Today I got lots of reading done for my South Asia in Politics class (120+ pages), and it was pretty boring... not gonna lie. It was really dense material on the buildup to the partition of India. My saving grace in this class? My professor is arguably the cutest old lady in the history of cute old ladies. We're not talking about the average "granny with cookies" stereotype - even cuter than that. So even though it's a 2 hour seminar, I think I can manage.

Yalies are too eager. Way too eager. Annoyingly eager. They are always knocking on your door asking for support for their political cause, charitable cause, academic cause, and anything in between. It gets very frustrating when you're working on an econ problem set and some overly eager Yalie storms in and knocks on your door, introducing themselves (although they've knocked on your door twice in the past week anyways, so we of course know each other's name) and asking you to sign your name supporting them. Trust me, it happens more often than it should. So, over Christmas break I bought a "NO SOLICITING" sign from Office Depot and it has worked wonders thus far. I know, I sound like a grumpy old man, but I really don't care.

Yesterday I got mochi ice cream with my roommates to celebrate one of them getting into a senior seminar as a freshman, which is quite the feat. Mochi ice cream is a japanese dessert...it is technically a rice compound surrounding ice cream. That doesn't do it justice. Let me give my explanation of mochi ice cream: so take a super large marshmallow (the kind you use for huge s'mores at a bonfire of course). Put in in a freezer for a while so it gets cold, but not hard. Then hollow it out and fill it with delicious ice cream. That's mochi ice cream, and it's pretty darn good. Here's what it looks like:

 The flavors shown are raspberry-white chocolate, and two chocolate-peanut butter ones. 

I was walking through one of the buildings where I routinely work, and noticed a peculiar wood carving yesterday. On one of the bench seats in a main hallway I noticed a dragon carving on the handle of the bench. Check it out:

Also, I want to say that the radiator heat we have in the old buildings on campus seems to keep buildings much more cozy than central air, although it seems like it may pose a threat to children that could fall against the radiator. In the older buildings we just have these grates covering the radiators, but the rooms still get SO warm:

And I passed Grove Street Cemetery today, which I believe is the first planned cemetery in America. As I walked past the entryway, I noticed a very strange quote in the stone. "The Dead Shall Be Raised" 

Click on the pic to enlarge it