Overdue Update (of course), Part 1

After a short, but incredibly jam-packed trip to New York City, a brief side trip to visit with a friend in Connecticut, a really crazy trip back from NYC to Amherst* and a nearly full week dedicated to recovering from said events, I am back in Amherst. I have some extra time this morning because my Yiddish teacher, Yuri, suggested that we move today's class to the afternoon. We're going to order pizza and go swimming while we have a Yiddish lesson on some relevant topic. Sounds good to me!

So, New York: On the whole, it was an excellent experience. I think I would have enjoyed some portions of the trip more had they been scheduled in a more reasonable fashion. But I will try to recall the details of each day. For the sake of organization and for to make this entry a palatable size, I am going to backdate my entries by days of the trip. Scroll down to July 1st to read about my entire from the beginning.


*Side story: About half of the interns left New York City in the National Yiddish Book Center van on Thursday evening. The other half wanted to stay in various parts of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut corridor and agreed to meet at the NYU dorms on Sunday to ride back in the other van. All went well with the meet-up: we managed to come from our various weekend travel spots and meet punctually. About halfway into our ride, about 15 miles South of Hartford, Connecticut, we hit a dead halt on i-91. We quickly found out from an adjacent trucker who hears traffic reports over his radio system that there had been a terrible motorcycle accident a few miles ahead of where we stopped. Two people were dead on the scene, one was airlifted and was in pretty bad condition, and the highway had to close for "3-4 hours." We made the best of it while we sat there, notwithstanding the fact that we had to pee in the dark bushes in Nowheresville, Connecticut. While I did some homework, someone took out a guitar, two of the other interns took out a harmonica and a violin, and they engaged in a "traffic jam" (yes, I know, very funny...). Several hours later, the traffic finally moved. Relief. But when we finally passed the scene of the accident, the authorities had not yet removed the two dead motorcyclists. They had white sheets spread over them, of course, but it was no less jarring an image to view, especially after we all had spent the last few hours in merriment with strangers we'd never see again. It was a really poignant scene. We didn't make it home until 1 AM, and, needless to say, I was absolutely exhausted (and a bit traumatized) on Monday.