1. Its roads are very curvy and nonsensical. Even Nigel the GPS gets confused sometimes. The worst part is that it's one of those cities where if you make even ONE wrong turn, your ETA jumps back about 12 minutes.
2. We have the ghettoest stroller in existence, apparently. Everyone else walking around town with their offspring has cute European-ish baby buggies. Almost they persuadeth me to buy an $800 stroller (but not quite).
3. Nothing is pronounced the way it should be, not even by Nigel the GPS. My friend Jen enlightened me on a few of my mistakes but I'm sure there are too many for her to catch them all. Worcester, Woburn, Copley - trust me, you're not pronouncing them correctly.
But we're really enjoying our time here. At least the girls and I are, since we're kind of on our own while Jeremy is busy with his conference activities. The low moment came yesterday afternoon when we were checked out of our hotel in the suburbs but couldn't check in to our swanky digs in the city for five more hours. What do you do with two kids in an unfamiliar city for an entire cold November afternoon?
We ended up hanging out at Copley Square for a while. A good hour and a half, actually. While we were there, a group of college students came up and started filming some scenes for a movie they were making for a class. Part of the scene involved two of the young male students wearing white shirts and ties, holding a softcover blue KJV Bible with gold lettering on the cover. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
When they got a break, I asked if they were pretending to be Mormon. Then I quickly self-identified as a Mormon, before they could unintentionally offend me. I didn't quite catch if they said they were or were not portraying Mormons in their film, because I was distracted when they asked if I wanted to be in the scene. I gestured lamely at my two kids and mumbled a half-hearted refusal, but now I wish I had said yes.
They were students from Boston University. When I was applying for college as a high school senior, I applied to William & Mary, Boston University, and the BYU. William & Mary deigned to accept me but did not extend a scholarship. BU said they'd give me a half-tuition scholarship. BYU gave me a four-year, full-ride scholarship. Guess where I ended up going?
But it's been fun to be in Boston and see the place where I "almost" (until I fully comprehended the number of zeroes behind the tuition rates, even with a half scholarship) went, and it would have been awesome to be in a BU student film lo, these ten years later. So I don't know why I said no. I should have said yes.
Maybe I'll get another chance. Probably not, but maybe. We're in Boston for about 24 more hours, so it's still a possibility, right?