The following post is going to be of epic proportions. I spent 6 days travelling between 3 states. Here goes.
Monday, 21 November
The grand plan to escape Cornell was full of drama. We had booked the tickets online in hope that we would be guranteed seats on the bus. We should have known better than to trust the Ithaca bus system. First of all, the information on the website was wrong. We thought the ticket counter would be closed at the time of our departure so Cherlyn and I took a trip down to the bus station on Monday to collect our bus tickets. Next, when we got there, we couldn't collect the tickets because all 4 of us had to be present. And they tormented us more. At around 5pm (on Monday still; our classes had ended for the day and we were in our room), the person called to say that we had to collect them by 6pm that same day and we told her she was nuts. She then said we had to be at the bus station by 11 am on Tuesday (the bus departs at 12.40pm) or else. Of course we couldn't be there at that time, our classes haven't even ended. In fact, Denise and Kristal had a prelim that only ended at 12.05pm on Tuesday.
Tuesday, 22 November
We met up with Denise and Kristal after their prelims and a senior (Colin) drove us down to the bus station. On the way there, it started snowing huge flakes of snow. Whee. We arrived at 12.15pm, only to be called "bad girls" by the old crone at the ticketing counter. Whatever. This first bus was to bring us to Philadelphia. We made 2 transfers at somewhere and somewhere else (haha sorry I can't remember...) and it was snowing heavily at those places. The snowflakes were huge compared to the ones that I've seen previously. Yesh, call me a mountain turtle. Anyways, after about 7 hours on the bus, we finally arrived at Philadelphia (whoopee!), only to get ripped off by the cab to the hotel. Sheesh. Ok, the whole story goes like this. We had the directions to our hotel. According to mapquest, it's only a 4 min drive which translates to about 10 mins walk maybe. We wanted to double-check anyway so we went to ask a couple of bus drivers and even the security guard there. Those liars. They all said that it was at least a 15 min drive there. One even called a cab for us. The cab ride cost $20 and guess what? It really was a 4 min ride there. They were all in it together man, ganging up to cheat us. Yar well now we know so... Our room had a spectacular view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. And I really do mean it. The first thing we saw when we went into the room was a breathtaking night view of the bridge. We all went "wow" at the same time haha.
*The funny things that happened in our room. Well it wasn't that funny. Just observations of one another's sleeping habits. I slept on the same bed with Cherlyn. She hogs the blanket. I woke up in the middle of the night to put on my jacket cos I couldn't tug the blanket out of her grip. Denise and Kristal were on the other bed. Apparently, Denise slowly edged her way to the centre of the bed over the course of the night i.e. Kristal was being edged out of the bed. Kristal and I decided that Denise and Cherlyn can share a bed the next night.
Wednesday, 23 November
We helped ourselves generously to the complimentary breakfast and packed a bagel each for lunch later. Part of money-saving measures hee. Our first stop was University of Pennsylvania a.k.a UPenn. Comfort Inn had a free shuttle service that can bring us to anywhere within 20 blocks of the Inn so we had the driver bring us to as close as he could to UPenn. That still wasn't close enough, so we went underground to take the subway there. Lucky for us, we actually met another Singaporean at the station. He's from NUS but I think he's doing his professional attachment at UPenn, so he's working and studying at the same time. Anyway, it's really a small world. He brought us to UPenn and gave us some rough directions as to where to go and how to get there etc. We spent about 2 hours in UPenn, before walking almost 20 blocks back to the city center. It was a very cold and windy day. We periodically took short breaks inside buildings to escape the cold. After looking around at the city center and taking pictures, we headed to Chinatown where I had roast duck noodles for lunch. Yummy! Egg tarts for dessert too. We just couldn't resist it when we walked past the bakery. Our last stop for the day was the historic area of Philadelphia, which was quite near our inn. We spent about half an hour lining up to see the Liberty Bell, which is really one of many bells that used to ring on top of the tower in the city. What set it apart from the rest were the words engraved upon it, something about liberty. Throughout America's history, various groups of people had used that phrase, and hence the bell, as a symbol of liberty and freedom. Yeah something like that. It also had a big crack down the middle. Amazingly, this big crack was actually drilled into the bell on purpose to stop the tiny hairline cracks that threaten to spoil the bell. Funny logic in my opinion but if it works, that's fine with me. We headed back to Comfort Inn to pick up our bags and had the shuttle send us to the bus station. We arrived at 5pm, about an hour before departure time (to Washington D.C.) and to our horror, there was already a long queue for the bus. At least 40 people were ahead of us in the line. Don't worry, we got on the bus. They knew it was the holiday season so had prepared additional buses already. It was 3.5 hours ride to arrive at Washington. I was surprised we arrived on time because I vaguely remembered a huge traffic jam on our way out of Philadelphia. (I was asleep for most of the ride though, hence "vaguely".) When we arrived at D.C., it was snowing. Bo pian, must take cab. We were determined not to get ripped off again so this time we bargained with the driver. $12 for a 5 min cab ride. Oh well.
