Random Public Thoughts #8 - Swarthmore

I was lucky enough to attend my first-choice school, Swarthmore College in the Philly suburbs. It was small, co-ed, on the east coast (I wanted to get as far away from Hawaii as I could), very competitive, and near but not in a major city. Everything that I wanted!

At least for a couple of years. . .

A small college was a great place to start: it was easy to get into classes, and the classes were taught by excellent professors, not by grad students or TA's. The school was VERY well-run. The administration was unobtrusive but everything worked smoothly, logically, and (in retrospect) marvelously well.

The best part of Swarthmore, for me, were weekend outings. Swarthmore's extra-curricular policy was simple: they paid for activities (aside from a nominal and very minimal charge), provided the activities were organized by students, and posted and open to all.

Various resourceful students organized "Outdoors Club" outings. These ranged from backpacking trips along the Appalachian trail, to white-water canoeing in upstate New York, to canoeing through cranberry bogs in the New Jersey pine barrens, to camping on the beach at Asseateague Nat'l Seashore. All the trips were well-planned, from the canoe rentals to the food to the carpools to the splitting of costs (always very minimal). All I had to do was show up with my sleeping bag, clothes, and $5! There often was singing - some of the groups had wonderful singers with perfect pitch, singing in harmony under the stars. So beautiful - I loved it!!!

If I couldn't find an outing to go on, then I usually tried to catch a ride with someone to visit high school classmates in various east coast colleges. I had quite a few classmates in Boston-Cambridge, several at Yale, and my brother went to Columbia University in NYC. I would show up with my sleeping bag, unannounced! In those days security was not an issue so it was easy to sleep in the dorms and none of my friends and acquaintances ever turned me away.

One weekend I was stuck on campus with no Outdoor Club outing and no ride to Boston or NYC. I chatted with another gal who was similarly stuck and a little bored, and we decided to hitchhike to Atlantic City, NJ to check out the Monopoly streets - Boardwalk, Park Place, etc. It was a day's lark - I was most interested to see the Atlantic City Boardwalk - so different from Hawaii beaches!

In retrospect, what I learned most from going to a school like Swarthmore was that anything is possible. On one white water canoe outing, my canoe partner & I managed to wrap our canoe around a rock in the middle of the Hudson River. We were rescued (I was thrown out of the canoe by the force of the impact and floated downriver while my friend stood helplessly in the middle of the river!?!) but I worried about the cost of replacing the canoe. When I asked what I owed for damaging the canoe, though, I was told - nothing! After returning to Swarthmore, a couple of the guys brought the canoe in to the engineering lab & shop, fixed the canoe, and brought it back, only slightly worse for wear. The canoe rental place didn't even know that there was a mishap and took the canoe back without comment or charge!

One of my more memorable outings was a week-long backpacking trip in the Great Smoky Mountains during spring break. This trip was meticulously organized by an Eagle Scout who calculated hiking distances, lined up all the shelters along the trail, planned all the food perfectly, and set up car pools to get us there. The only thing he couldn't plan was the weather - we started out our hike in a downpour. However, we were all young and high-spirited college kids and this didn't bother us unduly. And we had good days too. One gal brought her acoustic guitar in a plastic garbage bag so we had good music (no CD players & IPods in those days!). I still remember a song that she sang for me - Streets of London.

It was a wonderful two years (with a year off in between working in San Francisco and traveling in Europe), lived very intensely. I made good use of my time, going out almost every weekend! When I stayed at the school, there were all kinds of interesting movies & performances, and the students were so smart & resourceful & interesting - I learned the most from my peers!

But two years was enough - after awhile, the smallness of the school, once seen as an advantage, became tiresome. It was easy to get classes, but there wasn't much choice. It was easy to meet people, and they were wonderful people indeed, but after eating 3 meals a day with the same 900-1000 people and seeing them the rest of the day in class or in the library, I was beginning to crave a little more anonimity.

I'm glad that I did all the things that I did, so when I transferred to the University of Hawaii, it was with no regrets whatsoever. Since I entered UH as a junior and had already taken all my basic core courses at Swarthmore, I could sign up for all kinds of fun classes such as Soil Mapping, Plant Anatomy, Economic Entomology, Plant Taxonomy, Soil Physics, Ecology, Food Science, Geology of the Hawaiian Islands, Tropical Horticulture, etc. After working and wandering around for a year, I WANTED to go to school and learn again!

Such fun! Life was (and is) good!!!

Random Public Thoughts #7 - Trans-continental train trip

In my previous post (#6), I talked about a trip that I did to Scotland when I was 19, and mentioned the kindness of total strangers.

After wandering around Scotland and Europe for about half a year, I decided that I wanted to go back to school again. It was now early November, and I had gotten back across the Atlantic and was now staying with someone (which meant sleeping on the floor in a dorm room) at Swarthmore. Obviously I couldn't stay like this for long, and I decided to return to Hawaii until it was time for Swarthmore's spring semester to begin in January.

Somehow, I had found out about a trans-continental train trip from Montreal to Vancouver, that was supposed to be very cheap if you were under 21. I was now 20-1/2! My Swarthmore friend Cathy (whom I roomed with in San Francisco) had moved to Seattle and was living there with another Swarthmore temporary drop-out, Georgia. So, I had a plan: hitchhike to Montreal, take the train to Vancouver, drop down to Seattle to visit Cathy and Georgia, and then fly back to Hawaii!

