29/9/00-first, i'd like to say, l'shanah tovah to any jewish peeps reading this. for the first time, i think i'm finally in a place that's accepting of judaic beliefs, in large part to the high jewish population. today, i actually walked around campus with my yarmulke on, but its like, there's enough people that wear them otherwise that it's pretty much accepted, no questions asked. tonight i went to services at the anglican church where they're holding high holiday services for hillel. expected a bigger turnout, but i'm sure there'll be more people there tomorrow. its really weird not being with my family for the holidays, but it's also a growth thing. like i was talking to some kid, and he was commenting on how we can choose when we want to go and when we want to leave during the service. and its true. its definitely going to be a new experience that i'm looking forward to.

my laptop's still been been broken. no power. i have to send it back to the states, but i havent done that yet. HP Canada wont service it since laptops arent yet on the Canadian market. so i'm trying to figure out just how to update my website from the computer lab which ive been using, but there's only 2 computers, you cant print, and they lock up at midnight. so in that light, i'm not going to say too much, even though i havent updated in the last 3 weeks. and damn, this is the first time in almost 2 years where i've had to work on my page by going back to the basics and writing pure html code. but if i still remember how to do it, i guess thats all that matters... classes have been going okay, and i'm slowly easing my way in here. no plans to go home anytime soon, i still feel like i'm finding my niche, cause i dont know who my friends truly are here. but in time...

i'm working on getting a radio show, but ive gotta submit my sheet in on what i wanna do for the station. then there's the mcgill curling team, hillel, and i dont even know how involved i'm gonna end up being with tech crew this year. but everything else has been chill. and there's a few words i notice myself saying like a canadian, but no ehs yet. things on the floor are going real well and stuff with my floormates has been real chill. still a lot of good looking girls around here....things back on the homefront are a little weird, but i've been finding myself crossing the hall and hanging out with one of marcia's friends from home, sarah. and go figure, she thinks i'm weird (hehe, its fun to poke at canadians). but apparently, my weirdness is some kind of commodity to her. i guess i'm that kind of guy. she's pretty good looking and t'would be chill if something happened, but knowing me and women, i'll just be sitting on the sidelines again. so instead, i'm left to be weird and writing random quotes from fight club, clockwork orange, chris farley movies, and "i'm a camel" on her whiteboard. but who knows?

9/7/00-well the past coupla days havent been too too bad, though i still dont really know people well enough in my classes. tuesday started classes for me. first was microeconomics from 1130 to 1 and its a lecture of about 327 people. then i went eat lunch at rvc cause its closer than bmh. after lunch, i wandered around the city to future world to pick up cables to link up my laptop to my stereo (and play mp3s on my stereo) and the post office to pick up stamps. and i spent about $200cdn at the bookstore buying books of which i didnt even get everything i'll prolly end up needing. then at 230, i went to my space time and matter class, which seems interesting, except i have the prof seems rather dull. who knows? but that was a lecture of about maybe 150-200. and i dont know why but last night, i just didnt feel like being social outside so i was in my room most of the evening. but i was luckily able to catch melissa on the phone. also, jeff wilhelm told me where to get stuff to put up live captured pics from the webcam, so i was sending people to my webcam site ( http://132.216.32.120:8080 ) all day and then later last night, i figured out how to do live video with the webcam, and that's at http://smalrus.camarades.com but of course, it only works if i have my webcam turned on. sometimes it got annoying cause i'd be doing something like laying on the bed reading and everyone would be asking me what i was doing, but i gave a few people virtual tours of my dorm room so that was cool.

today was day 2 of classes. 1030 was my logic class, which wasnt too bad but again, the prof seems rather dull...she has us get this text thats not in the university bookstore, so i had to go to this little sidestreet shop to pay $101cdn cash for a single textbook. this course so better help me be a more logical thinker for that price...then i went to lunch at rvc again and met up with a couple people there, but i had a lot of time to kill, so i tried starting some of the logic reading and it's definitely gonna be a tricky class. next at 130 was intro to comp. politics and that class shouldnt be too bad and one of the kids in my frosh group is in that and my 230 political theory class. those should be literature heavy courses and remind me of the good ol days of hotchkiss...got back and chilled here, ate dinner myself but did some more logic reading and notes cause im determined not to lag in class, and then at 7, we had a floor meeting in the common area. so we talked about the floor, about "rules" and stuff we had to do, blah blah blah, played a game and then went to take the bus to go bowling. that was the first time i'd ever taken a city bus. bowling was really awesome, the lanes were all clean and whatnot, there werent fat, drunk guys trying to bowl like last time back home. we had these lanes that registered our names

