When I was in college in China, people always talking about how amazing the Harvard University and MIT. Those were my dream place to go, even just had a tour. Now my dream came to be true, I finally could have a tour in both places together. So exciting!

I took my kids with me to tour MIT and Harvard the second day when we got Boston. It was drizzling when we got off the bus. We walked to MIT first. It was the beginning of the fall semester, so many new students were reporting to school that day, and they offered tours to the students and families. In the beginning, we followed the tour groups, went into the main building, then started to walk around by ourselves with the campus map in hand. We walked down the hallways, toured the classrooms and labs, then I decided to go to the Great Dome. We walked around and round inside and outside of the buildings, couldn’t find that place. Finally, I realized we were lost. I started to use the google map on my phone to guide us. When we finally got there, that was the second building we stopped by already. My daughter was teasing me: “Thank you, mom, for your wonderful tour guide!”

After we finished the tour in MIT, the rain was getting heavier, so I decided to take the bus to Harvard, and we found a place to eat first so the rain might pass away after we ate. Didn’t get surprised that most of the restaurants which outside of Harvard were packed by the tour people. When we almost soaked entirely in the rain, we finally found this small place with the “cash only” sign on the door, had several tables available. I walked in and sat down, my son whispered to me: “Mom, do you have enough cash?” He knew I usually only carry less than $20 cash in my wallet. I said: “No worries honey, I have enough cash to buy us a lunch.” After lunch, the rain wasn’t disappeared at all, but getting lighter so we could walk outside with our damp sweatshirts. We had a quick walk inside of the Harvard, couldn’t get into any building because the security system request ID to go in. We had to go back to the hotel before another rain storm coming.

 

I wasn’t delighted with the tour, and my husband wanted to have a guided tour on both campuses too. So I booked Harvard & MIT tours combo online. Hopefully, we could have a chance to know more of them. This time we toured Harvard first. We took the red line subway to the Harvard station. The tour gathering spot was right outside the subway station. The tour guide guy was wearing a Harvard T-shirt and a straw hat, easy to be recognized. We had over 20 people in our group. There were three families from China, one family from Canada, one couple from North Dacota, and us from Minnesota. The tour guy told us three secrets about the Harvard.

We walked in the Harvard Campus on the side door of the main entrance, the Harvard Hall was right by the side of the main entrance. You might be wondering why side door? Here was the first secret, you were only supposed to walk through that main entrance twice in your lifetime, once was the first day you walked in to start studying here, the other time was the day you graduated and left here. If you went through this door before your graduation, then you never got graduated. I doubted if it was true, but nobody walked through that main door for sure, me either.

The second secret was about the statue of John Harvard. Guess what is it? This statue in the middle of the Harvard campus was not John Harvard at all! I heard somebody talking about if you touched the left foot of the statue, you could either get into Harvard for education or brought you good luck. Guess the truth was? Never touch that foot because you never know what was on it (maybe somebody’s elimination stuff). If you already touched, you’d better go wash your hands with soap and water several times to make sure they were clean. Is it terrible?

The third secret was about the Harvard Library. This Widener library was donated by Eleanor Widener, in memorial of her son Henry, Class of 1907, who died in the crash of Titanic. His mother donated all his collections of book and money to build this library. She requested that nobody could pull down this library forever, and Henry always had his study room and each day with a bottle of fresh flower on the desk for him. So the Harvard students all knew that this library was hunted by Henry’s ghost. The library was not open to the public, only students and staffs could get inside. We couldn’t go in even with the tour guy, but we were so lucky to meet my husband’s friend who was the staff at Harvard Medical School, came with his wife who was the students of the Harvard, took four of us into the library. I didn’t know if Henry saw us or not, but we got a chance to meet him.

After having lunch with friends, we kept going to MIT to have our guided tour there. Instead of Harvard’s secret, MIT students liked to do higher technology tricks for here campus.

From this picture, you could see there was a police car sat on the top of the Great Dome. They also put a cow on there too. The biggest hack was the students buried a weather balloon underground and inflated the balloon in the middle of the game which the Harvard against the Yale, and Harvard won the game.

Here was the TIM the Beaver, the official mascot of MIT. Why Beaver? Because “beaver is noted for his engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry, he did all his best work in the dark!” Now I understood why the MIT students did all their hacks and tricks in the darkness, just like the Beaver!

Here was a robot designed by MIT students. My daughter was super amazed by all the high technology skills we saw in the campus. She told me maybe this the place she would like to come to her college education. When I asked my son which one was his favorite between this two private universities, he gave me the same answer. My husband and I agreed with them. We all liked the friendly atmosphere among the MIT. They opened their door to everyone who came to visit, they also opened the public’s mind to all the hacking tricks they did. I wanted to say they were excellent for whatever they did in the history. I am looking forward to expecting more interesting high technology for them to invent.