IV: Wherin orientation is discussed, as is walking.

Hello!

I have found walking in Manhattan a very fine, even spiritual, art which requires as much faith as it does skill. You just have to walk forward and have faith that the cars approaching you will stop, but you must show no fear, lest they seize their opportunity. Just keep on walking. Also I have found rush-hour on the subway a great place to meditate on the delusions of ego and the unity of life, as everyone is pretty well unified, as in right back to back to some crazy Russians. Please note, I am mostly being silly.

Anyway, I forgot to write about the very first day of orientation yesterday, but to be honest there wasn't a terrible amount of things going on. Most of the day involved sitting and listening to people talk, then standing uncomfortably on line for near an hour. Not to say that I hated it, but mostly we just hung out. Today was a bit more active. After listening to some motivational speaker guy (Bleh. Well, at least he was kinda funny), we split into groups and went to presentations on clubs and tech and all that stuff. Here I had my first real acquaintance with another student when I started conversing with a Bio major named Bridget, from Philly. I also met another girl named Elise, who is Undecided and from California. They both were very nice, so I stuck with them the rest of the day and met a Dance major named Danny. I do wonder, however, after orientation if I will still see them much around, as they all have classes very different from mine. I hope so. At lunch, our group ate together, and our leader had us play this group building game which, I must say, was quite different form the silly ones I am accustomed to playing. It invloved a boat which could only fit ten people, and our smaller groups had to choose from fourteen people who lived and who died. Very bizarre. We took a fat guy, reasoning that if we had to resort to cannibalism, he would feed everyone. Then we discussed the reasoning for our choices as a larger group, which led to much disagreement and arguing. The purpose of the whole thing was to introduce the many different viewpoints of other people, and to be respectful of them.

After sitting through (viz: sleeping through) the rest of the day, I decided to walk down to MoMa to check out the Dali exhibit there. I really enjoyed myself, and it was full of wonderfully bizzare and disturbing films, prints, and paintings. I left feeling slightly dizzy, and on the walk to the subway I began to look at things in more surrealistic ways, which I suppose was the whole point of the thing. It was a similar feeling I had while looking at the paintings themselves. As soon as I tried to focus on them or think analytically I found myself completely backwards, so it was interesting attempting to view the exhibits on a subconscious level, without thinking. Anyone who wants to go, I'll be glad to go again.

I plan on going to bed earlier, as I am exhausted from all this walking, so I am going to play some WoW, hang with PT once he gets home, then hit the sack.

-Emerson