15 Aug

Me and roomie actually woke up at 5am or so because of a loud noise outside our window. We drew apart the curtains to find ourselves treated to a close-up view of this enormous truck. Garbage truck. Oh yeah, wat a way to start the day.

We met Jowyn and Denise at 8am at their hall. Denise is a fellow exchange student from NUS whereas the 3 of us are from NTU (if that wasn't obvious enough). Oh and I forgot to mention my hall is Balch. It's the only all-female residence hall and also the second largest on campus. It's also the closest North Campus Hall to the academic Central Campus. In other words, it's the first hall you see when you walk back from sch hee. We went to the Townhouse Community Centre to check-in with the International Students Office (ISSO) , got free red t-shirt, then proceeded several other places to settle some stuff. Below are some pics I took while exploring:

This is the view from the bridge linking the North and Central Campus.

This is somewhere near Collegetown, which is down south, out of campus, but within walkable distance.

This is my roomie Cherlyn. Yup just us taking candid shots with the Campus Store merchandise.

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Let's now take a short break to speculate about my amazing ability to bump into things. Last night (14 Aug), I had to jump over the bed for I dunno what reason and I kicked the bed post. One word sums up my feelings: Ouch. Anyway, I ended up with a 5cm bruise at the ball of my left foot.

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Yup so we had hot dog for lunch, then went back to sleep cos we were so obviously lacking in it. But before that, Cherlyn and I took a detour to Townhouse again to collect Cherlyn's keys from Andrew. (There was a mix-up; Cherlyn had keys to a room in this really far away hall. Good thing we are roomies hee.) On the way there, we were waylaid by this big group of Singaporean guys, all either juniors or seniors. So that commenced a rather extended hand-shaking session and continuous repetition of our names. By the way, for a 4 yr course, 1st-yr=freshman, 2nd-yr=sophomore, 3rd-yr=junior, 4th-yr=senior. For 3 yr courses, there simply aren't any sophomores. Anyway, we settled everything quickly, then took yet another detour to this ATM at Helen Newman Gym, where yours truly walked into this gigantic cobweb hanging above the ATM. There you have it, another splendid example of my amazing ability.

We went back to hall, slept, then woke up at 3pm again when Jowyn came knocking on my door. Denise suggested that we set up our bank accounts earlier instead of waiting for the planned one that would take place the next day (16 Aug) cos probably have alot of people, like the fellow PREPARE participants. Yup so dragged body out of bed and then back again. Almost didn't make it for dinner at Appel Commons cos both of us just couldn't wake up haha. But we got to know fellow Singaporeans at the dinner so it wasn't too bad. Most of them are scholars, so self-esteem also went down several notches after I realised they were talking about stuff beyond my intellectual level. Nah I'm just kidding =)

Then after dinner, there was supposed to be a ice-breaker session for all PREPARE participants but the 4 of us just couldn't stay awake any longer so we skipped that.

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16 Aug

Breakfast was at an unearthly location. Luckily we went passed that area yesterday (15 Aug) when we had to go settle stuff. We set off rather late but still arrived earlier then many of the other PREPARE participants cos they didn't know about the short cuts hee. The quiche was delicious but too oily. But there was plenty of free bottled water and juice so we decided to exhibit our exemplary Singapore behaviour i.e. kiasu syndrome, and take one of each haha.

Then it was time to meet our Older Sibling. Mine was Ivan from Malaysia, a engineering senior. Really hyper guy, always jumping around when it was time to play games. Fellow freshie siblings were Kim Song Hee from South Korea and Yao Qian (or was it Qian Yao?) from China. We combined with another sibling group to play ice-breakers. The first one we played was like true or false. Basically, each person will say 3 statements about himself or herself but one statement is false. So the rest must try and guess which was false. Those who guessed wrongly will get a chip (like casino chips. dun ask me how Ivan got his hand on those). I of course ended up with the second most number of chips la, given my long-running history of just being lousy at things in general, but I'm proud to say that I managed to get everyone to take a chip during my turn. Hee. To the buccaneers: Looks like all that Mafia-playing paid off *smirk*.

We proceeded to take short tour down south of campus. Went to Cascadilla Creek which has a nice little water fall.

Then we took a grp pic at the south entrance into Cornell:

Yup I'm sitting next to Song Hee, Ivan is the guy in black on the far right and Yao Qian (or Qian Yao) is the tall guy at the far left. He's only 17 but freaking tall... damn. Then we went to explore Uris Library, which is where the engineers normally go. Here's one of their prettier rooms:

We had Subway for lunch and later went down to Pyramid Mall to shop for some necessities. The major supermarket there is Target, but there are others at other locations like Walmart, Kmart, Wegman's and Tops. That took the whole afternoon. When we returned to sch, we had a pizza party at the Big Red Barn.

From left: Jowyn, Denise and Cherlyn. Then there was sports night at the Helen Newman Gym. We were very tempted to ponteng again, but decided not to this time. The gym is this deceptive looking building that looks small and shabby on the outside but in reality houses an indoor pool, a bowling alley, basketball courts and other facilities inside. But us being us, we ended up not using any of the things inside. We played frisbee instead out in the dark open with a couple of other guys. Andrew's frisbee is phenomenal. It lights up in the dark. I don't just mean glow-in-the-dark. It really lights up. There's a small battery pack in the middle of the frisbee that lights up tiny lights on the frisbee, so at night, it's like this red spinning disc of light coming towards you. Real cool. All of us want to get a frisbee now. We went to bed tired but glad.