June 27, 2022: Noodle Mission

In a convoluted attempt to eat out, we set out on a quest through shadiness in search of the light in the darkness: good food. Said light was closed for the day, so we found another one!

Breakfast

In the morning, I ate breakfast with the TJ Gang. I’ve been skipping dance in the morning since the sleepover to make up for the small amount of sleep I got. When I went to go get my morning tea (it’s always the morning tea), I went and talked to CH. After she left for class, I finished my breakfast and went back to the Round Table, where I’d been sitting with the TJs, to get my stuff. But like last time I got distracted in Resnik, I couldn’t find my things once I got back. However, this time, rather than it being just my phone that had disappeared, it was the entire backpack!

After some searching, I just figured that TJ Gang maybe hopefully probably must’ve taken the backpack and I had not managed to lose my iPad, computer, and compass all in one fell swoop, so I started walking to class. I ended up being somewhat late for class.

Morning Classes

The class itself was combinatorial number theory and, as per usual for ZD‘s classes, very big-brained. 

During the break, I went to visit the black and blue classes. I’ve been doing this pretty often (basically every day). The thing is, I can usually see into black and blue because of windows and/or the door being propped open, so I know if I’m disturbing anything actually important. With green, though, I have no such guarantee: they neither prop the door open nor have a window, so I always worry that if I go in, I’ll find that they’re still in class and feel very guilty. Also, for a while, I think I actually knew more blue/blackers than green MOPpers.

Like, before I became close with TJ gang in these last few days, the people I was sort of friends with (somewhat hung out with outside of class/had some sort of interesting conversation with that I happen to remember at the moment/spoke to me) were (in order of distance from the bottom of the sorting hat list): From Red, VH, RW, EW, EB, AGe; from Green, maybe KS?; from Blue, JW, JC, DD; from Black, like, all of them as an entity, but more specifically, people who were just like really friendly and/or I spent idk more than a few hours with, ~MLu, LR, ESh, DerL, AZ. So like. Yeah. Now I’m friends with TJ Gang, of course, consisting of DX, MK, LZ, RQ, LC, EX, IZ, VT, LuT. Along with Turtle, VinL, and DiaL, but they’re not students :(.

Like, I don’t think I was actually particularly close with the people in black, but it was fun to hang out in their vicinity and watch the shenanigans. 

As the break drew to a close, I ran into SR before he went into Red. He gave me a chocolate and then went to teach Red.

Then I got sidetracked as I left Black, dilly-dallied a bit, and was, like, probably more than an hour late for the Red class. It’s okay, being at MOP is about trying new things, and being late for most of the class is a new thing! …right?

Apparently, in class (Great Ideas, which I’ve been looking forward to for at least a dottedWeek, ever since blue and black took it and started telling us all to solve one specific problem once we got the handout), SR had issued them a challenge: the students would race to solve problems such that the winner could get chocolate! I felt kind of bad because I already got one before class :P. 

I got very little done in class, though, as I was so late and had nigh on no time. 

Lunch with Squirrels

We had a really long lunch break today, so a bunch of us went to get waffles! While everyone else walked to Stever to meet up, DX and I went on a slight detour to Resnik with a dual goal in mind: we needed to find my backpack and find VT. On arriving at Stever, I almost ran straight into a lady. On apologizing, I realized firstly that the lady in question was JB, secondly that she had a backpack on her back (which I had almost run into), and lastly, “Wait! That’s my backpack!”

Apparently, there’s a little bin next to the card-scanning place at Resnik containing lost items, and she’d just taken my backpack from that box. After relieving the kind lady of my backpack, I turned and went with DX to find VT. We found VT quite quickly on the stairs leading to the area above the Egg Shoppe (some other camp had once again taken the garage area). However, having already gotten lunch at Resnik, VT did not want to go get waffles with us and waste the full plate of food. Besides, he was sensible and knew that we would most certainly be late if we went to waffles, even with the extra long lunch. As such, we left Resnik having accomplished 50% of our goals. Considering a 50% on the TSTST would’ve been an excellent score, this was clearly quite good. 

Walking Over

Eventually, we all started walking to Waffallonia. I’m pretty sure we broke the rules, though, because we’re supposed to have two staff members for off-map ventures, not one. 