not much else is doing here other than that. more lectures, midterms coming in october. going home? i dunno, probably still not til december, and i'm realwhen we paid at the counter, the shoes seemed new, there were all these animations after every ball you rolled, etc...it was mad crazy bowling and i dont think anyone at home would believe my scores were 122, 141, and 157, with a plethora of strikes and spares. i think it was just the people. theres a coupla good looking girls on my floor...one looks like irene from realworld seattle only w/o the frizzy hair, and the other, marcia, looks like genesis from realworld boston (like the boston series, not the reunion special...and i dont believe this girl is gay either like genesis...). i found out she's doing polisci for a major also so thats kinda cool and i'll have to keep a lookout for her in my classes cause shes in my comp politics and i think, political theory class as well...and we've been planning all these things we're gonna do as a floor, so that should be cool. $2 tuesday night movies at the paramount and sundays is you-pick-the-movie night. fight club, baby...bowling was cool cause i actually got to see people on my floor and if we keep doing stuff like that, it shouldnt be as bad...

only my cough is acting up again, so that sucks big time, but i dont really have to be up til about 10, so thats even better :)...

9/3/00-i wouldnt be surprised if i start writing less frequently. i just get so lazy around here. i think darwin had it right in his "survival of the fittest" theory. the key word is environment. i remember in biology and in anatomy how we used to talk about the 10 different traits for life- absorption, movement, response to a stimulus, etc...and one of those traits was adaptation. somehow, man was given the ability to adapt to new environments, yet darwin tells us that the man who adapts best in a new environment would tend to outlive the others. i'm wondering if that's happening to me. over the past week, i've done my own thing up here, and its been cool. its an environment thats unlike anything i've ever been in before. first, there is the college experience itself. i never used to be a party person like and i can't make friends without depth... right now, theres no depth between anyone. we had a conversation at dinner tonight about how all our other conversations are rather superficial and we've never gotten to know each other, all its been is drinking and doing stuff...i cant make friends that way. thats all we've been doing this week is drinking to get drunk. its completely not an issue up here. in the states, drinking is a stigma for people who want to think they're cooler than everyone else, but here, its just a part of life and thats what you do. and that issue alone is what sets my college experience apart from anything anyone in the states have. do people still drink in the states? are there still parties? of course, but unlike here, alcohol is a stigma and frowned upon, thus a party here and a party in the states are looked at from different perspectives.

the other part of this environment is the city life...its definitely what i wanted and in an international city like this, there's so much culture to see around you on the streets, but that cultural variety is also an extreme contrast to the small suburban life of south windsor. and very different to what i know. the end result is that 8 days after coming up here to spend 4 years of my life, i'm having trouble trying to adapt. i've been talking to my friends on what's been going on up here and while i'm grateful for the concern on the morality of drinking, there is a drastic change in environment that isnt as prevelant in rural uconn or suburban south windsor. i'm quickly learning that there is a real world out there where i've never had to be around people who drink or smoke, etc...but the reality is, everyone does it up here, and no one has a problem with it. and because of that, i cant be closed minded as to who my friends are, just because they drink or smoke. in some respect, its like i've been in a little bubble of goodness and am struggling to adapt to this new environment. i'm not sure how to do it either because i cant be in my little bubble here, but yet i know i'm also here to study and keep things in some long term perspective.

maybe the fact that i've been in the little bubble of south windsor has made me more closed minded to who i'm allowing to be my friends. because my friends dont hang around people who drink and smoke, its almost like i feel the same way, but if i dont change that, i wont have any friends here...and if i dont adapt to my new environment, i'll also not have any friends here. its easy for people back home to say there's gotta be someone here thats like me, but dont forget, there are a lot of canadians here (duh) and again, drinking is not a problem for them. it is easy to make a statement like that when the campus is 19 miles from home and is 12 times the size of high school. yeah, there were good kids in high school and a small amount of troublesome kids and there would be at any school, but the environment 258 miles from home changes, just as i'm sure its different for chris in annapolis (well no kidding, thats the military), or amy (who's 238 miles) (distances measured using http://www.indo.com/distance/ and my lack of a life, being online at 310am) maybe i just need sleep, i've been deprived of it all week from orientation stuff and i'm sure that's not helping me think about things here at 310am. its definitely different from everything i knew, and everything i expected and adapting to this environment is harder than i expected as well. i came here expecting to meet people, chill, and then go to classes. but instead, i found myself in a real reality check when i found out that not everyone is bubble people and that somewhere along the line, i'm going to need to come out of my bubble and face this new reality check head on. i have four years to live here and i dont have the luxury of going home every weekend and remain in the bubble... in the meantime, i should actually go to sleep in bed, instead of on my keyboard...

Past reflections: