New message!

So I went to check my mail after lunch today. I guess last time I was in the mailroom I must have left the little combination lock on my box on the last number of my combination, because all I had to do was turn it a little bit to the left and it opened right up - lucky thing, since I forgot my combo! But definitely not safe. Remember to spin your combo wheel thing!

Someone else (Hari??) seems to have also known how to get into lazy people's mailboxes, because I found something weird in there. It was a plain envelope, no address or postage or anything. Over the seal someone had written:

X MARKS THE SPOT

Inside the envelope there were four photographs, which I've scanned for you. Here they are.


Any ideas??? Maybe we have to solve the other cipher first for this one to make sense, but we can probably start trying to figure out what these pictures mean...

Weird note from Hari - help!

So I found Hari's room in Hurlbut, but it didn't look like anyone had moved in yet. I tried to find out if he had a roommate, and someone told me that his room was in a block of rooms called "psycho singles". !!! He's a bit odd, but he's no psycho!

There was clearly no one there, but I saw a corner of a piece of paper sticking out from under the door, so I fished around with my key and pulled out... a note from Hari!

Anna,
I knew you'd try to track me down! Nice work! I'm sorry we haven't hung out yet, but I'm super busy! Meanwhile, check out these awesome books I've found in Widener - it's just like in our old letters!
xo,
Hari

The Strongest Poison
Neighbouring Nobel
Dizionario Italiano-romanesco '
Strange Negro Stories of the Old Deep South

The Annotated Nose
The Sub-prefect should have held his tongue, and other essays
Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?
On the Origins of Classical Economics

International Migration of the Highly Skilled
Der Typo Atlas
Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile
The Last of the Knickerbockers

Women Scientists in the Third World
The Political Legacy of Margaret Thatcher
Order from Confusion Sprung
Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon

A = D West

This must mean something. Hari has never used an exclamation point in his life. Any ideas??

Directory

Thanks everyone for your help! Especial thanks to Karen for pointing me towards the Harvard Web Directory. Looks like there's a shiny new version too. But Hari wasn't listed in those records!

So I had to go low-tech. Turns out we're all given big paper Harvard phonebooks still. Who knew? And Hari was there in the Harvard Freshman Register - seems to be living in Hurlbut. Hehe, Hurlbut. Apparently it's one of the "Union" dorms, whatever that means. I'm going to stop by after lunch - if the line in Annenberg ever shrinks! - and I'll report back later.

Where's Hari?

Okay, this is getting weird. I got all moved in and said goodbye to my folks, but my roommate had squeezed her entire extended family into our common room so instead of unpacking I decided to go try to find Hari.

I can't find him anywhere.

Well, okay, I mean his phone is off and I wandered around the Yard for like an hour hoping I'd run into him, but no luck. He didn't submit a listing to that freshman facebook thing (do you think that's where they got the name for the real Facebook??), but that's hardly surprising.

Is there a way to find out the dorm room of another freshman? Help!

Move-in!

okay! I am packed! Sorta almost kinda! We rented a uhaul and have a really long drive ahead of us, but this time tomorrow I will be a real live college student!

I left Hari a whole bunch of messages, because his blog was down and also just because I wanted to commiserate with someone else while packing and planning (it's a little weird with my high school friends because most of them are staying home for college, you know?). Hari and I went to elementary school together, til his family moved away in 5th grade so he could go to some fancy special school for special people, and we lost touch, until we ran into each other at CTY after 10th grade, and we've been penpals ever since.

Hari's kind of a freak, one of those geniuses who's such a genius that he almost comes full circle to, like, moron. He doesn't do the facebook/twitter/gchat thing really, and he almost never answers his phone, so we pretend we're in the 19th century and write letters. It's fun! He sends me all sorts of weird stuff - puzzles and riddles and random crap he found on the beach that reminded him of some medieval poetry. Basically letters from Hari are the most exciting things I've ever gotten in the mail - you know, aside from that one letter last April. :)

So it was really surprising when he started that blog a few months ago! And he was super into it - he gets super into everything he does - and was posting multiple times a day. And now it's just... gone. Anyone have any ideas?

Whoa, weird. A couple of you pointed out that the link to Hari's blog didn't work - I checked, and it looks like he took it down! Maybe he's trying to get rid of all those "incriminating" pictures from back at nerd camp before running for president of the Undergraduate Council. Or of the United States, whatever, i wouldn't put that past him!

Welcome!

Hi old friends and new friends and random people google-stalking me!

Welcome to my blog!

I am really excited (and really scared) to move up to Harvard next week. I haven't started packing yet, of course, but Mom has been on a wild laundry binge on my behalf. I think she's afraid I'll never manage to find the laundry rooms and will start wearing my dirty clothes inside-out.

Please comment on my blog, other freshmen! Maybe we can get to know each other a little before we move up. I only know one other incoming freshman - my dear friend Hari, who I haven't seen in a bazillion years. You can check out Hari's blog here.

See you all soon!!!

Anna