Monthly Archives: August 2011

The swimmin’ hole

Not too much new, but I wanted to put up some pictures I took today. A few of us internationals went down to Dam 2, sort of an unofficial swimming pool for Cornell and Ithaca students, for a quick dip, and it’s probably the coolest place I’ve ever swum in my whole life and I wanted to show the Internet. Check it out:

Pretty nice, eh? It’s tucked away in the woods, about a ten minute walk from the road. But that’s not the fun part:

See those guys way up on the cliff? They’re not up there for the view. Direct your attention to the bottom left of the screen and you’ll see a large splash. This place is like Basin Head but a bazillion times cooler. And yes, I did take that jump. And it gets even cooler. Remember what I said about it being a dam?

I know, right?! Anyway, this place is like the coolest, and I’m kind of sad it will be too cold soon to go there anymore. I plan on going whenever possible until then.

Well yes, I am technically an international student

International orientation is drawing to a close tonight, and there was quite a lot of it – three full days (plus another, optional, full day) of talks about life in Ithaca, campus tours, information about immigration, etc. I’m by far the whitest bread around, but I did meet a guy who grew up in New Jersey then moved to Malaysia, so I’m at least more international than him. He looks the part much more than me, though; I usually have to speak French to convince people I’m not American. We did have some fun events, too: an ice cream social, pizza party and that kind of thing, but most of that stuff will be happening later when regular orientation starts – another mess of events, but not full days at least.

Ithaca reminds me of Charlottetown in some ways. It’s a similar size (same order of magnitude, anyway), and people go to the Walmart for fun. There’s also a mall that’s about 30% bigger than Charlottetown’s and which has, I kid you not, pepperoni pretzels. America. Anyway, it seems like a pretty cool place, pretty cool people, pretty cool all around. I’ll have to take some pictures of the campus, because there are some very neat sights. Neat architecture especially: the campus is on a tall and steep hill (which I live at the very top of), so the buildings are all planned around the changes in elevation.

Good news! The suitcase has arrived and I am fully equipped once again. The roommate situation is more complex than I had thought, so still no sign of him and he may not move in for another couple of weeks. More space for me in the meantime, I suppose. I’ll go on a proper picture-taking expedition around campus at some point in the next few days and put them up here. Until then, if you have Skype, I always appreciate people calling me and eating things in front of me that I can’t have any of.

Ithaca at last

I’ve finally arrived at Ithaca and gotten established. My whole day up until about 4:00 was just one big run-on sentence: Since my flight last night was cancelled, I was on standby for a flight this morning, but I didn’t get on it because it was full, and everything else to Ithaca was full because they had a whole extra planeload of people on standby, so I went to Syracuse instead to get the shuttle to Ithaca, but they told me there was no shuttle (or flight!) to Ithaca, but then I called the Office of International Programs here at Ithaca and my good friend Diana told me there is so a shuttle, and gave me the number to call, and I called them, and the shuttle was there waiting already so I got on just in time, and then we drove to Ithaca and the guy driving got lost a few times dropping people off, but I finally got to the office at Ithaca where I was to pick up my keys and my day started making more sense. Also, somewhere in there one of my bags got lost, so Newark is tracking it down and in the meantime I have no clean underpants.

Regardless, my day at Ithaca has been pretty good. I happily had my first shower in 60 hours, and the food in the meal hall is excellent. Mandatory orientation starts tomorrow, so that’s my next thing, I guess. No sign of my roommate yet, but I guess he’s on his way. I think I’ll go to bed now.