Dan & Lindsay, Lovers Enjoying the Park

Dan & Lindsay
(sans bad photo of a guy I know).


Dan & Lindsay, Lovers Enjoying the Park

Sunny. The early spring evenings come to you with a confident balm. To a place like New England, they say, "It's going to be alright. You've suffered long enough without genuine sunshine and its sometime promise of unquestionable warmth. " When these days happen, you see people basking in them. Reveling. Remembering what it's like to walk around with a smile instead of a wind-chiseled scowl. Games are played in fields, people not only smile back but foster smiles, and anything you went through in the winter shall thaw, you say to yourself. Friday of last week was one of those days. I wandered over from my gallery job to Boston Common, essentially to bask in the warmth, take in the refreshing rushes of park people in their spring-mind, and finally, to lie down in the grass and not think heavily, not plan perpetually, and not finish some project.

I guess I'm something of a romantic; though, you'd think by 2007, we could come up with a better word for it, no? I'm a ragamuffin child (by way of Simon and Garfunkel), a wide-eyed flaneur (by way of Walter Benjamin and in this case, Louis Sullivan), a seeker of, in this case, warm fuzzies. Be careful what you ask for. While sitting on a bench, enjoying the polyphony of conversation and foot traffic, I noticed a resolute experiment in early-evening photo-taking (during what's called "the magic hour" by cinematographers) that a man and a women were engaged in, by the fountain. They didn't quite look like tourists. Their attempts had the focus of a pair on a mission, while their behavior was raw play, at almost-sunset. As I am apt to do, I went over and asked if they were visiting from out of town, and if they wanted their photo taken by me. They explained that they were locals, and that they were enjoying doing it themselves. However, once I came over, it was hard to leave the two-part harmony and syncopated rhythm of their voices. They had that stay-a-while-and-talk look in their eyes, and so I did. After a few minutes, I explained this site and asked Mr. Dan and Ms. Lindsay if I could press record on my technological dickey-doo, and they were all for it. The conversation was the perfect sorbet to a week of hoping for spring. Their togetherness was a wonderful antidote to the sometime-feeling of being (as Claire Danes once sighed it into our lexicon) a failed heterosexual. We had a good time explaining, suggesting, declaring, wondering. Talking and playing.



* Note: I have done my best to translate the musicality (accents, syncopation, melody) of the couple's way of talking. The accents and other notations are there for you to better hear the focus and play in the telling. The explanation of action is there for you to imagine our evening with more clarity (there was obviously more laughter than noted). Let me know if this works, as I will be experimenting with elements like these from time to time.


I. Hello's and a Little East Coast Swing

Dan: Give us the questions. Just turn it on. Let's start. I like it.
CE: Boston Common, by the Park T stop.
Dan: By the Titan Fountain.
CE: April 20, 2007. Dan and Lindsay. They're engaged.
Dan: 6:49
CE: They're still engaged at 6:49.
Dan: 6:51...
Lindsay: We're going to have to see.
Dan: We're going to have to see about that.
Lindsay: Moment by moment.
CE: How did you two meet?
Dan: Swing Dancing.
Lindsay: Swing Dancing!
CE: Swing dancing. Where?
Dan: Brown University Swing Club. The "other" swing club.
CE: It's called the other swing club, or is there like one and...?
Dan: Well, Brown is a liberal place.
Lindsay: It could mean, you know, the naughty, experimental swinging. Or it could mean the dance club format of the 40's.
Dan: We were doing the vertical swing.
Lindsay: Yeah. It's great. We still go.
CE: Where do you guys go? Ryles?
Lindsay: Nowadays? To MIT, actually. They have a club there.
Dan: It reminds us of the good old days. Where it's just a bunch of people coming together, dancing. A little less cliquey. A little bit more open. People are still learning so they're still having fun. They haven't taken so many classes that the fun has been mashed out of them.
[CE & Lindsay laugh.]
CE: My friend went to MIT, grad, and met his wife there. Through the ballroom dancing classes.
Dan: But we don't ballroom though.
Lindsay: But yeah, it's funny. I didn't get into dancing to "meet people," but it definitely, definitely can happen.You find couples on their way.
Dan: You told me you got into dancing to meet me!

