Cortaca 09 – True Bomination

Yesterday was the Cortaca Jug, the annual football match between school rivals, the Cortland Dragons and the Ithaca Bombers. I was very excited for this football match because it’s the biggest match of the year and is kind of a big deal amongst students here. The Bombers had won the match two years in a row so I was hoping this year would be the third time so I could celebrate the victory of Ithaca. Luckily this came true! I still really don’t get the rules of American football, but it was exciting cheering for the Bombers every time we got a touchdown and joining in with the football chants like “let’s go bombers” (not very original) and “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” (when the Cortland supporters started leaving before the match had even finished!)

One of the funniest parts of the game was reading the different t-shirts everyone wore, most of them too crude to put on here, but including things like “Cortland has Swine Flu!”

Overall the Bombers won 23-20 which was followed by a large night of celebrations around campus. All night long I could here cheering and “Bombers” chanting and everyone was united in the spirit of the game.

Such a spirited and fun football game was one of the experiences that I really wanted to have while I was over here so I’m really glad I went.

GO BOMBERS!

Katie

 

ithaca is GORGES x 2!

The next week after Jay and I had visited Buttermilk Falls the International Office sent an email around asking if we wanted to visit Taughannock Falls, which is another of Ithaca’s gorges and is about a half hour drive away. Jay and I couldn’t decline the offer after experiencing how beautiful the other falls were so we went with 3 other international students and a professor at Ithaca who was kind enough to drive us. According to wikipedia “The main cataract the falls is a 215 ft drop, making it 33 ft taller than Niagara Falls and one of the largest single drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains.^[1] The water then flows through a long gorge with cliffs up to 400 ft high, characteristic of the area’s gorges that give rise to the common “Ithaca is Gorges” bumper stickers and t-shirts.” It was a beautiful day and the falls were even more beautiful, but again I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Thanks again to Jay for letting me steal his photo’s as I still haven’t replaced my broken camera!

As you can see it was absolutely breathtaking and once again I was astounded by the beauty of Ithaca.

Hooroo!

Katie

ithaca is GORGES!

A couple of weeks ago my Australian friend Jay and I realized that despite living in Ithaca, one of the most gorge-tastic places ever, for a few months now, we still hadn’t visited one. We decided to change that by walking to Buttermilk Falls, about a half-hour walk from campus. It was very, very beautiful, and we spent at least a few hours walking around the lake and taking in the scenery. But I don’t think words can truly describe how picturesque it was so here are some photo’s

As you can see, Buttermilk Falls were gorgeous, and there is another side of the State Park that we haven’t explored yet where there are more falls so hopefully we’ll go and check that out soon.

Hooroo!

Katie

 

How Not To Listen To The Backstreet Boys

Saturday night was a very, very strange night. Before it even began I was hanging out with my friends Shakini and Francisco in Francisco’s room in terrace nine. We were feeling silly and decided to listen to a Backstreet Boys song and sing along. Apparently this was a very bad decision on our behalf because all of a sudden the fire sprinkler in Francisco’s room erupted, spraying us all with black water that had been sitting in the sprinkler pipes for a few years or so. It was like a scene from a movie, all of a sudden the lights went out and we were being soaked with water, it took me a few seconds to realize what on earth was happening but we quickly fled the room as the fire alarm went off, with Francisco grabbing his laptop and guitar on the way out. As we got downstairs we realized that Francisco’s room was the only room being soaked with 20 gallons of water per minute, which may not sound like a lot, but sprinkler wasn’t turned off for nearly an hour, resulting in the water flooding most of the first floor and creating a waterfall onto the road under T9. We were all kind of in shock, especially Francisco, as we watched the water pour from the terrace. Once the firefighters had turned the sprinkler off and let us go back into the building to look at the damages we saw the sprinkler had pretty much totaled Francisco’s room and everything was soaking with old stagnant water. We removed all of his clothes to wash immediately, but we couldn’t really do much else because the cleaners had to vacuum up the water and the firefighters had to photograph the damages. We still don’t know why the sprinkler went off but one of the Public Safety officers told us that he had been telling the College to maintain the sprinklers for quite a while now and they hadn’t done anything about it. Hopefully, Francisco will have all of his destroyed electronics replaced and it was very lucky that there wasn’t an actual fire in the building, although it is still extremely sad that Francisco has to deal with this right now.  As were doing Francisco’s laundry we decided that we wouldn’t be listening to the Backstreet Boys for a very, very long time.

Next blog I’ll tell you all about my gorge walks in Ithaca.

Hooroo!

 

Who Says Dressing Up Is For Kids?

So today is the first day of November which means I have less than two months at Ithaca College which is a bit sad. But let’s not think about that just yet, this blog I wanted to talk about my great Halloween weekend. On Friday night, I didn’t know that I was going to dress up, but apparently the whole weekend is Halloween themed, not just the day of Halloween, so I spontaneously dressed as the Statue of Liberty (luckily I had a souvenir headband and my roommate had a green-ish coloured sheet I wore as a toga).

Some friends and I went to a few parties where I met a football player, a pirate, a french maid, an apple tree, the Scooby gang, JD and Turk from Scrubs and countless other people. It was a really fun night. The next day my roommate and I went as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum from Alice in Wonderland. We didn’t really have the exact costumes that they wore but they looked quite similar and most of the people we spoke to agreed.

That night we went to a frat house at Cornell but unfortunately the partied had finished so we only stayed there for ten minutes. But just looking around the house was pretty cool, I’ve never been to one before but I’ve seen them in movies and that’s exactly what the house looked like. Seeing the frat almost made me wish Australian universities had Greek life because they’re so community orientated it’s nice. We ended up back at Ithaca College and had fun wandering around meeting people including Dumb and Dumber.

