Ithacan Life

Tomorrow will make two weeks since we have arrived in Ithaca. It's hard to believe. I haven't even started school yet and Scott has not started work yet either (we think he's working at Starbucks, yay!). So you might be wondering what we have been doing with our time and why we haven't blogged more or emailed more...

We found the farmer's market on Cayuga Lake on Saturday mornings which is the most amazing thing ever. Yummy blueberries, TONS of people, really good peanut lime noodles and cranberry iced tea. Beautiful scenery. Everyone has told us about the horrendous winters here but forgot to mention the gorgeous summers! It's still very green, sunny, and pleasant outside with an average temp of about 75 degrees. It's only rained twice, and usually at night or in the early morning so the rest of the day is nice.

I started my official orientation for my program last Saturday. Apparently, the CRP department has a reputation at Cornell for being the most social group on campus, so we have to live up to that with a social outing everyday. After being a bio major with all of the science people (I do love them but they are often anti-social) this is refreshing! Everyone I've met so far in our class of 34 is great and nice, interesting, and personable. It's quite intimidating because almost everyone has lived outside of the U.S. for some time in their life and speaks at least one other language besides English. However, when they found out I was a city planner, they always are interested in that (I'm the only one who has actually worked as a planner!)

And then there is always organizing our apartment. I like to call it "tetris for real life" because it is almost impossible to fit everything we own in 690 square feet. But so far, we really like our apartment--and with this view, how can you not? Plus, we have some fun neighbors to make it interesting.

So adjusting hasn't been too difficult yet. At least for myself, it probably helps that I'm flying back to California on Friday so I don't feel trapped here yet. Scotty is doing great because Ithaca is a pretty fun place to be right now and it is not too different from SLO. Except I would say SLO is more upscale because they have Sephora and Banana on the main shopping street and we have hemp stores and homemade craft galleries. But word on the street is that they are putting an Urban Outfitters on the first story of our building which is pretty cool for me. Not cool for our bank account. We'll see.

For now I'm just pretty stoked to be in the academic environment again. I do miss California already (and last night we rented "A Day Without a Mexican" from the library which is pretty funny and interesting) which made us think of home even more. But we'll be back someday....