II. School, Love, Etc.

CE: what did you study at Brown?
Dan: I was a medical student. She was...
Lindsay: I was studying international development.
Dan: Now I work internationally, and the romance continues... on a multinational scale.
[Dan and Lindsay look at each other fondly and laugh.]
CE: That's amazing! That's like, uh, love letters all over the countr-, world.
Dan: That's right.
Lindsay: Sorta, yeah [smiles].
Dan: That's right. We uh, think local, make love... internationally.
CE: That's great, that's great.
Dan: And by love I mean, you know, the vertical kind.
Lindsay: I'm just shaking my head. [Head shakes, face snickers and smiles.]
Dan: My last name is Smith, in case you were wondering.


CE: And your name and address, uh.... Anyway, so you guys were taking these Polaroids. G-rated Polaroids.
Lindsay: PG.
Dan: Distinctly vertical.
CE: Distinctly vertical. Why did you start taking these Polaroids?
Lindsay: I have this Polaroid that I got for this work thing. I didn't end up using all the film, so I though, you know, why not...
Dan: Shoot the beautiful day...
Lindsay: With my honey dear. Because I hardly have any pictures of him. And it's so much more fun to have instant gratification with Polaroids.
Dan: Polaroid is actually the only type of camera that will I will produce an image in.
CE: So, you don't exist?
Dan: The rest are mirrors. It doesn't show. Garlic, I don't like garlic either.
Lindsay: Yeah, big problem. One time, there was this guy carrying a fence stake. Dan just like, ran in the other direction. It took me another day to realize. Stakes, another big phobia for him.
Dan: Unlike my vampire brethren, though, I went crying, like a small dog.
Lindsay: They were tears of blood, so.
CE: Not like, The Band song, "Tears of Rage"?
Dan: Tears of blood.
Lindsay: You know, we had troubles with it. He just can't cry human tears.
Dan: What can you do? It makes me a little anemic sometimes, during those tear-jerker movies. Anemic.
CE: Do you have to like stop yourself from bringing it up in interviews [when they ask,] "Is there something you need to tell us about yourself?"
Dan: I'm just like, "Guys, do you have a transfusion bank?" And they're like, "We do." And I'm like, "That's great."Ah [sigh], kind of a non-sequitor conversation.

Lindsay: Oh, it's like so many other things. Do you tell people these things?. How will you be judged. And you know, you're born a vampire. It's not a choice that you make.
Dan: No. It was more injected into me by a blood-thirsty siren.
Lindsay: Again. did you choose that? Did you wake up one day and say, "I'm going to be a vampire"?
Dan: Actually, I did go to Ryle's that night, and that's where it happened.
CE: The sirens at Ryle's. it's not just middle-aged people drinking cocktails, trying to dance.
Lindsay: Here, across Beacon Hill, it's all the more poignant to be talking about vampires. Where are their rights?
CE: Where are their rights? Don't they work in those big structures [skyscrapers] over there? But they bite and claw into other countries and other banks.
Dan:They suckle the fortunes- internationally. No longer jugular. It's multinationally-jugular.
Lindsay: My, the world has really changed!

III. Politics (good and bad), Jobs, and an Ugly Bug with a Pretty Name

CE: So, how old are you folks?
Dan: I'm 30.
Lindsay: I'm 23.
Dan: Robbing -the- cradle.
CE: So, you met at Brown? You were a grad student?
Dan: I was a medical student. yeah...
CE: Lindsay, did you consider Clark? I went to Clark, and they have a big International Development department.
Lindsay:I didn't know what I was going to study when I entered college. I thought I was going to do, potentially theater.
Dan: She was a child star. Google her!
Lindsay: You can google me.
CE: Google you. I don't know your last name... Lindsay Smith.
Lindsay: I did a couple plays as a child and a couple independent films as a teenager. But I ended up getting more interested in non-profit work and social justice work. Then I got into international development. But yeah, I hear Clark is really cool for that stuff.
Dan: She hasn't been bitter one day since.
Lindsay: About not be an actress?
Dan: About social justice.
Lindsay: No, no, never bitter. Not me.
Dan: Neither one of us. We're the cheery Bostonians.
CE: The "Cheery Bostonians," right here!
Lindsay: They should just call me Lindsay Bitters.
CE: Lindsay Bitters, that sounds like a drink. Can I have a Lindsay Bitters, on the rocks?
Dan: Lindsay Bitters...
CE: Which indie films were you in?
Lindsay: Well, they were indie, you know. They were film festival films. There was one called...
Dan: DVD stock [type films].
CE: My friends just made a movie like that. They're trying to get festivals and/or DVD distribution. Still Green. It's a coming-of-age, last summer before college, summer house at the beach film. Shit is heavy.
Dan: Oh, yeah. This move is called Cicadas.
CE: Beautiful sounding... is it about sitting on the porch and listening to cicadas?
Lindsay: It's about how sometimes in moments of great pain, you can come out of your shell with the help of good friends.
Dan: And become a horrible creature who makes awful noises...
Lindsay: and then suddenly dies...
Dan: and then usually dies by crashing into a window.
Lindsay: It kind of takes the first half of the metaphor. Coming out of a shell. Discard the being alive for but one day, and then dying.
Dan: It's kind of like the butterfly metaphor, the cocoon. But with you know, with giant insect eyeballs and a giant awful body, and not beautiful wings. [All laugh and squirm at the image].
CE: It must have looked beautiful, visually.
Dan: But, it's not true. none of it's true. She's much more of a mariposa than a cicada. I'll tell you now!
Lindsay: It's a cool movie. The same director just made a movie called Jumping Off Bridges. It's screening all over the place, so that's exciting.


