Sheets

Hello everybody,

You know you've lived somewhere for a while, if you can't remember how often you've changed the sheets. I've been in Boston for approximately two months now, and I really enjoy it. The awesome thing about Boston is that it has a lot of public parks and squares where there's always something going on. For example, a couple days ago, I was on my weekly bike ride to Trader Joe's to do groceries (thanks suite mate Alex for the bike!). Because I rode the wrong way just a little bit, I ended up on Copley Square, where apparently the nice Boston Book Festival was happening. (Pretty logical spot for a Book Festival, since the Boston Public Library is just next to Copley Square.) I'll try to upload a video here, to give you a good feeling of the festival, and Boston in general:

In the video I'm standing right in the middle of Copley Square. The wide building at the end of the video is the Public Library. The beautiful church in the beginning is called Trinity Church. I initially wanted to get more on the video, but my phone battery died..

I received a great question from my aunt from the Netherlands after my last blog. She asked about my experience with having to share my room with two other roommates (and the suite with 11 other suite mates). And she asked, even when they're nice, are you able to be on your own sometimes?
Well, I can assure you guys, I do have some pretty awesome roommates. But of course, we've also had some issues. The biggest issue so far, which is still going on, is that one of my roommates has lost his keys. So for the past three weeks we have to open the door for him, and he's still not motivated to get new ones. (Okay, that is pretty understandable from this point of view: they charge you about $200 for the three new keys.) The rest of the suite gets pretty annoyed opening the door for him every time. We are having a suite meeting about this issue with our RA (Resident Assistant) tomorrow night.
To answer my aunt's question more fully, I don't have much time alone. I admit that I miss that sometimes. If I really need to be alone or concentrate, then I usually go to our library on campus. It is often pretty quiet and it has some very comfortable chairs and couches, compared to the ones in our dormitory.

As some of you may have seen on facebook, I've been to an NBA game with my roommate Ryan this Wednesday. It was awesome to see the Boston Celtics take on the Brooklyn Nets, and win 100-86. The most spectacular play was this block by Jeff Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgKqJDrcpFw#t=11 (his last name is a nice coincidence, because the main color of the Celtics is green).

For school I've been writing essays, papers and proofs. The midterms of last week went pretty well by the way. It turned out to be only one big midterm exam for Calculus 1. We had to calculate derivates of about twenty different functions. I've been doing that for a long time in high school already, so I passed the test quite easily. You only pass it if you achieve 80% or higher, because they want everybody to be able to calculate derivates. In the coming weeks, we learn about integrals (also called antiderivates). That's also something I have done in high school. I hope Calculus 2 will be a little bit more challenging next semester. 
My other math classes are already challenging though. In Discrete Math we finally started writing mathematical proofs, which I find pretty enjoyable. In my Applied Math class we are talking about a method to solve mathematical models. And we're using the program MATLAB to apply that method, which is called the Simplex Method by the way.
Another interesting class I have is Computer Science. We are learning the programming language C++. I didn't have any experience with programming before this class, but I am able to follow the material pretty well. I find it fun to write my own programs with the skills we learn.

Baseball is going good as well! We're having a lot of strength training nowadays. I go to the gym at 6 am every morning with the captain of the baseball team. My suite mate Alex has joined us too, so were having a great morning every day.
I look forward to going to New Jersey with Alex for Thanksgiving. Even though that's still a month away, Alex made me buy my train ticket early. That was probably a good idea, because the prices for a Round-Trip were already sky high.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, I will go watch the MLB World Series now!

All the best,
Bram