Boston, Massachusetts

Thus began "Beginning in Boston," a trip I planned for 16 North Carolina Teaching Fellows, college students from across the state.  Having enjoyed a wonderful experience with a different set of students last summer in Philadelphia, Lisa and I planned another one this year, this time to a different city.  The train was late, as trains often are, but not late enough for Ashley Whitfield, who had still not arrived at the station at 5:45, a full 45 minutes after the time I had given the students to meet me.  Eighteen of us—15 students, a professor, his very pregnant wife, and a wired three-year-old—pulled slowly out of Raleigh and headed north.

Only a handful of these students had ever traveled by train, and they didn’t look much like the people in the brochures.  Instead of flashing big grins and striking up fascinating conversations with strangers, they were staring blankly, headphones in their ears, or sleeping.  A lot were sleeping and sleeping a lot.  As time passed, however, they began to adjust.  One group passed the time with cards.  Others talked.  Melinda, I later learned, savored the experience, going through a whole roll of film in her attempts to capture the scenery outside the window.  The scenery indeed was wonderful, especially when we reached New England, where we rolled past postcard scenes of rocky beaches, deep blue water, and scores of white sailboats.  By this time, however, we had been on the train more than half a day, and Essie was getting restless.  Scenery, toys, books, and puzzles can occupy a three-year-old only so long on a train.  “It’s been a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time," she observed.  She was right, and the rest of us surely agreed.  When we finally rolled into South Station in Boston, it was around 9 p.m.  We took taxis to the Suffolk University dormitory and checked in.  "I don't want to go to bed," Essie complained.  Even waking up at 4:30 in the morning and spending 15 hours on a train were not enough to crush this girl's spirit.

Ashley arrived the next morning.  Thinking we were supposed to leave on Wednesday instead of Thursday, she had missed our train and taken a different one.  She was in good spirits, though, and was ready to discover Boston.  Although the weather forecast had called for rain and cold for the next several days, we stepped out into a glorious morning.  Indeed, our entire time in Boston was marked by some of the most beautiful weather I have experienced anywhere.  The sun shone every day, temperatures stayed in the 70s or 80s, and we never felt a drop of rain.  We began our first day by climbing aboard a "Duck," a World War II amphibious landing vehicle.  "This is cool, isn't it, Essie?" Mary said.  The next two hours turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.  After a drive through Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and other parts of the city, we rode the same vehicle right out into Boston Harbor, where tour guide "Salty Magoo" invited individuals on the tour to take a turn behind the wheel of the Duck.  The first to take the helm was Essie, who accepted the responsibility with perfect aplomb, indeed demonstrating far more calm driving an amphibious landing vehicle through Boston Harbor than her mother showed in watching her do it.  Two of the more adventurous students on the trip, Mary and Jennifer Z., took turns, as well.

The anticipation of our afternoon destination, the Boston Public Library, did not exactly stir the souls of my fellow travelers.  After a fine lunch at Davio's in Beacon Hill, I decided to make the library optional.  I still went there and saw a number of striking murals, including a depiction of the life of Percival of Arthurian fame.  I also spent some time in the library's delightful and refreshing courtyard, where I struck up a conversation with a local and learned some things about the library and nearby Cambridge.  I later learned that Mary and Jennifer Z. also took in the library.  Other students went their own ways.

I arrived at the Museum of Fine Arts that evening to find that some of the students had been there for a while.  Some, it turned out, had already had a brush with greatness--though one that did not involve Picasso or Van Gogh.  Almost breathless, Matt accosted and interrogated me.  Did I watch "Malcolm in the Middle"?  Yes, I replied, I had seen it.  The boy who plays the youngest brother on the show, Matt reported, was in the museum, and he and a few other students had seen him.  I'm not sure how the other students--or the "Malcolm" star, for that matter--felt, but it was clear that Matt's day and perhaps his whole trip was made.