CE: Dan, are you doing Doctors Without Borders?
Dan: No, i work with Partners in Health, which is the local game in town. It's the Boston-based Doctors Without Borders. I volunteer with them because I work at the hospital that they're affiliated with. I work mostly in Mexico. In Chiapas. Actually, I just came from Harvard, at the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Lindsay: He went to a twalk.
Dan: I went to a talk with John Ross, who is one of the premier left press journalists. He was also a beat poet back in the day. He read poetry and he tells his journalistic tales much like a round table, fire side chat. Or more like a story telling. It was actually a lot of fun. Even though I agree with a lot of what he said, at the q&a session, I asked him a question I knew would be very hard for him to answer: "What are the downsides of all the people you are saying are so good?" Like Lopez Obrador or the Zapatistas. He couldn't answer.
Lindsay: He couldn't answer? I mean, if you're look at individuals, you have to able to analyze the individuals...
Dan: Good and bad...
Lindsay: Well, rigorously, let's just say, rigorously.
Dan: I would personally not join a revolution unless they're going to say, "Okay these are both our goods and our downs." Because once focus only on the good, then you just end up in the same oooollld shit.
Lindsay: Ideologoical , dogmatic rut!
Dan: It happened to the Stalinists... it happened to the Mexican Revolution.
Lindsay: It happens to every good idea, if you don't watch out.
CE: You need good, old self-criticism, right?
Dan: You do. you need to be like, "This is what we're doing well. This is what we need to do better." With a lot of these things, they're up against much, they don't [think they] have a space for self-criticism.
Lindsay: I think it depends who you're talking about. I don't know about Obrador. i think He's pretty much like, "Get in the tent, play my guitar, sing some songs, wave my flag". I think some of the Zapatistas have more self-reflexion. They have really big encuentros, they also have meetings, set priorities. It's about consent these days.
Dan: I would like to see more, personally.
CE: There's a writer, Vijay Prashad. He teaches at trinity in Hartford. He's written a few books. The one I'm reading, The Karma of Brown Folk is about South Asians in America... Their immigrant story, essentially. The ways it's been politicized by various parties. For good and bad. He wrote a new book, The Darker Nations, and it's a look at six developing countries and their plights after colonization. In kind of a self-critical ways, looking at the ways they've tried to gain independence and develop nationhood, in good ways and in ways he's critical about. And this guy! The great thing about Prashad is he's so well-read, passionate-- it's criticism, but it's still very passionate criticism-- and he take on various sides and points of view. It's very enjoyable reading.
Lindsay: I love reading about that.
Dan: South Asia, colonization...
Lindsay: And the end of colonialism and the post-colonial period. It's a period I always find interesting. It shapes so much of everything today. It's so important to understand.

Dan: Just to bring it down to Mexico again, because I know more about that.
Lindsay: Because that's what you know! [Smiles at him, laughs knowingly].
Dan: That's what i know. I'm a one trick pony. So I'm reading right now, actually, an account of one of the soldiers that went with Cortez to Tenochitlan, to defeat, or conquer, Montezuma. The amazing thing about it is, the guy is probably a pretty straight forward Joe, back in the days of Spanish Conquest. His details are from the trenches looking up. It was amazing. You know, [he wrote things like,] "Cortez lost his sandal during the fight, and couldn't recover it." And the language going around, as they're marching to the great capital of Mexico, is one of moral high ground: "We've come here to civilize you; " "We've come here to stop the sacrificing of human beings;" "We've come here to give you the true lord Jesus Christ."

