More than a week since my last post, sorry about that people. It was my fall break that started from last Friday (7/10) and ended on Tuesday (11/10) so here's a super duper nice long post about my trip to Massachusetts :)

7 October
There were still lessons on that very rainy Friday. Luckily for me, I only had two. Only 50% of the students turned up for lessons, judging by the attendance in the classroom and lecture hall. So after our lessons ended at 12.05pm, we returned to our room to prepare for our departure.
A little more background information on this trip: It's a mighty 5 car convoy with a total of 25 people going to Boston in Massachusetts. Yesh, coordination was a pain in the neck but it wasn't my pain. Bascially, the people in this trip were the 7 Toronto Trip people (Alvin, Yizhuan, Chining, Denise, Cherlyn, Jowyn and I) and the Singaporean freshies. Directions from Mapquest indicated that the journey there will probably take more than 5 hours but we all knew it would take more than that because traffic conditions were not good. Rain and fog was expected.
So we were supposed to depart at 4pm but only left Cornell close to an hour later. My car contained the 4 of us exchange students and Chinning. Needless to say, that poor guy had to endure our funny antics but let's leave that for another time. Anyways, the scenery was gloomy cos of the rain. The first 1 1/2 hours was pretty slow moving too cos we were driving through the small towns and the speed limit was 30 mph. Furthermore, our car, which Chinning borrowed from a friend, didn't seem to have much accelerating power, so we literally crawled up every slope. There were always 4 cars behind us on that road but they can't overtake us cos of the double yellow line so.. *shrugs shoulders* We had a few stops here and there, drove thru McDonalds for dinner (cos we were the slowest car already, so we dare not stop to eat haha). We finally reached our hotel (Day's Inn) at midnight, so that was about a 7 hour drive. Our room was very nice and pleasant to say the least. There was wireless network so Cherlyn and Denise could use their laptops. The laptops also doubled as our jukebox during the long car trip. There were 2 double beds so all 4 of us were able to get a good night's rest comfortably. Which we didn't really actually, we played cards till 3 hee.

8 October
Sort of looked forward to this day of SHOPPING! Yesh, one whole day devoted to the Premium outlet where most of the brands are gathered at one location. We started at 10am or so and managed to cover the entire area. Oh I forgot to mention, we (the 4 of us) decided to coordinate our clothing that day haha. We all wore our red Cornell t-shirt and denim skirts, which of course drew alot of stares. I bet they were just jealous *humph*. Although I bought a couple of things, it was actually rather disappointing. Well Levi's let me down actually. The colours, designs and sizes there were awful. I came out of that shop empty-handed. Sigh. Oh well, at least I have my second-hand Levi's to comfort me. We bumped into Alvin and Chinning at Guess and we were thorougly insulted by them. Their shopping bags were larger than ours. 'Ours' = 4 girls combined. You see what I mean? Gosh, how can we lose to them?! Anyway, we were only about 1/3 through so we soon caught up to them in terms of purchases. Well not really me actually. I splurged on a necklace for Mommy, a t-shirt for Kor, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts and a watch for myself. That's all. Jyang, sorry I didn't get your Birkies. They had started to keep the summer stock and replace it with the fall/winter shoes so Gizeh was unavailable. Madrid was beyond budget. Lips, didn't see Hollister, sorry. Yeah so we literally spent one whole day there, headed back to the hotel at night, where I watched Iron Chef America before going to sleep.

Caramel apples! We shared one chocolate chip apple, yummy!

I met Rachelle!! What a coincedence! Rachelle's my Sec 4 classmate and gee I look fat next to her...

9 October
We went down to Boston City where one of the guys' friend brought us on a tour around MIT. One really interesting part of MIT culture is their "hacks". They've got this prominent building which has a dome-shaped roof and once, to protest against some parking dispute, a group of students spirited away a police car, took it apart and brought it up to the dome where they reassembled it. There are plenty others too, not just involving the dome and some of them are just pure ingenuity. We also took turns sliding down two of the corridors on chairs (those with wheels, like the ones in the computer lab). That wasn't too bad either :) MIT

After MIT, the day sort of went downhill. Boston was a mega-hard city to navigate so I dubbed this day as the Day of Hollanding. Holland=getting lost. We went to a restaurant called Penang for lunch, where we had a really good treat of Singaporean and Malaysian food (chicken rice, hor fun, duck rice, chicken curry, oyster omelette, kangkong). After that, we headed for Salem. And that's where we hollanded repeatedly I can't even keep track. I think probably the reason for that is we didn't have a proper map of the place. So it was a very frustrating experience for our poor driver (Chinning) and navigator for the day (Jowyn). We all took turns sitting in front btw. Well we finally found the place after approximately 2 hours of hollanding. The museum had closed but we managed to catch the show, which is pretty much a summary of the Crucible and the Salem witchcraft trials.