*Kristal and I slept soundly. Cherlyn apparently whacked Denise's ear while they were both sleeping.
Thursday, 24 November
We had grand plans for the day. Unfortunately, we overslept. We woke up at 8.50am and rushed out to the lobby to grab the free breakfast that ended at 9am. Our first stop was to the White House. We couldn't go in, so just took pictures outside the fence. Yeah, that sounds kinda pathetic, I know. What to do... Yup so after that we walked about that area, the National Mall, and took a look at other memorials like the Lincoln memorial, Vietnam War Veteran Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument. Sorry I can't post any pictures, remember to bug me for them when I return home yar? Next, we went to the Holocaust Museum which, as the name suggests, is devoted entirely to the atrocities of the Holocaust. It is perhaps the single most depressing thing in Washington D.C.. We proceeded to a happier place, the Air and Space Museum. Ranked No. 1 on Yahoo Travel's Places to See List, we definitely didn't want to miss this. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time left cos we were due for a Thanksgiving dinner. Cherlyn, Denise and I decided to return the next day but poor Kristal had to make do with snapping photos only and skipping the exhibits totally. Just to clarify, Kristal is a fellow Singaporean sophomore, NOT exchange student i.e. normal student doing the full 4 year course in Cornell. Unlike us, she has a GPA to fulfill (we only need to pass haha) so she returned to Cornell earlier to study for a prelim. So yesh, the highlight (in my opinion) of the trip: the Thanksgiving dinner. You may be wondering where the fourth member of our group (a.k.a Jowyn) is. Well her roommate, Michelle, is from D.C. and a family friend of hers invited her family and us over for Thanksgiving dinner. Which is so so nice of them, afterall we are practically strangers and Thanksgiving is a traditionally family affair. Anyway, on that cold Thanksgiving night, we had a nice warm dinner. In fact, it was a huge feast. Not only was the food good, they were really so nice to us. Tummy felt good, heart felt good too, if u get what I mean. After dinner, we played games. It's actually really simple but damn fun. Won't tell you guys how its played here cos I wanna play it again when I return to Singapore hee. Ah I neglected to tell you about our benefactors, the Subata family. Mr. Subata is Japanese, his wife, Kate, is Caucasian and their children are gorgeous. There's Lan, Mie and their younger brother whose name I can't remember, I'm sincerely sorry. Besides their family of five, their future-in-laws were also present. Mie's fiance, his brothers and mother (I think). Mom's Japanese, Father's Caucasian (I think... again). Then there's Michelle's family, consisting of her Mom who's Japanese, and her brother's Daniel and George. Her father is a diplomat, currently in Iraq. Yup so all the 2nd generation people are Eurasian, specifically Japanese-Caucasian. Right so after the games, there was the dessert, then the (the Subata's) showed us a video of this organization their involved in. It's like a youth organization and they make use of the performing arts (singing, dancing, skits etc) to promote AIDS awareness among youths. Then the youngsters had a break dance competition, no kidding. Besides Lan and Mie, all the others break dance. I have videos as evidence. Mr Subata even showed a trick or two. They're really an amazing family. We, the Singaporean free-loaders, were also persuaded to put up a little impromptu item, so we sang a song or two, recited the pledge and sang the national anthem. The Subata's gave us a lift back to the inn but before that, they took us for a spin to see the night view of the memorials and monuments. This was my first Thanksgiving Dinner and I had such a lovely memory of it because of the Subata's. They really extended their warmth to us unconditionally and unhesitantly, I'm sincerely touched and grateful to them for their hospitality. To quote "Little Women", it's like knocking on a stranger's door on a cold winter day and opening it to find yourself at home again. What a wondrous and magical feeling.
*We all slept like logs.
