Fly Away with Me

There was a bittersweet feeling when leaving Chicago. The thought of not taking buses everywhere and passing the stores in downtown made me want to stay, but the main reason I'm here is to learn about Hotel Management at Cornell. We packed all of our bags and left The Drake in an orderly fashion. It was similar to those old-fashioned carnivals passing by, but only similar! I promise we don't act, smell, or look like animals in any way. A shuttle bus picked us up along with another woman who happened to be from San Francisco. Instead of going to the Midway Airport, we went to O'Hare which is bigger. The most shocking part of today was probably the weight of our luggage! I left for Chicago with a 37 pound suitcase, but I left Chicago with 47 pounds! How did it gain ten pounds in three days? I only bought three pieces of clothing and postcards! Rochelle and Christian went up to 48 pounds too. We'll probably have to send stuff home or limit what we buy in Cornell.

After all the normal airport protocols, we grabbed breakfast and boarded a Delta plane to Detroit. Ithaca only has a small airport with limited flights, so we had to make a transfer. I sat behind Tomi and the flight was almost delayed because of bad weather conditions. Thankfully we did leave because we would've missed our transfer. We had a thirty minute layover in Detroit's airport which was so big that it had a shuttle to transfer people between terminals. They had a cool tunnel that changed colors between terminals! We boarded out next plane to Ithaca. It was so small that the flight attendant's head almost touched the top of the plane. I sat int he very last seat alone. Looking around the plane, everyone was probably there was probably going to Cornell even if they weren't going to summer college.

My "get to know you" sheet, ID, room key, mailbox key, and book filled with sticky tabs.

The drive to Cornell from Ithaca's airport was less than ten minutes. We entered a campus stacked with bricks. Cornell has a fairly large campus covered with trees. A residential college adviser(RCA) named Carol took us to the office to check-in. We each got a little yellow envelope with our keys and ID. It took us a while to find the elevator, but after a few calls, we were able to locate our rooms in seconds. There was no way we were lugging 47 pound suitcases up three stories. I ended up getting a single room. There's two shelves, two tables, a closet, and a sink. No bathroom. There's a shared bathroom with showers outside in the hallway. This room was definitely not like home or The Drake.  I met my RCA, Maisie a little after.

My dorm room! 

We met Mr. Schechter, the summer program director at John Thomas Steakhouse. The portions were huge! The "side dishes" were big enough to be main courses. I took a break from fish and ordered a small filet mignon. I guess all the meat looked so good that even our vegetarian accidentally ordered meat! The director asked us questions about the Ivy League Connection. Sadly, a group of Chiense students were stuck at an airport four hours away, so he had to figure out how to get them here. A lot of bus services were closed. We ended the dinner with a variety of cakes and pies.

Tamilyn and I started blogging in my dorm. Our RCAs called us down for our first curfew check. We have to go to the first floor by 11 on Sundays through Thursdays and 12 on Fridays through Saturdays. People aren't supposed to arrive until tomorrow, so there were only three people. We met a girl from China! She isn't taking the same course as any of us. We ended up chatting in my room. Tamilyn was surprised that she can't access Facebook or Twitter in China. I showed her our blog and she said it was really cool! The 900 other students will start rolling in tomorrow. I can already tell that it's going to be an interesting next three weeks.