But really, they're in it for the gold. They're there for the cash and the ladies. You know what's so interesting about it, too? Montezuma was such an imperialist himself. That's so interesting. Empire conquering empire. That's how they were able to do it. When they marched on, they were able to get the help of the people in Campeche and Tabasco, and they were able to get the help of all those tribes that were like, "We hate Montezuma."

Lindsay: Yeah, they gave him all their best food and best skins and animals and killed their virgins.
Dan: It reminded me a lot of the language that Bush sold to the world to march on Iraq. This moral high ground talk. Which, in some contexts, just as in Christianity, has some truth to some people. But it's for the gold. Black gold [oil]. It's just so amazing: "Let us learn what history teaches. History teaches." Eh, it doesn't teach. We don't listen.
CE: We don't listen.

IV. Time to Take in the Night

CE: This is so funny, these are three of my old friends, just walking by...
Lindsay: want to go talk to them?
CE: I'm not terribly close to them.
Dan: Want a picture of them, the three of them walking by?
CE: I'll just call them in a minute. I'll keep it up there [pointing to my head]. And I'll write some story about, walking, walking away... in my life, their lives, our lives.
Lindsay: We need to go watch this movie.
CE: Oh, what are you watching?
Lindsay: We might The Namesake, which i think at 7:30.
CE: Have you read the book? I hear it's good.
Lindsay: I read the book, it's good.
Dan: South Asian [stuff], that's her.
CE: I should get your email so that i could email you the interview and email the link, hoping that this was loud enough to be recorded.
Dan: Yeah...

We start our "see you later's", then they're gone, and I'm taking in the early afternoon, the conversation, and the proof [pointing to my head]. Sure, there's tape, sure there's Polaroids, but I'll keep it in my head... the experience. I'll keep it in my head as a distinctly vertical experience.

That guy who likes to talk with people
(Shahin/ conversations, etc./ CE).

Amy Steinnagel, Abby Ross, Cody Halcox, and Random Acts of Kindness

Hot Chocolate, Straight from Eastern Tennessee.

This all started with hot chocolate. Last Tuesday, I was walking along the BU region of Commonwealth Avenue, daydreaming about being in California, in Cleveland, even, with a good friend. Essentially, I was wanting to be away from the cold air cutting against my skin, and the distant fellow city dwellers, who seemed to be, in the words of Timothy Levitch, "running toward their destinations and away from themselves." Then I looked up and saw two warm faced, rosy cheeked folks with cups and a warm thermos. They asked if I wanted hot chocolate. Refreshingly floored by the possibility, I accepted. Then we started talking, and they agreed to share some of their stories. A warm afternoon in subzero weather, midwinter blues was abated by something called random acts of kindness.

I should note that I am not a religious person, in the "capital R" or "lowercase R" of the term. Also, what you read below would hopefully not be critiqued as preaching or soapboxing. Keeping in mind the blog's mission, I am here to offer moments into people's lives, to bask in conversation, to voice people's convictions with respect. As this is an evolving platform, constructive comments are welcomed, and when appropriate, should address the editor/interviewer, and not necessarily the interviewees.

Without further adieu, three members on behalf of a mission group from Roane State Community College's Baptist Collegiate Ministry. From Harrimon, Tennessee, to a room in a church on Commonwealth Ave., Boston.

Interviewer: Shahin I. Beigi
Interviewees: Amy Steinnagel, Abby Ross, and Cody Halcox.


CE: It is Wednesday, Tuesday, March 6, Marsh Chapel, Boston University. Outside, you guys were giving hot chocolate. What was the idea behind that?

Cody Halcox: Random acts of kindness. Cuz it was a really cold day, and it would be like givin' someone a cold glass of water on a hot day (affirming tones from group).

Amy Steinnagel: Yeah, we're here from Tennessee and this is our spring break trip. It's kind of like a mission trip. We're just doing random things throughout the week. We're going to Chinatown after this to teach little kids how to speak English, stuff like that. But you know, east Tennessee is a lot different than Boston, so what we're going to try to do is also see colleges in Boston.

CE: Have you met anybody interesting on the street so far, any interesting stories?

Abby Ross: About the second cup of chocolate we gave out, this one lady was like, "Why are you doing this? you know, this is so nice." She was like, "God bless you, you guys. You know that was so awesome." She just all started crying, she's like, "That is so nice, what a refreshing idea, you know, doing random acts of kindness like that, thank you so much!"

