Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Early Mornings and Thunderstorms

This morning I woke up at 6:15 AM to go running. Previously, I had pressured and threatened Stephen into running as well so I met him at 6:30 AM by Balch Hall. The sky was dark and the air had that electric, unstable feeling that brought thoughts of rain and thunder. We headed up campus to the Fuertes Observatory, and cut behind it to one of the gorge trails. At one point we headed off on a trail that ended up not being a trail, which became obvious as the trail disappeared and trees appeared.

After backtracking, we returned to an actual trail and crossed the Sackett Foot Bridge. We ran up Forest Home Drive and made our way to the Robert K. Jane sports complex. At this point we had probably run about a mile but Stephen was dying (not literally) and had to take a break. Apparently, he had done too many pushups and that meant that his legs were more tired than usual. Despite my teasing, he bailed on me and walked back. I continued my run down Campus Road, then turned up Ho Plaza and made my way back to South Balch. According to my phone's GPS I had run about three miles, which isn't much but it was acceptable. As soon as I got back to Balch it began to rain, and thereafter there was thunder as well.

Of course, as weather in Ithaca is bound to be, the thunder and rain cleared up by 10:00 AM and sunny skies appeared.

At 11:00 AM I started walking to brunch and met up with Laura, Isabella, Eva, Sam, and Roland who are students in the debate class as well. We ate and talked together for about  45 minutes. Laura despises Roland even though when she first met him she thought he was okay, and Roland enjoys annoying Laura, although I'm pretty sure Laura kinda enjoys it. It's one of those weird complicated teenage things that have no logical explanation. Anyway, we all walked to Ives Hall together and on the way Laura saw her Turkish friend who she thinks is really cute and she said hello to him. That's literally all that happened but Laura had the whole panic and then act cool moment in a span of about two seconds.

Enough with the boy story though. We got to class and Rodney had us all stand up and do a short breathing exercise and a talking exercise. (Saying, "20 dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet") After that, we went over the debate from yesterday, and a few points from our reading last night. The class also had a long discussion about how our sense of existence is reliant on other people's subjectivity, which was really fascinating to talk about. This came about from the writing of Rene Descartes, who proposed that "cogiro ergo sum," or "I think, therefore I am." We discussed whether we, as individuals, found our sense of existence, or if other people had to validate that for us.

Fascinating. But not debating. So to get back on the theme of debate, we debated whether violence was a legitimate political tool. I was part of the opposition to the proposition, and we argued that violence cannot be a legitimate political tool because as freedom of expression and speech becomes overshadowed by the doubt of personal safety, democracy and free society begins to disappear, which is the opposite reaction than the government wants. Of course, nothing goes are simply as that, and speakers from both sides rambled on about violence and aggression being different or the same, or revolution being different from violence. While these arguments may be strong, the class's presentation skills still need to be worked on. However, for the second day of class it was a better debate from the one yesterday so progress is being made.

After I got back to Balch, Alfredo Chan-Law texted and and said he had received a package for me from my family. I knew my family sent me something previously, but my mother wouldn't tell me what. However, I was texting with her and guessed that it would be cookies, apples, or a special spicy popcorn that I love. I'm such a great guesser too--the package contained cookies and apples. However these aren't just any apples. These are Fuji apples that are individually wrapped in gold foil and sealed with a wax seal stamped for credibility. Just kidding, they're just Fuji apples from a store. But either way I love Fuji apples and I immediately ate one with three cookies. 

After my lovely afternoon snack, I met with Thao at 5:00 PM to go get dinner. When we arrived in the dining hall we were surprised to see a whole lot of lacrosse players there who were part of the Cornell Sports Camp. They were everywhere and they all looked the same. Crazy. Anyway, we ate dinner and then headed over to Appel Fields for the intramural soccer I signed up for. Thao didn't sign up for it, she just came along to sit and watch and make fun of me. 

The soccer was okay. It got better as time went by. If my soccer coach saw me playing he probably would never let me on his team again but I'm going to make the excuse that it had been a month since I played and go with that. It got better half-way through though, when I switched to center defender because no one playing on the team knew absolutely anything about defending. Although I'm not actually a defender, I know how to play so I'm quite proud to say that during the hour I played central defense, only one goal got in. However I do hope I'll get my skills back up because it was a bit embarrassing how much one month can impact your skills. 

Overall though it was really fun. I met a lot of new people and the two hours were well spent.

1 comment:

  1. Wow those gorges are beautiful! So great that you get to cross them every day.

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