Van Adventures with Bob

This past weekend, I went on a field trip with my Architectural History class around Vermont and into new Hampshire.  It still blows my mind that New England is so small and that you can hop from state to state in a day instead of spending the entire day in the car just to get to a different part of Minnesota.  We all met at Wheeler House, the home of the Historic Preservation department, at 7:30 sharp.  Since I'm dependent on the buses here, that means I had to be outside, ready to hop on at 6:56 am.  Not so awesome considering I went to a concert the night before and didn't go to be until almost 1am.

So we get to Wheeler House and Bob, our prof pulls up in this white, unmarked van and we all pile in.  I sat in the back and promptly fell asleep snuggled against my rain gear.  Our first stop was the Rockingham Meetinghouse in Rockingham, VT.  It's a 18th century puritan church that's a good example of Georgian architecture.  There was a big cemetery behind it, so we took some time to explore while we waited for the landlord to come and open up the building.  There were tons of graves there from the 1700s and barely any listed birthdates, just death dates and the precise age of the person when they died, down to the day.  There was also this neat little tunnel in front of the meeting house that led back to a little cave.  Apparently it was where they would store the bodies of people who died in the winter when the ground was too hard to bury them.  I would not have wanted to be the person that had to deal with all of that come spring! But we stood around the entrance for a while creeping ourselves out and taking pictures hoping to capture some spectral activity.

No Gouls or Goblins here :(

Inside the meeting house, there are a bunch of box pews that wealthy families would buy.  The closer you were to the front, the more money you had.  Some of the original name plates were still on the doors!  One pew in the back had a little sketch of a horse.  Just proof that kids have been getting bored in church for centuries :) Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to go upstairs because they're doing some restoration work on the plaster so we monkeyed around outside for a while longer before packing back in the van.

The best thing about this van is Bob.  And the best thing about Bob is his snacks.  He brings the most awesome snacks.  Babybell cheese, 3 different kinds of crackers, grapes, cherry tomatoes, baby carrots.  V8 juice, apple juice, sparkling water.  Rolls, a loaf of bread and cookies.  It was paradise.  And all of it was conveniently located in the back of the van within an arm's reach.  Bob's theory is that if we're well fed and happy about snacks, we might actually pay attention.  I like it.

Our next stop was Bellows Falls, VT.  It's right on the Connecticut River which is the border between VT and New Hampshire.  We wandered around looking at the train station, some bridges, gas stations, warehouses, and storefronts before heading back.  It was so humid there!  We were all sweating bullets and antsy for lunch even though we'd been snacking all day.  While we were looking t this old, appearing to be abandoned paper mill, some lady driving super fast pulls up and yells at us because, according to her, someone lives there.  But then she says that if we had been there an hour earlier, she would have let us inside.  Curiouser and curiouser.

Bellows Falls Firehouse

NH Border!

Yeah right.  No one lives here.

We drove a while longer in to New Hampshire to our last stop of the day.  We had to drive through this little town that was having a town-wide garage sale that day.  They had the most hilarious sign -- see the pic below :)  We finally got to Harrisville around 1pm and went to their general store for lunch.  The most delicious sandwich ever.  Fresh turkey with tomatoes and lettuce and onions and this spicy mayo.  Nummy :)  And Bob bought us more cookies for desert :)

After lunch, the director of Historic Harrisville met with us and gave us the tour of town.  They have a very interesting philosophy about preservation.  They want to keep the town free of tourists which puts them in a tough spot financially, so they've decided to lease out their historic buildings to companies and organizations therefore generating revenue from rent for preservation efforts and employing people in the town.. I'm a fan. It keeps foot traffic low so the buildings aren't under a great amount of stress and the town stays more accurate to its past.  A lot of the historic homes are still privately owned too!  There are a couple of different mills in the town that have since been converted into commercial space.  And the homes were all built by 7 brothers from the original family of settlers.  And everything is in brick!  So it a) lasts forever and b) has a really quaint, New England feel.  And it's right on a lake so I may just move there.

