Exploring the Campus....Again

Musical Stairs (stairs leading to this)

There was a mandatory scavenger hunt I had to attend at 1:00 PM. My floor did it together as a group, but I think a lot of people went around by themselves for the scavenger hunt. You had to figure out a riddle and then go to the place the riddle was talking about. After arriving at the place you had to take a picture and at every destination you needed a different pose. We went to the two main libraries, Cornell store, the bell tower, Gannett Health Services, RPCC (our dining hall), Balch Hall (dorm), and the musical stairs. The only place I hadn't been before was the musical stairs and it's become one of my favorite places on campus. The stairs are called the musical stairs because when you kick a rock across the ground it makes different noises on the different colored tiles. It was really cool and I can totally see myself just running up the stairs to kick the rocks in between classes. The scavenger hunt for my dorm was scheduled at 12:00 PM (right in the middle of lunch) and we took a while walking so my friend, Lily, and I had to walk really fast back to RPCC, but we made it on time. 

The other day Mike told us that living in college dorms with communal bathrooms gets you over public bathrooms really fast. I was skeptical at first and completely didn't believe him, but he was absolutely right. The bathrooms here in Ithaca don't have the paper seat covers that are in most public bathrooms in California and so for the past week I have been just placing toilet paper on top of the toilet seat as a replacement. I got really tired of it today and finally just sat on the toilet. I was super grossed out on some level, but I also just didn't care. 

At 5:30 PM I went to my dorm's lobby for club sign-ups. There were a bunch of tables with posters explaining what the club does and sign-up papers. It was extremely packed when I went and I had to work my way through lots of people. It was terrible, but I got to sign up for the hiking, leadership, board game, and movie clubs. Right after I saw Joceline and I joined her groups of friends. They were a really fun and interactive bunch with interesting stories to tell. We just sat outside and talked for a while underneath a tree. The conversation went from crazy dorm mates to Donald Trump. After an hour of just talking we finally decided to get dinner. 

Today's lunch and dinner were much better than yesterday’s. After thinking about it some more the food at Cornell is actually really good. They do seem to have a little bit of every type of food. There's always fruit and a salad bar too if you are feeling healthy that day. I ate pasta with meat, a garlic knot, some noodle thing with beef, sushi, and ice-cream. After finishing our dinner, we just sat there and talked for another hour. It was super cool of the workers to not kick us out because it was already after the closing hours. 

Joceline, Paola (a new friend), and I went back to my floor hoping to make it back in time for the hot chocolate, but unfortunately we were too late. After feeling sad for a little bit we saw these girls playing Egyptian war, a card game where you basically slap down on certain cards and try to accumulate all the cards. We joined the game by slapping down on certain cards and after about half an hour I was able to accumulate all the cards and win. It was super intense and fun because we were all going crazy every time someone slapped back in. 

Joceline and Paola had to go back to their dorm at 9:00 PM and the rest of us went up to the third floor to eat cupcakes. There were chocolate cupcakes and lots of people decorating with different colored icing when we got there. Some people made some super cool designs. I kept mine pretty simple because I'm not a huge fan of icing, but it was really fun meeting all the people and talking to them while icing my cupcake. It's been a really long day and I'm super excited for classes tomorrow. 

My Cupcake Design