Cape Cod Day Trip

I seriously considered not writing this post. 

It’s not that I didn’t want to write it, but how in the heck am I supposed to capture so much awesomeness with my limited vocabulary!?

Once again, I am humbled by the generosity of the people that I’ve met here at Harvard.  Yesterday, a classmate opened up his vacation home on Cape Cod for the members of our class that have decided to stay in the area during “summer break”.  (There is a two week break between the Summer Program aka Boot Camp and the official beginning of the Fall Semester.)  It was only a day trip, but well worth the 2 hour drive!

The first thing I asked about upon arrival was about sharks.  I’m not kidding.  Earlier this summer (July 30^th to be exact) there was attack by a 12 foot great white shark on a swimmer in the same town. I needed to know my odds of being shark food before I got too happy about the prospect of frolicking in the water.  Our gracious host confirmed that yes, the incident happened in the same town, but 1.) The guy that got bitten was swimming with seals, who are real shark food and 2.) We’d be swimming on the bay side of the Cape and not the Atlantic side and sharks don’t come into the bay. (Do they have a ‘keep out’ sign written in shark?  Water is water, right?!) 

Sharks: Keep Out! I'm trying to swim over here!

After our afternoon of hanging out on the beach, we went back up to the house were we feasted on an American Style Cook-out with some raw oysters thrown in to keep it New England Style.  I didn’t get a pic, but we had two adorable helpers help us to finish the cookout with s’mores.  

raw materials

finished product

 
 

Like I said, I didn’t think I’d do the greatest job trying to articulate how special the day was.  After relocating, cramming 14 weeks of instruction into 14 class days, having all my free time be scheduled with compulsory and “optional” activities, missing home and family, it was nice to get away among new friends, listen to the waves and replenish my vitamin D stores.  Even The Lame Foot calmed down and allowed me to walk with almost no limp. Yay!

Needless to say, we closed it down!

Actual sunset from the day's festivities

Food, glorious FOOD!

Last night 30 of my classmates and I descended up on a Sri Lankan/South Indian restaurant about 20 minutes from the campus. A classmate organized the outing because he feels that it is important to experience a society’s culture through its food. He also feels that it is important to get out of the cocoon of Harvard Square. The purpose of this outing was to enjoy an ethnic cuisine, while also to learning more about the culture of the food.

Oh my goodness, where do I start? It was a small out of the way place surrounded by cemeteries, and I’m not sure we would have been able to find it without the voice from above saying “In 300 feet, turn left.”  

The food was great.  Since it was a small place, it had been arranged for us to try several Sri Lankan specialties family style. There were six of us seated at my table.  It was like eating in grandma’s dining room, even down to the clear plastic cover over the table cloth!  The first course was lamb soup.  Personally, I didn’t see or taste any lamb but that may have been because the pepper in the soup had seared a hole in my tongue!  YOWZA!  I like spicy food, but this ‘young grasshopper’ had to pace herself. The mango juice I was offered cut through the spice like a hot knife through butter.  Yay!

 

Lamb soup

The second dish was Chicken 65.  Don’t ask me why it was named that.  I just know that it was tasty.  It was served with coconut bread.  (Cultural insight: South Indian/Sri Lankan food is rice based.  The breads are made with rice flour or rice flour and coconut.  No wheat!)

Chicken 65

Coconut bread (savory)

Then they just kept bringing out the dishes. 

 

Pumpkin Curry (mango juice in the background!)

Okra

An AMAZING dry fish curry

Coconut dish

Lentils

And we kept eating…I think there were 3 dishes that we ate before I could snap a picture. Oops!

After dinner, the proprietress, host, and chef Premila gave a short speech about her journey to the US.  She is a Sri Lankan Tamil, the minority group in Sri Lanka.  Since 1983, the Tamils had been in a civil war with the Sinhalese. (The civil war lasted for over 25 years before ending in 2009.) She spoke of how her baby brother was killed in a military bombing of a church playground and spoke vaguely of the atrocities of war that she witnessed first-hand. (As a condition of her being able to flee, she is not to speak against the Sri Lankan government. She did not speak against the government at all, but I’ve read books about war. She didn’t have to say much for me to paint an accurate picture.)

A dear, dear friend of mine is a Sri Lankan Tamil.  Her family was fortunate enough to have the resources to flee to their home at the very beginning of the war, so this was the first time I had the opportunity to hear a first person account of what had happened there. Regardless of whether or not you feel the LTTE was a terrorist organization, there were tremendous civilian Tamil casualties that need to be acknowledged and addressed. Sri Lanka is a country that needs to be rebuilt and healed after 25+ years of continuous war.

Last night was a something that the Harvard classrooms cannot teach.  They’re good, but a student can only learn so much through case studies and analysis.  Everyone at the dinner was touched in some way. How often does a humble neighborhood restaurant get the opportunity to host a group of 30+ world leaders in the making?  We are the future leaders that care about public policy and human rights abuse and who will be in a position to do something about it.  She was thankful to have a rapt audience and we were honored to hear her story.

Although an experience like our dinner cannot be replicated, I’m already looking forward to the next outing.

Lessons Learned

This was the week of “mid-terms” for the summer boot camp that I’ve been enduring for the past couple of weeks. There are only 2 weeks left of boot camp, before I have about two weeks off before the fall semester starts. On the evening of my Quantitative mid-term, my AWESOME quant instructor Selin had our class over for a Turkish feast.  Oh. My. GUT! Not only is Selin the sweetest, bad-ass roller derby-ing mathematician that I’ve ever met, but she can burn in the kitchen! Stuffed eggplant, lentils with mint, spinach pie, meat pie, meatballs, red lentil balls with cumin, tabouli, Turkish quiche and bottles and bottles of red wine. 

Which leads to me the things that I have learned this week:

 

1.      Red wine is off limits.  Possibly forever.  Let’s just say that I couldn’t get up the next morning for my 7:50AM class.  I barely made it to my 9AM class.  One glass (yes, it was only one) is not worth that kind of suffering. UGH!

2.      The Lame Foot still hates me. On the night of the dinner, I think I walked a total of 2 miles. The Lame Foot let its displeasure be known immediately, and several days later it’s still letting me know who’s large (swollen) and in charge!

3.      I am a princess.  Air-conditioning is now required of all future living arrangements. I’m not kidding.  I’m tired of being hot, sweaty and bloated because of the heat.  I will not give you the details of the itchy/scratchy heat rash that I had to go along with the discomfort of just being hot and hung over. Use your imagination, then multiply by a factor of two.

4.      Last, but not least, I learned that I’ve got some pretty awesome classmates.  The wine loosened some tongues and made for a more festive atmosphere. We’re an eclectic and motley group from the four corners of the earth, but somehow it works.

Although the first three lessons were not fun to learn, they made lesson four COMPLETELY worth it. Hang over, heat rash and foot hate aside, I had quite an enjoyable evening. I look forward to our next outing because I’ll be bringing the white wine!