Overall the Halloween weekend was really entertaining and I had a lot of fun dressing up and meeting people. It’s definitely an American tradition that I’ll be celebrating when I go back to Australia. Next blog I’ll tell you all about my first “Ithaca is Gorges” experience.

Hooroo!

Katie

How To Carve A Pumpkin – Amateur Hour

Tomorrow is Halloween so it’s been a bit exciting doing some celebrating, American style. We don’t celebrate Halloween in Australia, well I think some people might go trick or treating in some neighborhoods but generally it’s not a tradition that we follow. In fact the one time that I tried to go trick or treating with my friends in Australia we got told to, “Go back to America.” Anyway one of the coolest things about Halloween celebrations over here is pumpkin carving. On Tuesday night Terraces and Towers late night dining halls had pumpkin carving so my friends and I decided to go. I have to say that pumpkin carving is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, but we did have the tiniest tools ever so I guess the serious pumpkin carvers out there have some proper tools. So here is how you carve a pumpkin:

1. First you have to cut the top off the pumpkin, which is probably the hardest job; I had to hack at my pumpkin for about half an hour before I could get it off.
2. Then you have to scrape out the insides of the pumpkin, which is definitely the messiest job. There were pumpkin seeds and pieces of pumpkin going everywhere; I would hate to have to clean up the dining halls after everyone was done.
3. Next you outline whatever you want to carve onto your pumpkin. I decided to stick with a basic Halloween jack-o-lantern face, or what I thought was a basic face.
4. Then you have to precisely carve the outline with a mini saw and some other useless tools. I saw some people doing really elaborate outlines and I hate to think how long it must have taken them to do it.
5. Then you’re done, put a candle inside the pumpkin and watch it glow!

Here is my pumpkin, which turned out more cute than scary, so we decided it was a baby pumpkin and when it grows up it will be horrifying!

Note: it took me two hours to carve Baby Jack!

Happy Halloween!

Katie

Oh Canada!

So what can I say about Montreal?

Well firstly it’s the coolest city in Canada. Okay, okay, it’s the only city I’ve been to in Canada, but I have no doubt that I am correct when I say no other city is as awesome as Montreal. Why?

Well Montreal is in Quebec, the French half of Canada, so straight off it seems to have so much culture and liveliness and everything is in French so it made me feel like I was really, really far away from Ithaca which was a nice change, especially because we were really only a 7 hour drive away.

just before we crossed the border to Canada!

I went to Montreal with five of my international friends so we had a nice mix of Australian, Chilean, Brazilian and Israeli which really seemed to confuse the border patrol officers, especially when Nick the Brazilian also pulled out his French passport! But nevertheless we got into Canada in our awesome 4WD Dodge Durango hire car easily enough and trekked it up to Montreal. We were told it would take us about 6 hours to drive there but for some reason it took us 9, but it was definitely worth it and was a fun drive.

outside our hotel on St. Denis street

We were staying at a hotel on an amazing street called St. Denis which was lined with restaurants, cafes and bars to keep us entertained. And because the drinking age is eighteen in Montreal we were all able to go out together without being restricted to under-21 places, which was a nice change to the intense ID checking of the US.

During the days we spent our time shopping, hiring bikes and riding around the city, and eating at delicious cafes. During the nights we went to hookah bars, normal bars, irish bars, clubs and wandered around in the freezing cold.

riding around Montreal

The biggest shock for me was that everything is in French! I even attempted to have conversations with people who only spoke French and knew zero English which I didn’t expect because we were still in Canada after all. But it was really fun to attempt to learn French, although I still only know Bonjour, which I thought was amusing to say to everyone I passed!

eating some yummy italian food

Overall the time we spent in Montreal was deliriously fun, and just an amazing way to spend the long weekend aka. Fall break. I could not think of a better place to go, better people to go with, or better things to do!

Bonjour,

Katie!

Marge the SNOW is ‘ere!

So I’ve noticed it’s been getting pretty cold around here, but I didn’t think it was that cold. That was of course until it SNOWED! Unfortunately I wasn’t here to experience my first snow and Ithaca’s first snow of the season because it was fall break and a group of friends and I decided to road trip to Montreal, but that’s another story. As my friends and I were driving to Canada my roommate sent me a message saying it was snowing, which made me sad and happy at the same time, sad because I’d missed my first opportunity of seeing snow, and happy because I pictured driving back to Ithaca with the whole town blanketed in snow. Apparently this was completely out of the question as we came back on Sunday night to a coldish day and no snow to be seen! It was really quite disappointing but I wouldn’t trade my Montreal trip for all the snow in the world, next blog up I’ll tell you all about Montreal and my activities there but for now take a look at my friend Austin making a snowman at IC, photo credits to my roommate Theresa.

Eagerly awaiting the next snow,

katie the hooroo’er!

An Unhappy Little Vegemite

I mentioned in an earlier blog how much I enjoy living on campus, one exception however, is the food! The dining halls at IC are great and they offer a lot of variety, but somehow the food has all started to taste the same and I’ve gotten a bit sick of eating on campus all the time. So when my friend suggested we go to an Indian restaurant last week I got really excited to eat something different.

Flashback to July 2009

So the month before I came to Ithaca College I traveled around the U.S going to LA, San Francisco, New York City and Vermont. I’ll be posting some flashback blogs occasionally to share the adventures and experiences I had in that time. Here is the first installment from the land of celebrities, Hollywood, LA.