Salem. Those are buskers but you'll have to tip them to take a photo with them so I just took pics of them hee.

We headed back into Boston City for dinner at this seafood restaurant called Legal. Any bad fish would be illegal (bad joke, sorry). We were the last to arrive because we mega-hollanded again. So it was about close to 9pm when we placed our orders for food. The 5 of us shared a table with 2 of Chinning's friends from MIT, Willie (not sure of the spelling actually...) and Jian Long. I think the 2 of them regretted it sorely cos they walked away with very very hilarious (on our part, embarrasing on their part I'm sure) nicknames at the end of dinner. Anyways, I think that dinner was the start of the laughing sickness that afflicts our car. Up till that point of time, I haven't laughed so hard for a very long time. We said our goodbyes at around midnight, returned to the hotel room about 1am and promptly went to sleep.

10 October

Another mega-holland day. We set off for Vermont. Our first stop was the corn maze which took a long time to get to cos we had to navigate through the more mountainous regions and we couldn't call for help cos there was no reception for the handphones. But well at least it was a scenic route. Beautiful, beautiful scenery. The leaves have started to turn yellow, red and orange and some trees have shed their leaves completely. It was a clear day too, so we could see the mountains amidst the clouds (might have been mist or fog actually...) far far away.

The Great Corn Maze. Gosh. We split up into 4 groups according to our cars. Our car didn't even make it through 1 quarter of it. It's humiliating. Let's not talk about it. Wait till I return to Singapore, you can take a look at the videos I took haha.

Our original plan was to go to the teddy bear factory after the corn maze but it was too late by then and everyone was tired from running around in the maze. The alternative plan was to go to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory because it closes later but I think every car hollanded while trying to get there so in the end, we decided to just check into our hotel. Our car was the first to reach. The rest of the cars hollanded and arrived about 45 min to an hour later. To pass the time, we played some taitee and indian poker. We then had Mexican fare for dinner which I felt was rather delicious.

I guess I should just do a little sidetrack here and talk about some more trivial stuff here. Well when I went to Toronto, we stopped by the Niagara Falls on the way back. Out of the 8 of us, the 4 girls (us, the exchange students) obviously have never seen the falls so we were all "ooh" and "aah" over it. The other 4 guys are upperclassmen so all but one have seen the falls like countless times I think. So Yizhuan very happily nicknamed the 5 of us (Denise, Jowyn, Cherlyn, Chinning and I) "mountain turtles". And on this trip, the 5 mountain turtles were all in the same car and very frequently, our car was the slowest. Well that's not our fault cos the car itself doesn't have much accelerating power so it crawls up any slope. Oops I think I've mentioned that before. Well anyway, we felt pretty good about coming in first that night. Turtle Power!

11 October

We went to Ben and Jerry's first thing in the morning haha. It's a very happy place, that's for sure. And yesh, we of course had ice cream despite the cold. Btw, it's about 10 to 15 degrees celcius daily now. Cool right? Next stop was the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory. There's the Vermont Teddy that costs a bomb and then there are the "exchange students" cos those teddys are made in China. No I didn't get a teddy, I've got my bear waiting for me at home. Cannot be "flowery-hearted". Hee. After that, it was another long long ride back to Cornell. We reached after 8pm, dropped off our stuff at Balch then went down to Collegetown for dinner. And dessert afterwards. I think within that short span of about 2 plus hours, I laughed so hard until my sides hurt. Why? Because of Cherlyn la. *glare* That girl and her funny antics. And Denise just goads her on... yar it's a bit hard to understand I guess so let's just leave it there. Wait till I come back and you can look at the photos and videos and get a better idea of what happened.

Ben and Jerry's. (that's quite a duh thing but nvm...)

Yup so that sums up my fall break trip and probably the last of my road trips. Quite sad actually, cos road trips are really so much fun. Hope to be able to do something like this in the future. This whole week is gonna be rainy and rainier. Plus the cold. Brrr.