I spent the past week visiting colleges in New England. This is how that went. Fair warning - in lieu of taking pictures, I took notes on this trip, so this might end up kind of long. There are a few pictures too, though.

It started out (as many trips do) with a drive to the airport. I hadn't really thought about it until we got there, but it was the first time I'd been to our local airport (in an Undisclosed Location) in like 3 years. So it was a bit weird being back. I got full-body scanned for the first time (woo), and then we got on the plane.

I had forgotten how freaking awesome airplanes were. Like, the experience of being on an airplane is pretty shitty still, but I was able to combat that by maintaining mindfulness of the fact that I was flying in the air! It was really great. They brought drinks and I got coffee, which wasn't bad at first, but pretty soon it started tasting like poo water. So.

We had a quick layover at Undisclosed Location 2, where I got some way-too-expensive pizza (seriously, $9.50 for a slice of pizza and 2 breadsticks? Airports, man). After that we hopped on another plane to Pittsburgh. On the way I listened to Watsky and alt-J's new albums (both great, would absolutely recommend) before taking in the next chapter in Mike Daisey's All the Faces of the Moon (also great - listen to it. Totally worth the time so far, and I'm 35 hours in). I also noticed around halfway through that our flight was like 95% white, and looked mostly upper-middle class, so I had a few thoughts about socioeconomic disparity and race.

When we came in to Pittsburgh, the first thing I noticed was how interesting Pennsylvania's terrain is. Having lived in a very flat place all my life, I always just sort of assumed that the typical view from an airplane is of flat patches of grass. This is not the case. I also saw an Aldi and a Tim Horton's for the first time outside of the Internet, which was kind of cool. Then we went to our motel, which was sketchy but in the small-town doesn't-get-much-business sort of way, so it wasn't bad.

The next day began with one of the most depressing continental breakfasts I've ever had. Freaking Days Inn. After that we drove to Allegheny College, which my sister's looking at applying to. There were a surprisingly large number of people for an end-of-summer college visit. We attended an information session and I asked a question via Twitter (technology!), and then had a tour led by a hilarious theatre-major guide. Then my mom and sister went to a financial aid/admissions seminar while I took pictures of the campus, and we went to our next hotel in Syracuse.

Day 3 consisted mostly of a visit to Colgate University. It was actually my sister's idea to go, but within like 5 minutes of being on campus it was clearly to both my sister and me that it was more my style of college. We attended a really awesome information session (my favorite of all the ones we saw, and they didn't even have a Powerpoint) followed by a campus tour, and by the end of it I had pretty well decided to apply early decision.

That afternoon, we visited a farmer's market in downtown Hamilton, where my sister got some jewelry or something and I bought a 2 oz. bag of awesomely dark, locally roasted coffee from a funny man with a neckbeard. We had lunch at a local restaurant (No. 10 tavern, if anyone's interested - I recommend the grilled cheese) and then drove to Binghamton. We watched that one shitty live action Scooby Doo movie at the hotel, which was kind of hilarious, and then went to a mall. I had forgotten how much I hate malls. Afterwards we drove back to the hotel, where I wrestled for about an hour with the worst wifi I have ever had the displeasure of attempting to use. After a while I gave up and went to sleep.

The next morning, we went to Binghamton (pseydtonne's alma mater) for an information session and campus tour. I didn't really pay much attention because it's such a large school that I pretty much knew I wasn't interested. Afterwards we had lunch at a sweet Chinese buffet and went to our next hotel.

The next two days unfolded in similar fashions - we checked out the campuses at SUNY New Paltz and American University, respectively, I visited with admissions counselors, and then I met with the directors of the Honors programs. Both were very good schools, and the Honors programs sounded great. I think if I don't make it into Colgate, I'll apply Early Decision II to AU and Regular Decision to NP.

Downtown DC was pretty great too - embassy row had some of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen, and the whole city is so architecturally diverse. I mean, there's even one building that's just a straight-up (pun intended) column:

Finally, with all the college visits done, the last day of our trip consisted of a visit with some of my mom's family in PA. We were taken on a tour of my great-aunt's retirement home, which she enjoyed very much, and had dinner there before checking out downtown Pittsburgh with my second cousins and their parents (first cousins once removed, no?), which was pretty awesome.

After that we slept in one more hotel, had breakfast at Starbucks, and flew home. All in all, it was a pretty great trip. I didn't really want to come back home, honestly - New England was so nice.

P.S. Wow, those are some large pictures. Sorry about that, guys. Will edit again with scaled-down versions.