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.