Now, the way a group like us travels is we follow the leader and then turn our brains off. The leader, in this case, was JC. JC wanted to speed up our walk (probably so that a quarter of camp wouldn’t be late to class), so rather than taking the path that everyone knows, he cut through a random neighborhood none of us (not even him) had ever been in. His first foray down that neighborhood was met with a dead end, at which point we realized that perhaps we should not be following him. At that point, he struck out towards another path. I followed him to tell him not to be an idiot and to just walk the normal path, DX followed me, and MCM followed us to keep an eye on us. Turns out, he struck gold this time. DX found a path that managed to deposit us right in front of the rest of the group, who had chosen to turn around and take the normal route. 

(Of course, not attempting to take a shortcut and thus avoiding all the accompanying confusion at all would most certainly have been faster)

Once we got to Waffallonia, we realized that the waffle most of us have been getting anyway, the waffallonia, allows “unlimited toppings,” meaning that, well. We can also have multiple ice cream scoops. 

DX and I took full advantage of this new breakthrough, ordering basically all the available toppings each, along with three and two ice cream scoops, respectively. I was attempting to be healthy, you see, but the fact that I went to get waffles at all shows quite the opposite.

Walking Back

After getting the waffles, we started walking back to class. There was a slow group and a fast group: the slow group consisted of (based on a photo that may not contain everyone) MK, RQ, LC, DX, and I.

After some shenanigans wherein MK stole both DX‘s and my water bottles, we soon realized that we were going to be quite incredibly late at the rate we were going, so DX and I started running. Before too long, we were waylaid by a red light, and thinking that we’d run enough, we did not start running again even after the light turned green. 

As a result, we were out of sight of both the slow group and the fast group. We were all alone in the vast wilds of Pittsburgh (or something like that). Our survival (for it was clearly a matter of life and death) was in our own hands which, as of then, were weak hands, having never tested their mettle against anything but math problems. The only heavy weight they ever lifted was a particularly large pencil. The only dangerous weapon they would ever touch was LC‘s giant compass within the hour (during Black Teaches Red, at 2:46 pm). 

In layman terms?

We.

Were. 

Lost.

DX and I, you see, both possess senses of direction so terrible it’s quite incredible. Just as we were growing a bit desperate at the thought of being lost, we intercepted a random woman to ask for directions. “Hey, can you point us in the direction of CMU?”

She gave us a strange look. “Ah, you’re already at CMU.”

My eyes strayed to the left. There, proudly displayed upon a random sign for a garage, was: “Carnegie Mellon University.”

Heh. Hehhh. Hehehhehhhe.

After walking a minute or two, DX and I found ourselves at the intersection between Morewood and Forbes. Finally, we knew where we were!

Afternoon Class

In the end, we were only around ten minutes late to class. Besides this, only two other people from the waffle group beat us to class! Apparently, the rest of the people in the fast group decided to detour to Resnik for lemonade, so they actually got to class ten minutes after us 🙂

The last class of the day was technically Black Teaches Red, but in reality, it was LR Teaches All. There were a few people from each color group stuffed in the red classroom (all of Red, DX from Green, LC, JW, JC, AnW, MX from Blue, and basically all of Black). None of the black MOPpers other than LR actually seemed to know what was going on, as those profoundly intelligent beings did not actually look at the handout. They were like, “Wait, LR, how do you actually do this?”

It was rather funny. The handout was called “Good Ideas” as a parody of SR‘s “Great Ideas,” and it was all rather big-brained.

Water bottle Shenanigans

After class, we all (DX, EB, EW, Evan Chen, IZ, LZ, LC, OS, RQ, SA, VH, and I) went straight to the activities room in Jared L. Cohon University Center. We needed to practice all the dances for the talent show, the formations, and the like. Before we started practicing, however, DX wanted to get his water bottle back. His water bottle somehow ended up in IZ’s possession, so DX decided to ambush her outside the bathroom to get the water bottle. However, LZ was also in the bathroom, so if LZ came out first and Daniel ambushed her, his plan would be ruined.

With that in mind, I went into the bathroom and started to waylay LZ to prevent her from going out first.

But, like, it’s mighty difficult to actually waylay someone in the bathroom. What was I supposed to do—be like, “LZ, I need to do girl talk with you!”?

Like, no.

So I was just like, “Hey LZ!”

“Sophie!”

And then we stared at one another awkwardly for a moment. She wanted to leave, but I wouldn’t move from in front of the bathroom door, and it was all very awkward and suspicious. LZ must’ve thought so as well, as she was all, “DX‘s outside, isn’t he?”

