when the wait ends, the school visits begin. so i've been accepted to risd, parsons and cal poly pomona and wait-listed at sci-arc. what does that mean? traveling and bite-sized vacations!
first stop: providence, rhode island 04.10 - 04.11.07
all accepted students were invited to this bbq and final review at the risd-owned tillinghast farm. it's really more like open land next to a body of water. i believe it's the bay. the monday overnight train ride wasn't as bad. although waking up disoriented at 5:30am made me pretty nervous about missing my stop. i thought the "new london" stop was already the "providence" stop. hey! what do i know about tiny new england towns? the scenery is gorgeous with the sun rising above the coastal towns, so it made up for the fact that i was up that early in the morning. anyways, i got to providence at 6:45am and took the 2-minute cab ride to my hotel. cheapest cab ride ever! after showing my sleep-deprived self at the check-in counter, i went straight to my hotel room and took a nap. it is quite hard when the church bells from across the street kept ringing every quarter hour, but i managed to get a solid two hours. (i seriously thought it was coming from the alarm clock in the room next to mine.) the school open house started at 11 am. on my walk over to the architecture building, i saw a fellow uva alumni. we went around the studios and saw what they were working on. then we had an overview of the program sequence and the typical classes one takes. then it was off to the bbq/final review. when i saw the students talking about their work and the critics commenting on it, i felt a bit nostalgic. i actually missed this interaction between student and critic.
after the ride back to town with one of the professors in a cramped hatchback, our mini-group (there were six of us) went around providence to check out all the risd buildings. the library's central feature - study carrels/study rooms/video rooms with the awesome bean bags - is very well done. the industrial design building's facility with it's sexy prototyping machinery is marvelous. but the coolest thing of all is the textile making machine. risd, as a design school, is great (actually one of the best in the country), and once you're a student you get to take all the classes offered by the school as long as you have the time to squeeze it in your already cramped architecture schedule. yes, you could take the glass blowing class or that textile class if you wanted.
we had dinner at this casual sandwich place which played a weird jazzy cover of the beastie boys' "(you gotta) fight for your right (to party)." experimental music is very odd indeed. at 7pm we lost another one, but the last three of us were on a mission to find a dive bar. so we walked around town and didn't quite find the dive bar so we settled for a fancy sports bar. well...i guess it wasn't really a sports bar but they were playing the red sox game on the tv. after getting happily buzzed, we decided it was time to retire to our respective hotels and ponder over the day. it was 8:30pm and i thought since i chose a hotel in the heart of downtown that walking back wouldn't be a problem since all the stores/restaurants would still be open. wrong! they were all closed, so my plan of doing a bit of window shopping was out the door. ah, tuesday evening at providence. on the upside, i didn't really fear for my life. it's not like you associate providence with multiple gun-shot murders.
the next morning, i woke up extra early (8:00am) to get some breakfast and do some window shopping at the risd design store. i originally planned to go to the local market to get food but was enticed by the cool sign by this quaint greek/turkish place that also serves traditional american fare. i am a sucker for neon-colored chalk and wavy script on black background. the owner was very chatty and talked to me about the non-existent providence night life. the only places open at night are the dance clubs and (possibly) the dive bars...and probably only during weekends. since i told him i might go to risd, he gave me extra bacon with my breakfast platter. (btw, providence restaurant food is good because there's a culinary school in town and most of the students intern at the local restaurants. i just don't know about asian cuisine. i only saw one thai and one chinese restaurant.) on my way back to the hotel after going through the stuff at the risd design store, i saw this cute huge beach bag from the window of a home accessories store. i was looking for a bag big enough to carry my enormous laptop, and this was just perfect. plus, it's not obvious that i'm carrying a laptop with me. it just seems like i'm going to the beach or hitting up the farmer's market.
(the check-out and the train ride back to dc isn't that exciting so i'm skipping that.)
so there you go: church bells every quarter hour, sexy risd facilities, awesome people i'll probably never see again, nice quaint town, good food, and beach bags - my two days in rhode island.