I'm Alive

Option were -, ✓-, ✓, and ✓+...rocked it!

Dear Familia,

So sorry that I've been terrible about returning phone calls/emails/etc. I am OVERWHELMED with school right now. But in a good way...I think ;) Haha. Anyway, today I received my first graded assignment and even though it took me over 8 hours and is only worth 1% of my grade, I felt pretty amazing. The Nerd in my heart lives on :)

Love,

Jem

PS Click on the image if you want to see it a bit bigger

Orientation 1

Dear Familia,

Yesterday I had my first official day at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government(HKS). It was our first day of orientation :) We were at HKS from 8 am to 5 pm doing various activities, but I was pretty happy because we finally got a better idea of what the program entails. In the morning the large group (MPPs, MPAs, MPA-IDs, etc) got together in the forum (where the most ridiculously amazing speakers come every year) for the Dean's address. They had displayed all the flags of the countries represented by this year's incoming class and it looked very cool. I think there are over 40 countries in our class!

It was definitely a full day...we were at the school from 8 am to 5 pm. I stopped back home for a bit before I headed back to meet up with about half of the class (100+ people) to go on a boat cruise down the Charles River. I definitely had a lot of fun...I didn't get to take a lot of pictures, but here are a few :)

A couple of shots looking over the river from the bridge that meets up with JFK street.

Our boat and the bar on the boat. Still not a drinker, but they set up a snack station after this so you know I was definitely all over that!

The sunset was completely gorgeous!

I got home a little after ten and went to sleep shortly after b/c we had another long day today. Luckily, we had a long break in between the massive amounts of information. A couple of my classmates and I checked out a Harvard staple, Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers.

I got the "Drew Faust (Harvard Prez)" which was a veggie burger with feta and red peppers. It was pretty decent, the bun was buttered and toasted which I definitely liked. It was really nothing too great though and at $10 even for the plain jane burger, I probably won't be going back anytime soon.

At the end of the day all 215 MPPs (master of public policy) got up in front of everyone to do a 15 second intro. Some were funny, some were awkward, most were just normal (mine included). We learn all about registration tomorrow and we have some other fun things planned for the rest of the week so I will be sure to do at least another post about orientation before the end of the week.

Love,

Jem