The next day began with another brush with greatness, but this time the Canadas were the ones breathless.  There in Boston Common, in front of the Freedom Trail information booth, in living and breathing person, were two stars from Zoom, a children's show that Essie watches on PBS.  Lisa spotted them and pointed them out to Essie, who seemed a little confused by the whole incident, but nonetheless shook hands with Caroline.  Like us, the Zoom kids were touring the three-mile Freedom Trail.  Unlike us, they were doing it for a national television audience.  Over the next eight hours, we saw them again, this time at Old North Church, as we took the trail to several Boston landmarks: Old South Meeting House, bustling Quincy Market, Paul Revere's house, the graveyards where Cotton Mather and other New England notables are buried, charming Charlestown, Bunker Hill monument, and the U.S.S. Constitution.  Although I enjoyed the lunch that Lisa, Es, and I had at Union Oyster House, the nation's oldest restaurant, the highlight of the afternoon for me came near the end of the trail at the Bunker Hill, where seven exhausted students--Terry, Shelly, Matt, Josh, Ashley, Melinda, and Holly--mustered the energy to join me in a climb the 200-odd steps to the top of the monument and enjoy a fabulous view of Boston from across the Charles River.  After a delightful evening ferry ride back to downtown Boston from Charlestown, we returned to the dormitory, later gathering for a picnic on Boston Common.

The next day we returned to the water, this time to visit the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum, to have lunch at Legal Seafood, and to see the New England Aquarium.  Though interesting, the Tea Party Ship was not exactly aimed at college students--a fact that became apparent even before we were asked to place feathers on our heads and chant.  The mock town meeting that preceded our boarding, I suspect, left the students cold, but Essie was inspired.  As I sat watching the presenter, I noticed a flash; Essie had managed to get a hold of our camera and had decided to capture this moment on film.  I laughed, as did some of the students seated behind us.  Then we heard a series of clicks.  It was Essie again, now advancing the film for another shot, which she took.  As the picture here clearly indicates, this girl is a natural photographer.  Notice the keen sense of composition, the daring use of lighting, the uncanny sense of timing.  After a fine meal at Legal Seafood, where some of us topped off lunch with Boston Creme Pie, we all went over the Aquarium, where we saw penguins, a giant tortoise, a shark, and, of course, scores of fish.  The students were on their own for the evening.  Some went shopping, some went out to eat, and some joined me at Fenway Park for a baseball game between the Red Sox and Phillies.  A lifelong baseball fan, I was thrilled to get to see Fenway Park.  From a spot in the outfield bleachers not far from the Green Monster, I watched something close to a perfect baseball game.  The Sox won 3-1 on great pitching from David Cone and three home runs.  I even got to see one of my favorite baseball moments--a play at the plate (out!).  After the game, Kenneth, Josh, and I took turns snapping pictures of each other in the ballpark.

The next day, our last full one in Boston, I took Essie to a children's museum, where we played house, pretended to camp out in a tent, and even watched a play.  In the afternoon, the students explored on their own.  Some took a tour of the Black Heritage Trail, and many took the T over to Cambridge to see Harvard and its environs.  In the afternoon, I made a special trip to Boston's science museum, which by a wonderful coincidence was showing Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure on its Imax screen.  I had just finished reading a book about the Sir Ernest Shackleton's amazing journeys a few months earlier and enjoyed seeing the spectacular Antarctic scenery on a billboard-size screen.  Later, Lisa, Essie, and I went to see Harvard.  Apparently, we chose the wrong time to take the T, however, because it was jammed.  "Look at all those people," Essie said as the three of us stood shoulder to shoulder with a few billion other people.  When even more tried to pack into the same car, she sensed trouble.  "Oh, dear," she said.  Nevertheless, we escaped and enjoyed a couple of hours in Cambridge, where Essie got a piggy-back ride through Harvard yard.

That evening, all of us regrouped in the dormitory for pizza and a debriefing.  Essie played photo bug again, snapping pictures of the people she alternately called "Daddy's kids" and her "friends."  Here and throughout the trip, I asked the students for their impressions and highlights.  An evaluation sponsored by the Teaching Fellows office solicited similar information.  The predictable things came up--the Duck Tour, the Freedom Trail--but so did some unpredictable things.  Several mentioned the taxi and subway rides.  Some even mentioned their chaperones.  "There is not enough room on the page to express how much I enjoyed this trip," one student wrote.  "A big part of the trip was meeting such a wonderful family."

We like to think that we plan and run good trips for students, but we also realize that the students themselves help make traveling fun.  Every last one on this trip proved to be a champion traveler, cooperating beautifully and approaching everything with a positive attitude.  Is it any wonder that the Canadas are already discussing their next trip?  The next stop for the Canadas and the North Carolina Teaching Fellows will be Colonial Williamsburg.  This time, however, there will be four Canadas.  Despite our fears, Will decided not to arrive until June 28--more than two weeks after we returned from Boston.