Amherst over the summer

Hey guys,

This is way overdue. My apologies :(

Buuuut, to make it up to you I will tell you about all of the wonderfully awesome things that happened to me while I was at amherst over the summer.

I was teaching middle school kids during July. It was great. Once you accept the fact that 12-14 year olds are assholes, it gets much better. They have surprising moments of maturity and intellectual depth that I don’t quite remember having at 13. I was impressed. One of my favorite kids, Azham, is a rising 7^th grader and, quite frankly, just a delight. Let me paint you this picture: he’s tiny, looks like he’s 9 or 10, and is extremely polite. He wears his pants very high on his waist, and says things like, “Miss Megan, I sure made a good friend today. His name is Robert,” and “Miss Megan, there are all kinds of shape shifters, but my favorite are werewolves,” on a regular basis. Needless to say, he brought much joy to my workdays. I also really liked this one kid Julianna, who came up to me in Val when we took them to campus as a field trip and said, “Miss Megan. Guess what I did? I put hot sauce on my ice cream.” I see much potential in this generation. So. Much. Potential. George was one of the bests. In class we were talking about social justice, and the teacher asked the kids to give examples of things that are unfair in the world. George is very opinionated and pro-communism. Among his long list of injustices in the world (along with things like hunger, poverty, racism, etc.) was the following: “Oh, and capitalism—it’s a disease!”

On a more random note, I played Uno and flip cup for the first time. I also did SULA (lots of fun). I’ve been to Puffer’s Pond at least twice now. I tried the Tibetan restaurant in Northampton and had Tibetan tea (which is literally melted butter- it wasn't very pleasant, unfortunately). And I’ve learned how to cook eggplants. As you can tell, it’s a summer of firsts.

So the summer school ended at the beginning of August. Now I'm working at the Natural History Museum. It's fun. on the first day, this lady brought her infant and started breast feeding it in the museum, and I thought to myself "is that allowed in museums?" Interesting times. Sometimes 6 year olds school me on my dinosaur knowledge, and then I feel inadequate. But other than that, it's great.

Also, last week I went to New York for a few days. Lots of fun. I went to a comedy club, where I duped the waiter into giving me alcohol (albeit, I actually wanted a virgin drink but never specified, so I guess I wasn't really duping anyone, was I?). I ate a lot of food. It was fun. Also, when the bus dropped me off in NY the first cab I hopped into had an incompetent cab driver who told me, "Yeah, I don't really know where you're trying to go. You're gonna have to get another cab." Great introduction to the city!

Snag <3