I was very lucky and got a "good" ride from a lesbian couple while still on the New Jersey turnpike. One woman talked with me in the bathroom at a rest stop. When she learned that I was trying to get to Montreal, she offered me a ride as far as Boston, to her parents' house, which I happily accepted!

When we arrived at her parents' very proper home in the Boston suburbs, they didn't blink or lose a beat when their daughter asked if I (total stranger, Asian girl with huge rucksack) could spend the night there. They were happy to see their daughter again, greeted her partner as a family member, and were kind and hospitable to me in their proper East coast Yankee manner.

Thus, I had a safe ride with good company, and a good night's sleep in a real bed to boot!

Since it was November, the days were short, and there weren't a lot of cars on the road north of Boston. Thus, I remember having some trouble hitchhiking to Montreal, and when I arrived, it was already dark. Whoever it was that gave me a ride on that final leg to Montreal dropped me off by the youth hostel. However, when I walked up to the door, I found that the hostel was closed!

So there I was, on a chilly November night, with no place to stay!

A young man, perhaps in his 20's or early 30's, was walking by. He noticed me staring at the sign and he confirmed that the hostel was indeed closed. He saw the dismay on my face, hesitated a minute, then told me that I could stay at his house for the night until I figured out what to do. He must have noticed my own hesitation so he added that I had nothing to worry about - he lived with his girlfriend! So, OK, it was settled!

I ended up staying at their apartment for several days - when he found out that I wanted to buy that special train ticket, he took me to the station and helped me get it. It turned out that the train didn't leave for a couple of days, but he said no problem, I was welcome to stay with them until it was time to go. He gave me a little tour of Montreal, and helped me to buy groceries for the train trip - it was 3 days and 2 nights, and although it would stop to drop off and pick up passengers, I obviously would be unable to leave to buy anything.

His girlfriend was French Canadian (he was English Canadian), and even though she understood English perfectly well, she pretended not to understand anything that I said. I tried my high school French but I wasn't fluent enough to have a meaningful conversation. She probably was annoyed to have me staying there, but she was polite and hospitable even though we didn't talk much.

The train left Montreal some time in the afternoon, I think. I remember passing over glaciated, boggy terrain - quite interesting. Then it got dark. When we crossed the midwestern plains, I remember there was an ice storm - all the trees were coated in ice and it was beautiful!!! I didn't drive and have a house there so I didn't know how dangerous ice storms can be. From a warm train, for a 20-year-old from Hawaii, it was great!

I was anxious to see what the Canadian Rockies looked like, but nightfall came again just as the foothills were in the distance. I was SOOO disappointed!!! I pressed my nose to the window to try to see what the mountains looked like, but it was pitch dark outside - no moon, nothing to see!

And what was it like being on a train for so long? I brought a book to read, but spent most of my waking hours either looking out the window (I found this fascinating) or chatting with a young black artiste-type man who sat with me in our little booth. He was good company for the 3 days and 2 nights, but like so many other people that I met while traveling alone, we never met again. We shared our food (he had better food than I did; I think I only brought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter to eat for 3 days!), talked about books and this and that.

The best part of the trip was the last leg of the trip. Daylight found us still in the mountains (probably the Cascades or the coastal range), and very spectacular ones at that. We were following a river gorge which cut through some spectacular scenery. I had no camera and made quick sketches in a futile attempt to try to hold on to and "keep" some of the beauty. When I looked at my sketches later, they just looked like pencil marks. Too bad! But definitely it was "the best for last."

I think we arrived in Vancouver in late morning or early aftenoon. My erstwhile travel companion wanted to maintain contact and hang out together but he made me uneasy, and he was gracious enough not to press the point and went on to wherever he was headed.

Instead, I tried to hitchhike out of Vancouver to Seattle, but had no luck. Because the days were now so short, it was growing dark. A young girl saw me hitchhiking and offered me a quarter for the bus! I hope I didn't take her quarter, but I did end up taking a bus.

An older lady eyed my backpack and asked me where I was going. I told her I was trying to get to a bus station since I wasn't able to hitch a ride to Seattle. She said that if I was able to get a bus, it wouldn't arrive until quite late, and then what would I do? Also, it might have already been too late to get a bus. So, she suggested that I come home with her!

So, a total stranger on the bus invited me to stay at her house. When we arrived at her house, I could tell that her husband was NOT pleased at her bringing home a stranger with a backpack, but he was too polite to protest, though he eyed me suspiciously. She put me up in a nice guest bedroom, and thus I was able to head out to Seattle in the morning.

It was a good thing - I didn't realize that it was a fairly long trip from Vancouver to Seattle! I arrived in the early evening, called my friend Cathy's house, and her brother gave me Cathy's new Seattle address and told me how to get there. Seattle is a fairly large city so it did take me awhile to find Cathy's place. But I finally found it, and had a nice haven for a little while with Cathy and Georgia.

So many nice people... I wonder sometimes, would I do something like that, offering to let a stranger stay with me? I'm not sure...