The school year is well underway now, campus is settled into a constant bustle from the craziness that move in and welcome week brought. Although I'm on coop, since I'm still active in BESS I've been really busy. We have e-board meetings, study session, and general body meetings and a new community service project starting next week. We were supposed to start the community service project tonight, but due to a logistical problem at our community partner, we're waiting a week.

Since I had a free evening, which was my first in a few weeks and quite likely last in a while, I decided to walk home. I started past the T stop, Charles, MGH and down Charles Street.

Cars driving by got in the way, so you can't see it, but this garage fits a lot more cars than you would expect, by using an elevator to get them to the upper levels instead of ramps. Beacon hill is one of the oldest parts of the city and I expected it to be mostly old brick buildings, and classic architecture, and while there was plenty of that this caught my eye.

I kept walking and although this wasn't the most functional sidewalk, it is semi typical. Plus it had a leaf that had actually changed. That's one of the things I miss most about home. For 18 years, I thought people who drove to go look at foliage were somewhere in between crazy and stupid. Freshman year the first time I went home was in October, I had to drive out to my ski shop through all sorts of back roads in the woods & between apple orchards, and finally appreciated it.

I also spent a little time playing with that picture. It's nice to use someone else's software to just edit pictures, instead of figuring out the math that I need to do to produce the desired effect, like I've done in a lot of my work.

This one didn't require any editing. Just something I saw along the way that I thought looked interesting,. One of the things I've never really done since starting school is explore the city as a full-blown tourist. I did the whole tourist in Boston thing enough times on school field trips. Instead I like to walk around and just appreciate the little things that make this city so great.

This is one of my favorite sights in the city. It's the church at Copley Square reflecting onto the Hancock tower. Then it started raining, so I took the T back to campus. Back here I got one more shot worth sharing from my living room in West Village.

That's looking down between West F, the freshman honors dorm and only freshmen housing on this side of campus, and Behrakis, home to Admissions & Bouve College of Health Sciences. You can pick out a couple Northeastern Buildings, the flag on Centenial Common and Ruggles Station from between the trees. Reflected in the middle is West A North the highrise that i can see out my windows the other way.

Posted by Sarah Brown at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once move in is complete welcome week begins. Campus is full now and the past week had been very busy everywhere. There were activities fairs all over, meet & greets, free entertainment and everything all last week. Now every day there are so many different meetings and programs to go to when I get back from work and there are some that I miss because they happen during the activities periods built into the academic schedule.

Last week on Tuesday was the night in the student center. This is a huge activities fair with lots of free giveaways. The whole first 3 floors were filled with tables set up by student organizations. On the ground floor they had a DJ and carnival games.

Here are some of the BESS e-board members, Kathy, Sharifah, Janae & Earl by our table at the night in the student center. We have 11 members in total so the rest of us were just wandering around and trading off recruiting efforts.

Friday evening was Huskies Gone Wild, a few hours of bands & carnival games and a cookout by RSA. A whole bunch of groups collaborated to put on Huskies Gone Wild every year. The first year was my freshman year and it won for overall program of the year that year. I won a stuffed husky for knowing a bit of NU trivia.

This week on Monday BESS held our first major program of the year, Guaranteed 4.0. We had about 100 people in attendance and everyone liked the program, evident by the long line of people waiting to talk to our speaker, Donna O. Johnson at the end when I was supposed to be be walking her out to her cab.

Posted by Sarah Brown at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The real fall move in started Wednesday. Those of us who were on campus for the summer and staying for the fall moved a few weeks ago, gradually, a person here & there pushing a bin around. Since Wednesday though, it has been completely different. There are tents set up everywhere for people to get the moving bins, volunteers in red welcome week T shirts everywhere, Parking and traffic flow are crazy, and lost people everywhere.

Welcome week is starting, so there's a lot more stuff going on everywhere. All week there will be tons of vendors giving away free samples of stuff on Huntington. Monday our radio station, WRBB is having a "Block Party" on one of the quads. This afternoon there were buses to bring people to and from Bed, Bath, and Beyond for people to equip their dorms to be as homey as possible. Classes will start this Wednesday for people in classes, but since I'm in division A, I'm still on coop until December, and I'll start classes again in January.

As always, if you have any questions feel free to comment!

Posted by Sarah Brown at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)