She peeked outside, her suspicions were verified, she told IZ, and I pouted because I’m apparently a terrible accomplice.

Dance Practice

Anyway, then we actually started to dance. I’ve learnt Me Gustas tu opening, Bboom bboom, and dalla dalla. As they were practicing Snapping, though, they were like, “Sophie, wanna do Snapping?”

I was like, sure. So now I’m part of a dance I haven’t actually learned 😛

Dance practice went on for three hours. Three Whole Hours! I feel like it’s so impressive that people who have never danced at all can grow to be devoted to it in just one short week to the extent that they would be willing to practice for three hours. I don’t know whether it happened because of the sheer joy of dance or the comradery produced by the close contact in MOP, but I think it’s beautiful either way.

Eating Dinner

After we finished dancing, we returned to Stever to put some of our things away and then we (that is, TJ gang) decided to go eat! At that point, it was already 6:49 pm and singing troupe was happening at 8 pm, so we knew that we would not have time to go all the way to Squirrel Hill to eat. We didn’t particularly want to go to the closer places, either, and for obvious reasons, we did not want Resnik food. So instead, we somehow decided upon a Thai place near Pitts University. We definitely broke the rules, though, because we had no staff with us. 

After walking for some twenty minutes through some incredibly shady areas (there was a smoke and vape shop trying to make itself look cool by writing its name in Greek letters, but they just managed to make themselves look stupid as we read the letters in actual Greek pronunciation), we finally reached the rather shady Thai place. And yet, upon reaching that destination, we discovered that the restaurant was, in fact, closed. Even though it said, quite explicitly on Google Maps, that it was open today. :(.

After that, we went and found a slightly less shady noodle place nearby. It was delicious! And I finally remembered to take a photo of my food!!!!

End of Day

On our return to Stever after finishing dinner, though, we discovered that we still managed to be thirty minutes late to Singing Troupe :(.

Singing Troupe was rather chaotic. A lot of the kids who didn’t do singing troupe initially joined us after TSTST ended, so today, JC, AZ, and more joined singing troupe. Most notably, some people started carrying JC halfway through singing troupe :P.

After singing troupe, IZ, VH, and I practiced the piggyback move for Me Gustas Tu some more. The issue is that we’re unable to time it correctly 100% of the time when we’re not looking at a mirror, which is like, not good.

Selfie Collecting

After some more dance practice, I realized that there are only two more days of MOP! This made me quite sad, but it also made me realize that I really, really need to get the rest of my MOP selfies. I only had 8 more students I had to get a selfie with! 

There were some people who were very helpful in my selfie collection adventure. ESh, for instance, on hearing who I had left, was so helpful as to drag Amol over so I could take a selfie with him. Others, namely Andrew Lin, decided to make it slightly more difficult. He said that he would take a selfie with me if and only if I got a 1 on a random number generator from 1 to 10. I badgered persuaded him to let me generate a random number every three minutes. However, in the time before curfew, I did not manage to get 1, so I did not get his selfie >:(.

In the time between when I could get a random number, I lay on bean bags and pillows in the meditation room with the TJ kids, creating a ridiculous TJ human pile. We talked a bit, but I was too sleepy to really absorb anything. It was fun, though.

Pre-college RAs

I was curious whether there was anyone on the fifth floor, so I peeked up there to check. I did not find any MOPpers up there, but I did find some of the pre-college RAs! I found one of the boys I met at the foosball table, the girl I met first on the fourth floor, two more boys, and one more girl. They were sitting in the lounge where we had our sleepover. I sat down and started talking to them. They were creating colorful doortags for their students. Those nametags were very interesting, with a lot of personality. Each RA seemed to have a different style in which all their students’ doortags were also made.

Namely, some of the doortags were cartoonish potatoes, others were fictional characters, others were cars, etc.

Interestingly, the last girl just so happened to be Helen, the girl who was mentioned before the sleepover. She was also the person we were most worried about waking up during the sleepover. We actually scouted out the rooms a bit and discovered her name on a door a few rooms down from the fifth floor lounge. I asked her if she heard any of us, and she told us she slept through the night without noticing a thing. I felt very proud of us.

They were all very interesting people and I had fun talking to them.

However, just then, DebL and JB came upstairs to make sure no one would attempt to sleep on the fifth floor again. It was after curfew and I felt like I was a dog crawling home with my tail between my legs :P. 

(Also, I just realized that JB has the same initials as James Bond)