Upper West Side

Today we moved out of the hotel and into our dorms at Columbia. Our morning wasn't too interesting, so I'll focus on the important stuff. We arrived at the gates of the school, at 116th and Amsterdam, in the afternoon. Registering, finding our rooms and unpacking were all finished within an hour. I met my suite-mates: Jamey, an Italian, Sebastion, a Puerto Rican, and Mike, a native of New Jersey.

After setting up, Ms. L. took us to Pink Berry for ice cream. I've had frozen yogurt before, but I had never had yogurt flavored ice cream. It was... interesting.

We then went to get school supplies and our Columbia apparel. I chose a light blue hoodie. When we got back to the campus, Ms. L. said her farewells. From now on, she will only see us on most days in a brief meeting. From now on our chaperones are our Resident Advisers (RAs)

My RA is named Danny Chow. He's in charge of my suite as well as one other. He seems pretty approachable. At 5:30, he took us to John Jay dining hall. The Columbia High School Program was having a barbecue for all of its students. I didn't eat too much; wasn't hungry.

When we were all full, Danny took us to a field of grass in front of the Columbia Law School. You could see the endless stacks of paperwork through all the windows. He explained some of the rules of the program as well as some safety guidelines. We also played an icebreaker, but it didn't go very well. After that we just chilled for a few hours. I wandered around the school for a while with some guys from my hall. When I got back to the dorm, I called my sister on Skype. She's doing a study abroad program this summer in Italy, but right now she is in Norway, visiting relatives. I called at about 7:00 or 8:00 PM. It was 2:00 AM there. We kept the conversation brief, and agreed upon a time to call each other again, tomorrow.

Around 9:00, people started gathering in the quad. By 10:00, there were hundreds of students out there getting to know each other. I've come to the realization that there are more international students here than there are American citizens, which is awesome. I met a ton off people, but none were taking Con. Law. Sadly, our conversations were all so brief that I'll forget most of there names by tomorrow.

We had to be back in our halls by 11:00 PM (weekday curfew). All the RAs on my floor brought tubs of ice cream into the halls for us to share.

I'm sorry, but I spent much of today trying to familiarize myself with my surroundings, so I didn't take to many photos. I'll definitely post a ton over my time in this class. We start lessons tomorrow.