Second Day in New York!

Hello everyone!

One quick note, no one was able to blog yesterday because the hotel we were at did not have free wi-fi in our rooms. Sorry no one could read about our adventure on the first day.

It's our second day in New York and we arrived in Columbia today. When we arrived at the JFK airport yesterday, the weather wasn't super hot but it was still warmer than in the Bay Area. I was warned that it would be humid, so I'm not surprised by the weather. We were picked up by a taxi/shuttle company and the driving was crazy! The driver was weaving in and out between traffic and squeezing into very narrow nooks. The driver was also cutting into traffic in any opening the he saw. It was slightly terrifying because it felt like we would hit a car or something, but we didn't. Mrs. Lilhanand said that the driver from last year was doing the same thing, so I guess that's how taxi drivers in New York drive. The efficient ones at least.

Yesterday, our rooms weren't available when we arrived at six so we walked around the area near our hotel with Mrs. Lilhanand. One of the places we went to was Times Square and it was so crowded! I went to Japan last summer so I'm used to crowded streets but it was still very different from the Bay Area because although there might be people on the streets, the streets aren't PACKED with people. The atmosphere of New York is also very different, it's much more urban than El Cerrito.

Anyways, I'm now in my dorm room and I have a roommate! She's really nice and from London. Actually, a lot of the residential students are from out of the country, even in my suite, there are 6 out of 8 girls from overseas. Two are from Turkey, one is from Dubai, one is from Canada, one is from Brazil, and the last one is from London (my roommate). The other girl from the US though is also from California! She's from San Francisco in fact, very close to where we're from. But it's also refreshing to hear about things from her perspective because San Francisco is it's own community and things there are different from El Cerrito and West Contra Costa County. It's really interesting meeting all these people from around the world and learning what it's like where they live because I haven't met many students that have lived outside the country.

Well, our class starts tomorrow, so I'm very excited and look forward to meeting my professor. On a slightly different note, Columbia University's campus is beautiful. There are lawns everywhere and everything is so neat and clean and orderly. The campus gives off a very relaxing feeling.

One last thing, I haven't gotten my photos uploaded because we're still deciding how we want to upload them, but when we figure it out, everyone will be posting their photos to the blog and there'll be a link to everyone's photos in New York.

Julie