Friday, 25 November
We sent Kristal to the bus station before heading for the Pentagon. It was a let-down actually, cos we couldn't enter the building. Neither could we see it's famous pentagonal shape. So we went to Pentagon City, which is a mall near Pentagon. Did some window shopping before going back to the Air and Space Museum. We spent most of the afternoon there looking at the exhibits before heading to Chinatown for dinner. On the whole, it was a pretty slack day, largely because we were all exhausted from the previous day and we didn't dare to return to our inn too late also because it's not very safe. Most of Washington D.C.s population is black. Most of the white people we see are either tourists or at the richer districts of D.C., which isn't very big. In fact, most of Philadelphia consists of Afro-Americans too, except for the UPenn area I think.
*I got a bed to myself hee. When I woke up in the morning, to my horror, Denise was sleeping on the floor. Decided she could have the bed to herself the next night.
Saturday, 26 November
We caught the 9am bus to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Atlantic City is basically a casino city. There are 3 major casinos: Trump's Taj Mahal, Bally's and Caesar's. Each has a different theme (Bally's is like wild wild west) and they all lie along the Boardwalk. Atlantic City is easy to navigate because all you need to do is to walk from one end of the Boardwalk to the other. The Boardwalk is really a wide walkway of wooden planks that run parallel to the coast. We arrived at 2pm at the northern end of the Boardwalk but alas, our inn was at the southern end. We took more than half-an-hour to carry ourselves and luggage all the way there. Exhausting. The innkeeper was very helpful though. By far the friendliest innkeeper I've met. After setting down our stuff, we headed out onto the Boardwalk, making stops at souvenier shops, peeking into the casinos here and there. We spent about 45 min in Ripley's Believe or Not Museum, which is filled with weird and bizarre artifacts. It was generally alot of walking around. When we got back, we had a nice chat with the innkeeper's son, who's actually a law grad. We were actually looking for information about this lighthouse that we wanted to visit the following day and we learnt not to rely on the mass media too much. It was at such an ulu-fied place that we abandoned our plans for going there.
Monday, 21 November
The grand plan to escape Cornell was full of drama. We had booked the tickets online in hope that we would be guranteed seats on the bus. We should have known better than to trust the Ithaca bus system. First of all, the information on the website was wrong. We thought the ticket counter would be closed at the time of our departure so Cherlyn and I took a trip down to the bus station on Monday to collect our bus tickets. Next, when we got there, we couldn't collect the tickets because all 4 of us had to be present. And they tormented us more. At around 5pm (on Monday still; our classes had ended for the day and we were in our room), the person called to say that we had to collect them by 6pm that same day and we told her she was nuts. She then said we had to be at the bus station by 11 am on Tuesday (the bus departs at 12.40pm) or else. Of course we couldn't be there at that time, our classes haven't even ended. In fact, Denise and Kristal had a prelim that only ended at 12.05pm on Tuesday.
Tuesday, 22 November
We met up with Denise and Kristal after their prelims and a senior (Colin) drove us down to the bus station. On the way there, it started snowing huge flakes of snow. Whee. We arrived at 12.15pm, only to be called "bad girls" by the old crone at the ticketing counter. Whatever. This first bus was to bring us to Philadelphia. We made 2 transfers at somewhere and somewhere else (haha sorry I can't remember...) and it was snowing heavily at those places. The snowflakes were huge compared to the ones that I've seen previously. Yesh, call me a mountain turtle. Anyways, after about 7 hours on the bus, we finally arrived at Philadelphia (whoopee!), only to get ripped off by the cab to the hotel. Sheesh. Ok, the whole story goes like this. We had the directions to our hotel. According to mapquest, it's only a 4 min drive which translates to about 10 mins walk maybe. We wanted to double-check anyway so we went to ask a couple of bus drivers and even the security guard there. Those liars. They all said that it was at least a 15 min drive there. One even called a cab for us. The cab ride cost $20 and guess what? It really was a 4 min ride there. They were all in it together man, ganging up to cheat us. Yar well now we know so... Our room had a spectacular view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. And I really do mean it. The first thing we saw when we went into the room was a breathtaking night view of the bridge. We all went "wow" at the same time haha.
*The funny things that happened in our room. Well it wasn't that funny. Just observations of one another's sleeping habits. I slept on the same bed with Cherlyn. She hogs the blanket. I woke up in the middle of the night to put on my jacket cos I couldn't tug the blanket out of her grip. Denise and Kristal were on the other bed. Apparently, Denise slowly edged her way to the centre of the bed over the course of the night i.e. Kristal was being edged out of the bed. Kristal and I decided that Denise and Cherlyn can share a bed the next night.
