely grasps that I even know the rules of the sport, used to coach with the team one of the players out there are from.

One last funny thing: I was at one of my many stops at Starbucks deciding what to have when Kings of Convenience comes on (you know, the Bergen band with the Simon & Garfunkel sound to it). I got so puzzled that it took the nice girl at starbucks three tries to get through with a “how are you today?”. Nice to know Bergen export music is still in the mix.
Sorry, no pictures today. I forgot my camera yesterday at home ….. (ashamed)