CE: The surprising this is just that, uh, Boston, it's not so common. I mean if you go looking for it, definitely. There's communities where people give. In those specific areas, people will seek your guidance and comfort and stuff. But, outside of that, I feel like a lot of Boston has been, "cold"? I mean, it's very much a city of surfaces, and people kind of being away from each other, and I personally have been trying to infuse some sort of community in there by doing this sort of thing. It was great to see you guys do this random acts of kindness. Do you folks do that in Tennessee, or is there something similar? How does your relationship with the community work there?

Abby: I know that random acts of kindness goes for different kinds of projects that we do. we've been trying to start up more mission opportunities back home. We go to nursing homes. We try to do stuff back at school. On Wednesdays, we feed our students [any Roane State students], they can come to our building and get lunch for two dollars every Wednesday. BCM [Baptist College Ministry] is always open. If people need to talk, or pray, or just come over and have fun and play ping pong, that's the big thing that we do, and just different stuff like that. We've been just trying to get more missions opportunities going, and just about everywhere we go we try to talk to people.

CE: Is this a specific denomination, or is it cross-Protestant, or?

Amy: It is the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. But our students are from every denomination, it's not just made up of Baptist students. We have all types of Christians that come and are apart of this very group.

CE: How long have you folks known each other, personally, and through the church?

Amy: Some of us have been together for two years now and the rest of us, just since this school year. We're kind of growing to be a family, since this past fall.

CE: Five years from now, how do you feel the kind of thing you're doing now will affect yourself or others, because people always remember this kind of compassion and this kind of community?

Amy: You realize, New England is just totally different than Tennesse. I went to school here in Boston and was raised here in Connecticut. In Tennessee, out there there are churches that do ministry work like this all the time. Basically, with these random acts of kindness, it might not turn into a conversation where you know, right now we're talking to you for a very long time. You don't really come across that very often where you actually talk to a person by giving them a cup of hot chocolate, for like hours or anything. I think all of us really believe that, you know, showing the love that we feel from God and from Jesus Christ, by showing people that love, it's kind of like showering seeds and planting seeds, seeds of love. And those seeds of love, they can get uprooted or something like that, but they have been put there. Your question was, "How does this go like five years down the road, these random acts of kindness?" You know, we may never see some of these people again, ever. But, they have experienced love on a very cold day through a simple cup of hot chocolate.

CE: What do you guys like to do as a group, some of the fun things you like to do?

Cody: I like to ride my four wheeler and I like to go fishing and ride around in my bass boat and i like to go deer hunting, or deerhuntin, I like to meet new people. I love the outdoors. I spend a lot of time outdoors, trying to catch fish and just see the country.

Amy: In New England, we're just having fun walking around, and trying not to get hit by cars and stuff like that. Just seeing the city. Tennessee is a lot more outdoorsy, climbings a big thing, hiking is a big thing. I think a lot that we do that's fun together is just hanging out, because when you become a family, you really just love spending time together, whatever you're doing.

Abby: We like to go places together. But when we're at BCM, we play ping pong, we play pool, different things like that. But one thing we really like to do that people wouldn't think is necessarily fun: we like to have bible studies, we like to pray, we like to have that close-knit kind of family situation, so even if we kind of get off subject, we're still talking about God and we still have that, we still have that connection and it's really important. No matter where we are, we could jump in: if we have a question about something, we could talk to each other and just pray with each other, no matter what time and it's really important. That's what we like to do.

CE: That's really beautiful. Being a nonreligious person, I come to the church through literature, through music. There's that Bruce Springsteen song, "Reason to Believe." He keeps saying, "At the end of every hard earned people find some reason to believe." I think it's very important, you know, the version you guys are sharing, the community building, the talking, the interacting and the growing together through focusing, speaking, and doing good work. As opposed to what we see these days: the separating and dividing and all this other stuff.

Amy: One thing you said was, this community that we have. I think so much of religion today is exactly that, it's Religion. It's man-made. We have all these different denominations and all these different, you know, beliefs and everything. So often, and I know myself, because i used to be a "religious person"... I went to church and I didn't really know God, at all. And i know for me, religion is very different from the God that i know. The God that i know loves me, and I feel that in my heart.

CE: I want to hear a fun story about ping pong or bass fishing, just a fun time, a good story.

Cody: Something i like to do is go catfishing. When i do that, i like to try to catch them them ones as long as your leg. me and my friend Nathan, we always go out there, nighttime, cast the line, put up some nasty bait, and we like to hang them big ones and just fight them in. it's like fightin' a seamonster.

