I woke up from a nap and went on an adventure to find “Narnia,” which was mentioned in “The Ultimate Amherst Bucket List” on the Amherst website. All I knew was that it was an abandoned building somewhere. Sarah had a map on her phone, so a group of us followed her to Narnia. I imagined that we would get lost in the middle of the forest and starve, so I brought a couple of French cookies with me. I finished them in an instant.
We kept walking… past town, past the end of town, past bushes, trees and houses… to UMass?! It was the first time I went to UMass. The campus looked really big, and their hills make ours look like nothing. According to Sarah’s phone, UMass was where the abandoned building was located. To the phone’s credit, we did find an abandoned building with a garage on their campus, but it wasn’t Narnia. Alicia knocked on the door and no one responded. The door was locked and no one seemed to be in the garage either.
We made a long trek back to Amherst after failing to find Narnia. We stopped by a music store called Mystery Train Records because of their colorful decorations. They had a sizable collection of indie music in record CDs as well as an eclectic mix of old music, classical, jazz, country and more. It made me wish I had a record player so I could play operatic French songs. I also found a CD of the original cast performing The Sound of Music.
A while after I got back, I went to rehearsal for Amherst Symphony Orchestra’s Homecoming Concert. Even though the event was not as widely advertised as Homecoming, the audience still filled up many of the seats. I played Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major. I was disappointed that I missed the Homecoming Bonfire, so I headed to town for a lychee bubble tea at Lime Red. No alcohol for me—I have a Choral Society concert the next day.