blogvid

columbia is near harlem... okay, its in harlem, but not harlem harlem. you gotta walk up to martin luther king jr. boulevard (from now on known as Milk Jug bvd), which is really just 125th street. i went down that road a couple days ago to go to the cingualr store in hopes of getting my phone fixed (i can't hear anything in the earpiece so i have to use a crappy hands free set that doesn't work so well). harlem is great. theres all these street vendors selling african stuff and bootleg dvd's. i even saw some guys with a large plastic bag full of high end sneakers. i couldn't tell if tey were, as we say in the shoe biz, 'legit' becuase i was jsut walking by. i didnt really care anyways because milk jug alone has ten shoe stores in the span of four big city blocks (about a mile). i was in heaven. this week is tax free week too. yet i didnt buy any shoes. nothing i really wanted. pretty upsetting. on my journey i passed malcolm x blvd., which will heretofore be known as Malox sidenote: when i was visiting teachers college for the first time i had to take the subway from my uncle's apt. well i mixed up the e xpress and the train i wanted. see the express goes to 125th street like i wanted but not at broadway, like the 1 does. the express stops at 125th and lenox ave, better known as Milk Jug and Malox. now when i stepped off that train i had a funny feeling that i wasn't where i should be. i walked into a corner store to ask if htey knew where columbia university was, adn they gave this look of "education?" im not sure these poeple realized one of the best universities in the country was within 2 miles. its pretty sad, in my opinion, and indicative of the fact that the people living in these neighborhoods don't get the same opportunities that the bullk of the readers of this blog got. hopefully someday that wont be true. and hopefully i played at least a small part in making that change. i never thought i would be a teacher (at the high school level) but now i don't think there is anything else i want to do. the speeches at orientation reaffirmed this. tc has just started an initiative to create equity in education, so the speeches revolved around this. while most of the orientation was boring, some good things were said i am glad to be a part of it.
okay, enough about that. i just noticed a small cut on my hand. don't know where it came from. my guess is that it was from drinking last night. i went drinking with some people i met at tc plus matt and manisha. im not sure these new peeps were quite prepared for me drunk. but they handled it. i told htem in a month or so they wouldnt be able to differentitate sober me from drunk me.
so the strangest thing and perhaps the coolest thing about tc is that it is like the anti-caltech. by which i mean instead of 70% dudes its 70% women. and despite the fact that i kissed a guy once, i do like women. the more the merrier. nonetheless its still strange to be in a sea of women like that. its kinda like driving through wyoming- i realized i flet weird, then it hit me. you can see 360˚ of horizon in wyoming. i have never been in a place where mountains or buildings or giants didnt interrupt the horizon. the 360 view is dissorienting. apparently this is what "big sky montana" refers to. you should all try it, its fun.