It’s been an interesting past few days to put it mildly. The first of my varied experiences started Wednesday with an Earth Day celebration on IPFW’s campus. This was probably the coolest Earth Day event I’ve attended since starting at IPFW a little less than 5 years ago. It’s hard to believe I’ve been on this campus for that long of a time. Anyway, there were lots of vendors there that were giving away everything from plants to compact fluorescent light bulbs. The best vendor by far was Friends of the Third World. Sarah bought all of us sociopolitical buttons; I got one that read, “Our National Health Care Plan: Don’t Get Sick,” and Joy got an Albert Einstein one that said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” We sat outside for an hour before class which was enough time for me to get sunburned on only one side of my body (I tried unsuccessfully to even it out later in the day by sitting half in the shade and half in the sun).

On Friday, Chelsea Clinton made an appearance at the IPFW Stomping Grounds (the cafeteria in Walb) and had a Q & A session for about 45 minutes. I showed up an hour and a half before she arrived and was the first person in line. Funny enough, I happened to be wearing my Obama 2008 shirt that day. My shirt got a laugh from just about every person who lined up behind me, and I told them all that I was going to try to get my picture taken with Chelsea while wearing my Obama shirt. What can I say, I’m shameless.

We were allowed into the cafeteria at 12:15 after filling out a ticket and showing them our student ID. I got in with a ticket claiming I was George W. Bush with an email address of dubya@hotmail.com. Chelsea came on stage around 1:00 and spoke for five minutes about education reform and then took questions from the crowd. She had a calm, collected, and intelligent demeanor about her and she spoke slowly and deliberately. I was standing in the front row and I had my hand raised the entire time. Chelsea would look at my shirt, give me a dirty look, and then call on someone else. This charade went on for the entire 45 minute Q & A session. I had a lot of good questions to ask her, too. She probably knew what was coming though; if she were to call on me, I was going to ask her a serious question and then say, “Oh, and can you autograph my shirt for me?” All in all, it was pretty cool hearing her speak and now I can say that I’ve heard the entire Clinton family speak in person.

Friday night was a blast. My friend Paul threw a party at his apartment since his wife is out of town. We had some great music (Jurassic 5 and Kanye West), great beer and scotch (Guinness and Yamazaki, respectively), and great video games (Dr. Mario and Street Fighter II). Saturday night I went out to Club Soda and Flashbacks where I tried (unsuccessfully) to impress the ladies with my dance moves. Today (Sunday), my friend Scott and I helped pick up trash along the Maumee River (http://www.savemaumee.org/index.htm) with some other IPFW students and people from the community. It was a good experience, and I feel like in some small way I was able to give back to the city and the environment that has supported me for 23 years of my life before I move to Philadelphia this summer.

I couldn’t believe the amount of trash and pollution along the river, and judging by the things we found, it probably hasn’t been cleaned up in years. We also discovered a couple of rundown, abandoned buildings along the river. One of them was an old gravestone manufacturing building and there were thousands of unfinished gravestones lying behind it (some even had names of the deceased and when they died). It was kind of eerie. Even though I’m looking forward to moving out of Fort Wayne, I have to admit that there is a lot of fun to be had and mysteries to be uncovered in this city, if you just know where to look.