Our entire trip so far has been hot, sticky, and humid. I'm not really complaining though because regardless of the humidity, I absolutely love the heat! Bay area weather is so cold all the time that I never really have the time to enjoy the outdoors and feel the warm summer heat gently touch upon my skin. Even in the summer I'm usually out with a jacket or at least with a sweater! Whoever said California is a sunshine state must have been Columbus #2 thinking he was in one place when he was really somewhere else. At least, I know for a fact they weren't speaking of Northern California. After all, if you don't believe me, listen to Mark Twain: "The coldest winter I ever had was a summer in San Francisco."
However, I do like the heat but I hate the rain. Here, it rains quite often but it's usually a quick rain and the warm weather is still maintained throughout the shower. I don't really mind it here, except last night that is. Last night was 100 degrees here in New York while back in Richmond it was only 72. Regardless of the day's intensive heat, it still managed to rain at night! I shouldn't really care because I was already back home by the time the shower started, but the thing was that the rain was also accompanied by violent thunder and lightening. I'm not one to be scared by those because in fact, it fascinates me, but the problem was that it was affecting my Internet here at Hartley. The Internet would constantly disconnect and when it was connected, it would be really slow and unbearable. Nonetheless, for some reason blogger was not working for me either. I stayed up until around 2 in the morning frantically trying to post my blog, but constantly faced barriers. By this time I was exhausted, I worried, and I still did not want to disappoint my organization by not completing my blogging duty and satisfying what was expected of me (blogging every day). Luckily, I e-mailed Don with my friend's iPhone and he told me to call him and explain to him my situation. He understood completely and told me to get some rest and fix the the problem the next morning (today). So this morning I downloaded Google Chrome and I can now safely say that everything is resolved.
Well first things first, I will speak of today's adventure tonight but specifically write only the things that happened yesterday in this blog post. If you want to know what happened today, you must wait until later (sorry!). There will be no spoilers, although there's not much to spoil since I will only working on my research paper today for the most part.
Yesterday I woke up early in the morning to get a bite to eat with Adrianne before heading off to visit the world famous New York University. I really wanted to get Crepes at the Artology restaurant, but since Adrianne wanted pancakes from Deluxe, I accompanied her there so she would not be alone. There, i resorted to just eating banana pancakes and cranberry juice, which is fine but I decided I must try the crepes here at least one before I leave! Although that day was not yesterday, I knew I would try them someday soon.
After breakfast, Adrianne and I rushed back to the campus to meet with our cohort and enter the subway together. By the time we arrived to New York University, Mrs.L had already signed us up on the waiting list for the information seminar and it wasn't long until our names were called to attend. Interestingly, I happened to see one of my suite-mates there too! I walked in the door and I just heard someone scream, "Momo!" which is actually the nickname a few of my friends call me. I did not see her in the morning at the suite, so it was really interesting that we both planned to be at the same place even though we didn't know of each other's plans. Small world right?
Anyways, the information session was quite informative but I had already researched NYU so I already knew a lot of the information that was provided. I did, however, enjoy the presentation and the enthusiasm of the admission officer speaking at the session. Later, we divided accordingly among groups for an NYU tour. We went from classrooms, to libraries, to even the dining hall and the entire atmosphere seemed very welcoming to me. I enjoyed not only the school itself, but also the tour. However, we had to leave a bit early because we had tickets arranged for the 9/11 memorial. To be honest, before going I thought to myself "there's nothing there! What would the memorial even look like?" Little did I know how powerful of a message it had and what an impact it had on it's visitors. I'm so glad Mrs.L brought us to the memorial, it will forever stay as a touching memory for me personally. During the 9/11 attack, I was only 5 or 6 years old, and I did not really have a strong memory of what exactly happened. I always knew how tragic the event was for so many families, but it was never something I can sense independently since nothing of the sort ever happened to me. The world and our nation has forever been affected by the tragedy of the 9/11, and nothing will ever return to the way it use to be before. Until I visited the 9/11 scene, I was never as affected as I was after my visit. I could almost sense how those individuals felt and their families. I saw so many people having a family reunion there, perhaps one of their loved ones died in the incident. I saw a wallet of a man that died in one of the buildings whom called his wife right after the crash telling her he's evacuating and will call her back after he's out. The woman never got a call back, but found his husband's wallet with a two dollar bill; a sign of their love and his proposal for marriage.
Overall, it was a very powerful memorial, and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to visit. After the memorial, we went straight home and got ready for that night's dinner. We went to Oceana restaurant with two over Vassar alums and had a very nice talk with each of our guests. They were both really interesting individuals and I enjoyed speaking to both. they referred to themselves as "Vassar cheerleaders" due to their passion for the institution. As the were speaking about clubs, they told us about how Vassar has such a variety of different and uniquely diverse clubs. They named a few and I asked, "Does Vassar have a Persian club?" They said, "No, but you can start one..." I quickly replied, "Well I guess Vassar needs me now!"
My new favorite quote of the night: "I don't need nobody to give me nothing, open up the door and I'll get it myself." -James Brown. (One of the Vassar alums mentioned this quote and I quickly jotted it down, I just thought it portrayed my academic responsibility and independence.)
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