CE: Do you eat them?

Cody: I eat the small catfish and the crawfeet, but i don't eat the big catfish cuz they have had more time to get nasty stuff in them like mercury, and radiation, nasty stuff. More fishing questions?

CE: Funny stories?

Cody: Oh yeah, one time me and dad was in his old bass boat. He would do over 70 miles per hour on the water. and there's this yacht that made big waves several feet tall. Me and dad hit that wave, doing bout seventy. We got some good air time. We pulled some dukes of hazard on the water [all laugh]. Yeah, well i guess that's ll i have to say.

Amy: I have a funny story about how to shoot. Up in new england, the only people who have guns are authority figures, you know police and stuff, or criminals, and i was neither. But then in Tennessee, people have been shooting guns, pretty much since they're out of the womb. So one day we were over at a friend's house and he had a rifle and it was unloaded. So it's an unloaded gun,, i was like it's alright, and started waving it around, toting it around because it's an unloaded gun. Everyone starts screaming at me, because apparently there's two rules that you aren't supposed to break, ever, with a gun: always treat a gun like it's a loaded gun, and never shoot, and don't point a gun at something you don't intend to kill. I did both. I actually pointed the gun right at my friend's chest and it was a 12 gauge, which you could pretty much blow a hole through anything. Everyone was freaking out and this stupid Yankee over here is laughing her head off.

But it actually taught me a really good lesson: that me, having no preconceived notion, assuming that an unloaded gun doesn't harm you, had no concept of how dangerous that actually is cuz I've never shot a gun. I know it kills people. They were telling me afterwards how many deaths and accidents because of "unloaded guns," and it brought tears to my eyes to think I literally pointed that thing at my brother-- he's not biologically my brother but he's like my brother-- at my brother's chest...and to think i could have killed him. It made me realize how often so many of us do things that we have no idea how dangerous it really is. That just opened my eyes to other things that we do that are really dangerous, that we have no idea how dangerous it really is.

Cody: The first date me and my girlfriend Jamie ever did. Instead of taking her out to dinner and taking her to watch a movie, like everyone else does, I was, "Hey Jamie, you wanna go ride four wheelers and then shoot guns after that?" She was like, " yeah sure." So we went: rode four wheelers and hit mud holes and I showed her how to drive. Then after that, I had an old lawnmower sitting in the cow pasture. "Jamie honey, we're gonna shoot us a lawn mower!" We just blew that lawnmower to pieces. and she's been the coolest girlfriend ever, and it seems like you know, I've taken her fishing before and, she doesn't do this [ makes a disgusted face] [all laugh] .

Abby: A couple stories we have about playing ping pong at the BCM. We play just about every day. We're each starting basically to get addicted to ping pong. We each have our own paddles that we like to play with, that we've bought ourselves.

CE: Do you have names for them?

Abby: Our friend Adam, he has this ping pong paddle. He loves the Red Sox. He's written on it in permanent marker, with the two sox on one side, and his name on the other.

And then one of our favorite movies we like to joke about all the time is Anchorman. One of the sayings in that, a name from that, is "Brosef," and that's what he's named his ping pong paddle. We kind of name each other, like "Hey Brosef, what are you doin'?"

One thing we like to do is have tournaments for ping pong. Basically, after Noonday-- which is what that meal is called, on Wednesday-- we have our own little tournament, and we make brackets, and all this kind of stuff. It always comes down to basically the same two people every time, and it will be like the most intense game ever, and the same person will win. It's so funny,and [the loser], they'll get so frustrated, and it's like, "It's just ping pong." They'll get frustrated and throw the paddle all over the place, but it's just so funny too see how intense we get over a game of ping pong. It's so funny.

CE: Any fun places in Boston so far? How long you been here? Since Friday?

Cody: We went to Brown Sugar Cafe, a Thai restaurant. It was good. I had seafood, it was great. I love seafood.

Amy: We're kind of on a limited budget, staying at a church. A lot of the meals we've been eating are together, we're just cooking at the church and eat there. But we are going to treat ourselves. On Friday, we're going to be going to the North End. We'll be going to La Familia Giorgio's. It's good, it's good and it's not too expensive either. Of course, we'll be going to Mike's Pastry for some cannoli, because most in our group here have either never heard of cannoli, or never had it.

CE: Thank you so much, and keep enjoy doing these random acts of kindness.