Friday, July 23, 2010

It's the Big Apple, I wish for everything

First of all I apologize for missing a day of blogging due to the lack of Wi-Fi in the previous hotel in New York. And to make up for it, this blog will be long.

Morning: Morning was usual, woke up at around 7:30, packed and got ready. The group made its way to the station in Philadelphia, ate a quick breakfast and hopped on the train to New York. We got to New York at about 11:30. Because it was Marisol’s and Brandon’s first time in New York City they were completely thrilled to finally be in The Big Apple. New York City is the most populous city in the United States and can often be confusing to navigate through. Fortunately, Mrs. Kronenberg is a native New Yorker, which made walking through NYC much easier. After landing in NYC we quickly checked into our hotel, the Wolcott, and started to head of to Columbia.

Columbia: Although Columbia is in the heart of New York City, the campus has a feel that makes a person think as if he/she is in a completely different city, which gives a good feeling in Columbia. We attended the information session in 1 PM and the campus tour right after. What makes Columbia slightly unique compared to the other private schools is that it has a set of required courses that every student in every major must take. For some people this is a major positive for Columbia. I, however, did not find the courses particularly appealing to me (but I’m sure they are all good classes) and like a very large degree of freedom of class chooses. For our campus tour we had an exceptional tour guide by the name of Dane who presented Columbia well. After the tour we had the great opportunity to meet with the admissions officer for Northern California, David Buckwald who is a great guy and definitely a contributing factor to the appeal of Columbia. Overall I felt like Columbia is a great school, especially for people that like the urban location in NYC.

New York City: After visiting Columbia we headed back to the hotel and subsequently to a semi-formal dinner in the city. Because this was Brandon’s and Marisol’s first time in NYC we all decided to go out to the city after dinner. The first destination was Times Square where the NYC nickname the city that never sleeps became obvious to us. Although it was close to midnight the city center was still thriving with people. 

After Times Square was a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. We were very fortunate in the weather with very clear visibility. We arrived back at the hotel at about 1 AM.

New Haven: Mornings are usually the same. Waking up in the morning and heading off to a train station to move on to the next city which in this case was New Haven. We arrived in New Haven, checked into the hotel and headed off to Yale.

Yale: We arrived at Yale just in time for the information session. Yale, unlike Columbia has a more suburban setting to it which is slightly more appealing to me. The information session gave out most of the general information about the college. After the session we had a badly needed lunch. This day we had the most free time so I had a much needed nap. This night the group had the chance to again have a dinner with Dr. Luong. During the dinner we discussed many current political dilemmas including the prisoner exchange. Since it is late I will end my blog here.

2 comments:

  1. Henry,

    You all have to know that some of us here at home are going over your blogs with a fine tooth comb. We keep track of all of the typos, the frequency with which you blog, the length of your blogs, how many photos you insert—we keep tabs on everything.

    So when you write about missing a blog and blame it on the lack of free Wi-Fi—just how much weight do you think that carries with us? Do you want us to believe that New York City is the only city in America that doesn’t have a Starbucks or a Fed-Ex on every street corner?

    At least you’re blogging now.

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  2. ^^ Who is this goofball? Somebody needs a life.

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