Wednesday, 23 November
We helped ourselves generously to the complimentary breakfast and packed a bagel each for lunch later. Part of money-saving measures hee. Our first stop was University of Pennsylvania a.k.a UPenn. Comfort Inn had a free shuttle service that can bring us to anywhere within 20 blocks of the Inn so we had the driver bring us to as close as he could to UPenn. That still wasn't close enough, so we went underground to take the subway there. Lucky for us, we actually met another Singaporean at the station. He's from NUS but I think he's doing his professional attachment at UPenn, so he's working and studying at the same time. Anyway, it's really a small world. He brought us to UPenn and gave us some rough directions as to where to go and how to get there etc. We spent about 2 hours in UPenn, before walking almost 20 blocks back to the city center. It was a very cold and windy day. We periodically took short breaks inside buildings to escape the cold. After looking around at the city center and taking pictures, we headed to Chinatown where I had roast duck noodles for lunch. Yummy! Egg tarts for dessert too. We just couldn't resist it when we walked past the bakery. Our last stop for the day was the historic area of Philadelphia, which was quite near our inn. We spent about half an hour lining up to see the Liberty Bell, which is really one of many bells that used to ring on top of the tower in the city. What set it apart from the rest were the words engraved upon it, something about liberty. Throughout America's history, various groups of people had used that phrase, and hence the bell, as a symbol of liberty and freedom. Yeah something like that. It also had a big crack down the middle. Amazingly, this big crack was actually drilled into the bell on purpose to stop the tiny hairline cracks that threaten to spoil the bell. Funny logic in my opinion but if it works, that's fine with me. We headed back to Comfort Inn to pick up our bags and had the shuttle send us to the bus station. We arrived at 5pm, about an hour before departure time (to Washington D.C.) and to our horror, there was already a long queue for the bus. At least 40 people were ahead of us in the line. Don't worry, we got on the bus. They knew it was the holiday season so had prepared additional buses already. It was 3.5 hours ride to arrive at Washington. I was surprised we arrived on time because I vaguely remembered a huge traffic jam on our way out of Philadelphia. (I was asleep for most of the ride though, hence "vaguely".) When we arrived at D.C., it was snowing. Bo pian, must take cab. We were determined not to get ripped off again so this time we bargained with the driver. $12 for a 5 min cab ride. Oh well.
*Kristal and I slept soundly. Cherlyn apparently whacked Denise's ear while they were both sleeping.
Thursday, 24 November
We had grand plans for the day. Unfortunately, we overslept. We woke up at 8.50am and rushed out to the lobby to grab the free breakfast that ended at 9am. Our first stop was to the White House. We couldn't go in, so just took pictures outside the fence. Yeah, that sounds kinda pathetic, I know. What to do... Yup so after that we walked about that area, the National Mall, and took a look at other memorials like the Lincoln memorial, Vietnam War Veteran Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument. Sorry I can't post any pictures, remember to bug me for them when I return home yar? Next, we went to the Holocaust Museum which, as the name suggests, is devoted entirely to the atrocities of the Holocaust. It is perhaps the single most depressing thing in Washington D.C.. We proceeded to a happier place, the Air and Space Museum. Ranked No. 1 on Yahoo Travel's Places to See List, we definitely didn't want to miss this. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time left cos we were due for a Thanksgiving dinner. Cherlyn, Denise and I decided to return the next day but poor Kristal had to make do with snapping photos only and skipping the exhibits totally. Just to clarify, Kristal is a fellow Singaporean sophomore, NOT exchange student i.e. normal student doing the full 4 year course in Cornell. Unlike us, she has a GPA to fulfill (we only need to pass haha) so she returned to Cornell earlier to study for a prelim. So yesh, the highlight (in my opinion) of the trip: the Thanksgiving dinner. You may be wondering where the fourth member of our group (a.k.a Jowyn) is. Well her roommate, Michelle, is from D.C. and a family friend of hers invited her family and us over for Thanksgiving dinner. Which is so so nice of them, afterall we are practically strangers and Thanksgiving is a traditionally family affair. Anyway, on that cold Thanksgiving night, we had a nice warm dinner. In fact, it was a huge feast. Not only was the food good, they were really so nice to us. Tummy felt good, heart felt good too, if u get what I mean. After dinner, we played games. It's actually really simple but damn fun. Won't tell you guys how its played here cos I wanna play it again when I return to Singapore hee. Ah I neglected to tell you about our benefactors, the Subata family. Mr. Subata