After our tour, Bob was rearing to do some walking.  As if the last 9 hours had been for naught.  So we walked up this little hill to a field where you can see the biggest mountain in New Hampshire -- that's not saying much btw.  So we walked back down and had some more snacks and then piled into the van for the drive home.  Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep very much and was getting a little crabby and sick of the car.  Apparently, I had on what Lucy calls my "murder face".  But we got back to UVM safe and sound and Robyn and I caught the bus home and who do I meet on there???  My second cousin!  Small world right!  Good thing I wore my CSB sweatshirt so she could recognize me :)

CANNON BALL!!

Life in Vermont over the past couple of weeks had been going along swimmingly.  Classes are going well, I got a job at the Women's Center, and we've made friends with some apartments down the hall.  A couple of weekends ago, they invited us roommates to go cliff jumping with them, so Laura and I decided to put off homework for the afternoon and go for it.

We went to some lake in South Burlington and less than 5 minutes after we pulled into the parking lot, an ambulance and a firetruck pulled in behind us.  We were a little confused about what was going on, but we marched on through the woods for about 20 minutes to get to this spot where there are some good cliffs for jumping.  There are 3 main cliffs, one at 20 feet, one at 40, and one at 76. The water there is plenty deep, but  no matter how deep the water is, it's still going to feel like you're hitting concrete when you land after falling 75 feet.  One of my new buddies had jumped it a couple weeks before and was still hurting.

When we got to the cliffs, we saw that one girl had jumped the big behemoth and wasn't doing so hot.  She'd swum over to the side and gotten herself up on some rocks, but wasn't moving, although other kids said she was still talking.   It took the EMTs quite a while to get down to her, especially with all their gear,  and then they weren't able to get her back up the cliff once she was on a backboard, so they had to call in the Coast Gaurd and she was boated away.  The whole process took 45+ minutes, so hopefully she didn't have any neurological injuries.  

After watching all of this go down, we were all a little shaken up, so we went down to the baby cliff, jumped once and were done :)  The water was really clear, but really cold!  And while we were swimming around, 2 more dumbos jumped the 76 foot cliff.  They first was a really petite girl who we think tore her MCL because she could barely swim and had to be carried back.  The other, an athletic guy, jumped and surfaced on his back and didn't move for a couple seconds before he came to.  he was convinced he was ok, but his buddy was going to make him go to the hospital to get checked out.  And they all took the bus to the cliffs too, so they  didn't even have cars to drive to the emergency room.  Hopefully everything ended up ok for them.

After we got back, the roommates and I decided to have a Vermont-themed party with lots of flannel, maple syrup, and Vermont-brewed wine :) Things were going swimmingly until we realized that we were locked out of our apartment!  So we ended up crashing down the hall and then driving an hour and a half to my roommate Clare's house (where she was for the weekend) to grab her keys.  Spending $20 in gas was definitely better than paying a locksmith $100!  And we got a mini road trip out of the deal too :)

1 Year Ago Today:

I left my home in MN, my friends, and my family to spend a semester in a foreign country with foreign people.
I woke up to the sounds of sirens, traffic, and rushed Italian.
I met the people who would become some of my closest friends.
I fell in love with Rome.
I tried my first gelato.
I was scared out of my mind.
I was looking forward to one more year at CSBSJU.
Graduate school was something future-Rachel would have to deal with.
Was the the first of many I would prove to myself how tough I am.
Seems like 10 seconds and a lifetime ago all at once.

1 year ago today I hopped on a jet plane and flew half way around the world.  I miss it every day.  But having such a clear demarcation of time - 1 year- puts into perspective how much my life has shifted in the past 365 days.

I spent one quarter of them abroad.
I learned to love life sans cellphone, sans reliable internet, and sans security.
I returned and fully appreciated the people who make the places special.
I wrote 72 pages in a display of self-motivation that I will be proud of for quite some time.
I graduated.
I put off having to process that by living at CSB for another 4 months.
I applied to, was accepted at, and made the decision to go to graduate school half-way across the country.
I moved to Vermont.
I both grew up and refused to do so.

So, in a scenario taken directly from a cheesy Lifetime movie (picture me sitting at my desk, pondering the infinite possibility of life), I'm left to wonder where I'll be in another year, or 5, or 10.  Maybe I'll still be writing horrible blog posts about how I miss living in Vermont, or how I got to go back to Italy, or how great my job is, or how much of a terror my new puppy turned out to be.  Who knows.  Not me, that's for sure.  And as the last 365 days of my life have been, it's both scary and exciting all at the same time.