Another term, another several months that I go without updating  my blog. Oops. Anyway, as of a few days ago I have completed my junior year at MIT. Junior year was probably the most challenging year for me at MIT academically so far, but in the end I came out on top and am happy with how I did. Everything seems to be on track for me right now and I am looking forward to what’s in store for the future.

After term ended I spent a few days in Boston hanging out with people before my train home Friday evening. Saturday morning my mom, dad, brother and I headed out for Lancaster, Pennsylvania to visit my aunt and her husband for the weekend. All of my cousins were elsewhere, so it was just us six. My uncle joined an oldies band a year and a half ago and they had a gig in Mount Joy, PA, so we all went over there to check it out. As it turns out, they were playing at the Mount Joy Popcorn Festival, which turned out to be loads of fun. Here’s me standing next to the sign. (To see all the photos in this entry and more, check out this set on Flickr).

When we first arrived, not only were we shocked that we were at a Popcorn Festival, we were also shocked by how awesome the park was. James and I took a joy ride on the swings for a while and he hung out in the tire swing for a bit.

After enjoying the park we explored the rest of the festival. When we first got there in the early afternoon it wasn’t very crowded, but it definitely picked up as the night went on. One noteworthy attraction was the popcorn kernel spitting contest. The record spit for the junior division (14-40 yrs) was over 27 feet!

There were several other contests as well. There was a coloring contest for the kids, a popcorn hat decorating contest, and a contest to guess the number of kernels in a jar. My dad, James and I did our best to estimate the number of kernels in the jar by estimating the number of kernels per cubic inch. We actually came very close (all three of our guesses were within 10%), with my dad off by only 400 kernels from the winning guess. There were about 27,000 kernels in the jar.

After wandering around for a bit we decided to grab some Italian ice because it was just so ridiculously hot out standing on the pavement.  While we were eating the ice the old school popcorn truck also showed up and we got some delicious popcorn here at the festival.

After my uncle’s band the Ravens finished their second set, organizers of the festival convinced them to play an encore show because they had done such a tremendous job. In order to convince my aunt to let him stay later, the band played Freebird. It was hilarious and awesome. I put a video of it (with commentary from the crowd!) up in my public here.

The next day we were all pretty tired and didn’t get out of the house until after 2pm. We decided to go shopping at the mall so I could get more clothes for my internship this summer (It’s with Boston Scientific in St. Paul, MN), and James got a few things too. I picked up a nice pair of casual sandals and a pair of dress shoes, along with some slacks to go with all the blouses I got a few weekends ago.

After shopping we headed over to the Tilted Kilt Pub (also in Mount Joy) to listen to a few guys play that James and my Dad know from New York. One of them is a really mean keytar player, and things were great until it rained and we headed home.

I had a great time. Hopefully I’ll be posting more over the summer!