is Japanese, his wife, Kate, is Caucasian and their children are gorgeous. There's Lan, Mie and their younger brother whose name I can't remember, I'm sincerely sorry. Besides their family of five, their future-in-laws were also present. Mie's fiance, his brothers and mother (I think). Mom's Japanese, Father's Caucasian (I think... again). Then there's Michelle's family, consisting of her Mom who's Japanese, and her brother's Daniel and George. Her father is a diplomat, currently in Iraq. Yup so all the 2nd generation people are Eurasian, specifically Japanese-Caucasian. Right so after the games, there was the dessert, then the (the Subata's) showed us a video of this organization their involved in. It's like a youth organization and they make use of the performing arts (singing, dancing, skits etc) to promote AIDS awareness among youths. Then the youngsters had a break dance competition, no kidding. Besides Lan and Mie, all the others break dance. I have videos as evidence. Mr Subata even showed a trick or two. They're really an amazing family. We, the Singaporean free-loaders, were also persuaded to put up a little impromptu item, so we sang a song or two, recited the pledge and sang the national anthem. The Subata's gave us a lift back to the inn but before that, they took us for a spin to see the night view of the memorials and monuments. This was my first Thanksgiving Dinner and I had such a lovely memory of it because of the Subata's. They really extended their warmth to us unconditionally and unhesitantly, I'm sincerely touched and grateful to them for their hospitality. To quote "Little Women", it's like knocking on a stranger's door on a cold winter day and opening it to find yourself at home again. What a wondrous and magical feeling.
*We all slept like logs.
Friday, 25 November
We sent Kristal to the bus station before heading for the Pentagon. It was a let-down actually, cos we couldn't enter the building. Neither could we see it's famous pentagonal shape. So we went to Pentagon City, which is a mall near Pentagon. Did some window shopping before going back to the Air and Space Museum. We spent most of the afternoon there looking at the exhibits before heading to Chinatown for dinner. On the whole, it was a pretty slack day, largely because we were all exhausted from the previous day and we didn't dare to return to our inn too late also because it's not very safe. Most of Washington D.C.s population is black. Most of the white people we see are either tourists or at the richer districts of D.C., which isn't very big. In fact, most of Philadelphia consists of Afro-Americans too, except for the UPenn area I think.
*I got a bed to myself hee. When I woke up in the morning, to my horror, Denise was sleeping on the floor. Decided she could have the bed to herself the next night.
Saturday, 26 November
We caught the 9am bus to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Atlantic City is basically a casino city. There are 3 major casinos: Trump's Taj Mahal, Bally's and Caesar's. Each has a different theme (Bally's is like wild wild west) and they all lie along the Boardwalk. Atlantic City is easy to navigate because all you need to do is to walk from one end of the Boardwalk to the other. The Boardwalk is really a wide walkway of wooden planks that run parallel to the coast. We arrived at 2pm at the northern end of the Boardwalk but alas, our inn was at the southern end. We took more than half-an-hour to carry ourselves and luggage all the way there. Exhausting. The innkeeper was very helpful though. By far the friendliest innkeeper I've met. After setting down our stuff, we headed out onto the Boardwalk, making stops at souvenier shops, peeking into the casinos here and there. We spent about 45 min in Ripley's Believe or Not Museum, which is filled with weird and bizarre artifacts. It was generally alot of walking around. When we got back, we had a nice chat with the innkeeper's son, who's actually a law grad. We were actually looking for information about this lighthouse that we wanted to visit the following day and we learnt not to rely on the mass media too much. It was at such an ulu-fied place that we abandoned our plans for going there.
*Denise got the bed to herself this time. She really hadn't had much sleep the past nights. She doesn't (or more like can't) sleep on the bus rides too so she's really running low on sleep.
Sunday, 27 November
Last day of Thanksgiving Break. None of us could believe how time just flew by but it did. We took a morning stroll along the beach and took some crazy pictures haha. We roamed around the inner part of the city until it was time to head back and pick up our bags and catch our bus. The bus at 12.30pm took us to New York City and from there, we caught the bus back to Ithaca. And that's about it. My Thanksgiving Break.
It's winter time now. Snow has accumulated on the ground, my heater is not warm and I miss home dearly. After my exams, I'll be flying to Florida (it's nice and warm there, thank goodness), then back to New York City to spend Christmas and finally Singapore. Finally.
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