Well, I won't bore you with details about how I spend my days (wearing lacoste and pearls, playing croquet in the Yahd) and nights (dancing in cages...oh, wait. That's MIT). We're still in the middle of shopping period, where you can drop in and out of any class you like for two weeks. We need shopping period here because all the classes sound incredible on paper. They have really great names. "Political Legitimacy and Resistance: What Happened in Montaigne’s Library on the Night of October 23, 1587, and Why Should Political Philosophers Care?" Yes, you read that correctly. It's a semester-long class devoted to one room on one night in history. You hear that, and you KNOW that professor WANTS to be teaching that class. This place is really about knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It's pretty cool. But even incredibly passionate people can lecture in a monotone, and that's where shopping period comes in handy. The best part, though, is getting to sponge up esoteric knowledge in classes I know I'm not taking. It's like trick-or-treating at nerd Halloween.
Here are some things I've learned so far.
"Yucatan" means "I don't understand you" in the language of the ancient Maya. When the Spanish conquistadors saw land, they started calling out in Spanish (logical), and the native people in canoes yelled back, "Yucatan."
Swaziland is still ruled by an absolute monarch, who periodically orders every virgin in the land to dance bare-breasted so he can find a wife to his liking.
The bronze ceiling of the Pantheon was torn down and recast as Bernini's Baldacchino in the Vatican.
There's a reason why we sometimes shorten "them" to " 'em" (as in "yeah, I roofied 'em last night"...don't drink the punch). Think about it: you don't shorten "this" to " 'is," or "then" to " 'en" ("and 'en we did 'is crazy 'ing"...no.). So why 'em? It's because the Old English plural third person was "hem," and even when that word dropped out of formal use, the casual pronunciation lived on. Go on, you try and tell me that's not cool.
Coming soon: vlog with q&a, a peek at the dorm, and all the stuff I've wanted to say for a very long time. hehe. leave your most burning questions below. it could take a while, so if you want more tiger cub in the meantime check out the twitter :)
