Arriving in Cambridge

I arrived at Boston Airport at 8am on Wednesday, collected my luggage and waited for the shuttle I'd requested for that time. I saw one belonging to Knight's Transportation, but apparently they're not the same as Day and Knight's, so I kept waiting. After an hour there (ie. 9:30) I dragged my bags to find a payphone, where I discovered that shuttles didn't start until 10:30. Had I known this initially, I would have found my own way to Sidney Pacific using the public transport system, but I decided to wait. 10:30 came and went, and just before 11:30, a shuttle finally arrived. Once on, it was a smooth ride to Sidney Pacific.

I met my flatmate, Jeremy, just as he was leaving for work, and put my bags down, quite tired from the long trip. Fortunately I had a human chamois in my bag, so I was able to clean of the dirt and sweat for the trip up Half Dome (my apologies to those sitting next to me on the plane!). It was then time to plan some priorities for settling in.

1) Lunch: sushi at the MIT student centre
2) Bedding: from Jax, which seems to be an equivalent of The Warehouse in Australia. Both cheap and close, which was good.
3) Nap!

Well, it doesn't look like I achieved much on that first afternoon! Actually, I also did a bit of getting myself oriented, eg. I found where I could get an ID card to let me into SP, but I needed to sign in at the international students office first.

I had dinner at an Indian restaurant with Jeremy, and we chatted about life as an MIT physics student and SP resident. We then went back to SP for coffee hour. I slept very well that night!

On Thursday, I went to ISO soon after it opened (9am), and was happy to discover that there was a check-in session at 10:30. After a brief wander around campus, I attended, sitting next to Tim from Brisbane. Some hardly thrilling administrative details later, I departed for the supermarket on my way back home.

I was very pleased with my shopping expedition. My aim was to buy breakfast and lunch foods, and I was able to find my usual choices, or reasonable replacements. My first joy was finding 100% peanuts peanut butter: I think I may have given the jar a little hug as I took it off the shelf ;-) . I was also able to find a 100% wheat breafast cereal: a different texture from Vita Brits, but a reasonably similar taste. For those who think that Americans call jam 'jelly', that isn't quite the case - it's more that they spread jelly on their bread! Actually not quite, but they do have jam available in a range of textures, and the one they call jelly isn't all that far from what we give the same name.

The fruit and vegetable section seemed pretty reasonable: much the same as a supermarket in Australia. I'm certainly not expecting the 'culinary hell' that Bede suggested. So close to my home (even closer than the shops at Lyneham were), I'm more than satisfied.

After lunch I was able to collect an MIT ID card, and I signed up for an account with the MIT credit union. I had decided I would walk towards the student centre and go into the first bank I found, to see if it had a free account including a debit card. The credit union in the student centre was the winner.

For dinner that night, I invented the burrito pizza. Step one: accidentally buy tortillas that are a bit too small... Perhaps 'pizza' is a bit misleading - I didn't cook them like a pizza, simply tried to wrap them up and failed - but I did have to eat them with a knife and fork.

As you see, I'm settling in well so far.