Monday, June 22, 2015

More People, More Fun

I woke up at around 9:00 this morning.  For the first time in what felt like forever, there weren't a million items planned on an agenda.  Knowing that I had more time allowed me to work at my own leisure and opened up the opportunity to even get a little R&R.  At around 9:30, I went on a little jog to find out where my class was in order to eliminate the stress of identifying it tomorrow.  When I was jogging, it felt as though the weather took a harder toll on my body.  It was incredibly humid and as the run progressed, the sun slowly started to split the clouds like the Red Sea and greet the Earth, which made the task a lot harder.  To make matters a little worse, the classroom was a little hidden.  I was only able to find my classroom after making a couple wrong turns and looking at a map that was placed at a bus stop.  Nevertheless, I able to successfully find my classroom.  

I ran back to my dorm, quickly showered, then headed down for a quick breakfast.  I was a little tired and wasn't in the mood for meeting new people so I just sat by myself and starting reading basketball related news.  While I was wrapping up my meal, I met Adam, the RAC of one of the buildings at Cornell.  Initially, I thought that he was a high school student because there was a large discrepancy with how all the students I encountered looked.  He sat down, we both said hello, then I asked him what dorm he stayed in.  He told me he was an RAC, which slightly embarrassed me for asking, although I can be sure he appreciated me asking that because it must have made him feel younger.  While we both ate, we started talking about where we were from, what the Ivy League Connection was all about, and our sports teams.  He was a Blackhawks and me, being a Warriors and Giants fan, we both knew a thing or two about championships.  He was yet another incredible person that I have met in only my two-day stay at Cornell and he made my breakfast a lot better than what I expected. 

The Robert Purcell Community Center
At around 11:00, Stephen and I met up at the Robert Purcell Community Center to take a trip to Target, which the whole Cornell cohort planned last night.  When I arrived, Stephen was talking to a friend from the Hotel Management program, named Gaby.  I introduced myself to Gaby and jumped in the conversation.  Soon, Mr. Chan-Law arrived and he, too, joined in the conversation.  Together, we all talked about an array of subjects, such as where we all came from, what is the Ivy League (I've had to explain this to a lot of people so far and I feel as though it won't be ending anytime soon), languages, cultures, athletics, the Philippines, and China.  The funniest topic of discussion we had was people speaking languages with different accents.  For examples, Gaby's parents are Chinese, but they both lived in Panama, so they both speak Spanish, but with an accent.  My two years of Spanish put an incredibly fun image in my head.  All in all, the conversation was really fun, free-flowing, and a great way to start off my day, even after I initially wanted to shy away from getting myself out there.  

At around 11:20, Chan-Law left and Stephen and I walked Gaby back to her dorm because her scavenger hunt was around 11:45.  We retreated back to the dorms and got together to do a little bit of work.  I worked on my room description and took photos of my room while Stephen read his Hotel Management papers that were assigned to him the previous day.  I finished up my room description and retreated back to my room, where I read and slept until our floor's scavenger hunt.  I walked into my floor's lounge area at around 1:10, where I met up with my friends Ricky, Dylan,  and Andrew, my roommate, that I had met the day before.  We chatted it up a bit until Josh, the RA for our wall, described what we would be doing for the day.  We were a bit early so after a brief introduction, we headed out and started to tour around the campus. 

The Waterfall
Josh took us around the campus for about an hour, starting in the RPCC building and then progressively touching on the dorms, science buildings, and math buildings.  One of my favorite parts of the tour was that we passed a bridge and under it was an incredibly waterfall.  As per usual, Josh described the buildings that we saw in a good amount of detail.  He'd describe who went in the buildings, what they were used for, their age, and whether he liked the buildings or hated them (he had a distaste for the chemistry and mathematics buildings because he disliked chemistry and mathematics).  About 30 minutes into the tour, it started to slightly rain, nothing too major and controllable.  As the tour went along, the rain started coming down a little harder, ever so slightly.  Eventually this rain turned into a full on storm and we had to migrate to dryer pastures.   Due to this, the actual scavenger hunt had to be replaced with a  series of ice breakers.  

The Risley Building
We walked into the Risley building around 3:45, where we had an incredibly fun ice breaker.  Here was how it goes: Out of the maybe 50 students, we were all broken up into four groups.  Each group was given a hula-hoop and the objective was to get the hula-hoop through each person's body while everyone held hands.  This led to a bunch of head weaving and arm flailing, but it was fun experience filled with laughs.  After two rounds, all the students came together and tried to break the record of the day, two minutes and 50 seconds.  There were multiple hula-hoops going around, but the one that mattered was blue.  Miraculously, we didn't just beat the record, but we crushed the record with a blistering one minute and 55 seconds.  We were all up-beat because of this accomplishment and the room had an incredibly vibe to it.  Following the game, students that wanted to view the art of the dorm we welcome to walk around the various floors and view the murals on the wall.  I went and each and every one of the murals was absolutely amazing, some were straight-forward, while some were a little more abstract.  It didn't matter which one it was because all of them were beautiful and anyone could easily tell that a lot of time and effort was put into these artistic creations.
Balch Hall

Shortly after, we headed to North Balch Hall, where we had yet another ice breaker.  This ice breaker was a little different.  The game was called mafia, and this is how it worked:  All the students were divided into five groups and every round, one person in each group would stand up and either walk to another group or walk back to the group they were in.  The goal of each group was to accumulate the most members until dissimilating the other group and dominating the board.  The game was incredibly intense, involving a lot of screaming, shouting, and energy.  Eventually, the room was divided into two groups and as more people came into the room and entered the game, both groups yelled at the top of their lungs to persuade that person to join.  Our group ended up losing the match and although we took the L, everyone was in high spirits.  The rest of the day was pretty chill.  I read the Invisible Man for my school's summer assignment, ate dinner with Gaby, Stephen, Thao, and Helen, then went back to my dorm room to do more Invisible Man reading and blogging with Stephen and Gaby until I called it a day.  Tomorrow, I have my first class of Debate and Rhetoric.  I am a little nervous because I don't know what to expect, but I am incredibly excited for the opportunity and to expand my knowledge on debate.  

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