The Boston Selling Point

  
 
For Carter looking at colleges is as much about looking at the city as it is looking at the schools and Boston has a lot of positives. For Carter Boston has one thing that no other city has, her eight year old cousin Sarah Lange, otherwise known as “party of one.”  
Sarah is Russ’ first cousin Mike and his wife Andrea’s daughter and she is a bundle of fire. Her older brother Jason is a senior in high school this year and is a good egg too, but since he is leaving for college he does not hold the draw that Sarah does. Sarah in great anticipation of Carter’s visit had told her whole class of her visit as well as a wrote about it in her Friday Journal at school.
Today we spent the afternoon and evening with the Boston Lange’s doing off the beaten path tourist things natives never do unless relatives come to visit. The first stop at the Mapparium in the Mary Baker Eddy Museum was a visit to a giant glass globe of the world as it existed in 1935 where we stood on a glass bridge on the inside of the globe. It had all the acoustical properties of a dome so we could whisper across the room to each other and sound like we were talking in a normal voice right next to each other.
After looking at the opulent splendor of the mother church of the Christian Scientist as well as the beautiful reflecting pool we all piled in the Lange car to go to Castle Island in South Boston. Sarah was very disappointed that the “castle” was just a fort with cannons on top, but we enjoyed the walk around the property that looks across the harbor to Logan airport. Sarah was able to quiz Carter about all her favorite American Girl and Magic Tree House books.     
We took a circuitous route back to Beacon Hill where we parked and continued our walk before stopping for a fabulous dinner. Sarah pulled out her Friday Journal so Carter could read the letter she had written to her in it. Carter reciprocated and wrote Sarah a letter back in the journal with the promise to stay in touch. The love an adoration of the girl cousins was palpable. 
The draw of all these fun Lange’s gives Boston quite a leg up. Andrea already started planning our visit for Carter’s first thanksgiving vacation in college with us all going to Plymouth Plantation. I would love for Carter to have Mike and Andrea nearby as surrogate parents.  
Now we are going to have to see what the NYC Lange’s are going to bring to the table when we go to visit colleges there. The Carter’s are going to have to lobby for Washington, DC Schools. Any other relatives out there who want Carter nearby who have a good college?