The Mail and the Mailman

Hello again,

This post was actually written quite a while ago, but we couldn't find the time to publish it. We figured it's still a nice memory to save on our blog, but please imagine that it's a cold yet sunny New England morning on November 3rd while reading this. Also, sorry in advance if this post is a little rambling. There's no moral or meaning to this story; these are simply observations from a good, exercise-filled day.

November 3rd:

We just turned in our college apps and decided that today would be a fun day. Unfortunately, we actually got a lot of schoolwork assigned so we could not make it as fun as we had originally planned. 

Like most others, the day began with a chore: we had to go to the gallery and take down all of the October artwork to make room for the new exhibit which will be hung up in November. After those exciting fifteen minutes, we were going to go explore the graveyard near my house. We’ve been planning to go for a long time (this may seem strange, but there's actually a perfectly good reason which is wrapped up in too many inside jokes and history to explain). However, my mother, who is very superstitious, informed us that graveyards are a notorious source of bad luck and then strongly encouraged us to choose a new location for our adventures. Since this is a very sensitive time for luck, we decide to take headed of her instructions (notice the subtle "the office" reference) and started brainstorming other -- non-graveyard -- places where we could wander around. We briefly considered going to the mall, but as we were driving we stumbled across a third, secret adventure option: walking along the trail near the library.

We ended up diverging from the main library-trail, and, even though it was pretty cold and only half of our two person group had a jacket, we took a nice fall walk around the general North Wayland area. As we walked, we ran into many children, dogs, bikers, and poles, but the pinnacle of our great adventure was when we found someone's mail lying in the street -- not just one random piece of mail, but whole stacks of letters littered across the road and all addressed to the same person: Joey. Neither of us actually knew a Joey, but because we are good samaritans (and mostly because the address on the mail was of a street just a few blocks away) we decided to go on a little mission to return the mail. As we were walking towards Joey's house, we saw more of his mail scattered across different roads. Suspicious. We formed a few theories about how his mail ended all over Wayland: perhaps Joey's neighbors had a long-standing feud with him, and every day they would steal the mail from his mailbox and disperse it throughout the streets of Wayland as a form of revenge; perhaps Joey was feuding with the mailman, who now refused to give Joey his mail; perhaps the mail was haunted. We're still not really sure, but some things are better left as mysteries.

The funny thing is, as we were walking to Joey's house, a mailman was also driving by in the same direction. He saw us holding the stacks of mail and waved at us, recognizing us as his fellow mailpeople. Later on, after we had returned Joey's mail and gone on a walk to a different part of the town, we happened to randomly cross paths with the same mailman two more times. By the third time, we even walked up to him and said hello. This is a shout-out to you, Mr. Mailman, we wish we got your name but maybe we'll see you around on our next adventure.

Anyways, after experiencing the great North Wayland life, we decided to head back to the library. because of the route we chose for walking back, we actually ended up passing a road which we once cleaned up during Earth day--- it looks a lot cleaner now (way less plastic water bottles) so that’s good news. Unfortunately, when we got back, the library was closed so we couldn't go in like we had wanted to. On the upside, we did find a great spot for a new mural in the fake window: tell us what you think!!

When it got colder and darker we drove back to Amelia's house to eat some ramen (Amelia's dad is a pro ramen-chef, so it was a great experience all around). During dinner, we talked about China. Apparently Chinese culture was heavily influenced by Russian culture (big brother type relationship) until their split in the 60s, which really bodes well for our Russian-Chinese cross cultural friendship. We also talked about a group of people living in China, called the The Uyghurs, who are in imprisonment camps. No one really seems to be doing anything about this situation, or even paying much attention to it. Maybe this is a result of the heavy, government-imposed censoring of information throughout China. Or maybe we have just grown more jaded and apathetic to cruelty as a global community. Another mystery, but this one is probably better left solved.

CQOTD: “It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.”