Hi ppl Jing Yin here, thanks for waiting. I've finally found time to set up this blog. Yup I'm at Cornell University now, situated in the city of Ithaca in New York State, USA. I've been here since 14 Aug, that's a couple of days already and much has been happening so this is gonna be a long first post haha. Prepare yourselves =)

14 Aug
My flight was at 6am so for those who know where I live can probably guess the unearthly hour I had to leave home sweet home. When I reached Changi Airport, there was already a queue at the check-in counter. Turns out that everyone had to go through a one-to-one interview with security employed by Northwest Airlines. Rather stringent checks but hey, I'm no criminal so of course I got through. I checked in about 50kg worth of luggage. And yes, yours truly is strong enough to lift 27kg all by herself (yay to me!). Met up with Cherlyn, my roommate in Cornell, and Jowyn, yr 3 and of course got a pleasant shock at Jowyn's new hair style. Real cool man...

And dear dear El came to send me off. El! You're the best!!

And so I said bye bye to dear mommy and daddy and left on the flight to my first transit stop at Tokyo's Narita Airport. It wasn't a very comfortable 7 hour flight mainly because of the neck rests of the seats. Suffice to say, they were tailored to the average-sized person and I'm obviously a midget so... But Jowyn is amazing. She probably slept 5 hours out of the 7 hours we were on air, waking up only for the meals. Anyways, before landing, the pilot informed us that our connecting flight to Detroit has been changed to 3pm (Tokyo time) instead of the 4pm one we were originally scheduled for. Well the Tokyo flight only landed at 2.30pm and by the time the doors opened, it was already 2.40pm so we had a nice jog to the boarding gate. One thing about Japanese air stewardesses is that they are damn chio. Really. So envious. Too bad there wasn't any time to take pictures of them. So we boarded the plane and waited. And waited. And then the pilot told us that the flight has been delayed 50min due to some mumbo-jumbo. Great. We ultimately took off at about 4pm.

The flight to Detroit seemed forever. We weren't all sitting together either. Cherlyn and I got the left column seats but Jowyn got a right aisle seat at the center column so that spoilt our plans for 3-ppl taitee. Sigh. We did managed a 45 min chat about halfway through the entire flight.

So we arrived at Detroit's McNamara terminal (2.30pm Detroit time) and went through VERY Stringent US customs check. I had to take off my shoes. Shan't bore you with the details. (And if you're wondering, I actually gain one day while travelling to USA cos they're time is behind ours). We finally cleared customs at 4.15pm and then it was more waiting to board our final connecting flight to Ithaca. While waiting, the personnel at the gate announced that they were looking for 3 volunteers to give up their seats and board a later flight. In return, Northwest Airlines was going to offer them free return trip tickets valid for several locations. We were ready to take up the offer but unfortunately another lady volunteered first so there weren't enough seats for all 3 of us. Oh well. Yar so we boarded this really tiny plane, think it had only 30 passenger seats, plus 1 pilot and 1 stewardess.

We waited some more, then the pilot announced that the plane wasn't going to take off. Apparently there was a malfunction in wing flaps. Luckily we haven't took off or else it would have been really dangerous. As an afterthought, I only found out about the Cypriot plane crash much later. Got depressed actually. My sincere condolences to those who lost their loved ones on that ill-fated flight. Well, they rescheduled us on a flight that was on the opposite end of the terminal. In fact, we highly suspect that it was the cargo gate cos it was at the end of the opposite end of that really long terminal. And yes, we had a nice long hike to the gate but never mind.

So we got onto our final flight, immediately dozed off (well I did), woke up when they served us a drink, dozed off again, and before you know it, Welcome to Ithaca.

We arrived at 9pm (Ithaca time) and the logistics coordinator for the international students orientation (PREPARE) , Andrew, was there to pick us up for early check-in to our rooms. His good friend Jeremy provided the car. For platoonmates: I suspected that he might be THE Jeremy but he was the one who confirmed it with me later when he asked me if I knew Anna. Guess it really is a small world. Yup so we checked in and whoo hoo, my room is fabulous. It isn't too big for a double room but we have a attached bathroom! Now try and beat that man! *Victory sign* And first thing we tried to do was to get internet connection hahaha.

Yup so that sort of sums up the first day. Well it was a very long day cos we did gain 12 hours when we headed to USA. So that makes it a 36 hour day. Cool. Oh well I would love to post more stuff but seems like this post is too long already cos my laptop is lagging. Or maybe it's just my laptop. I'll ponder about that.