I’m not sure, but somehow it seemed that the organizers of the month-long workshop at Cornell thought there should be some unique activities each week. So for the last week, the organized a picnic at Stewart Park, a local recreational park on Lake Cayuga.
There was food (sadly I guessed this unproportionally summarized the picnic for quite a number of us), ball games offered by the wonderful professors at Cornell, and breathtaking views of Lake Cayuga under a setting sun. There wasn’t much to talk about for the picnic, so this post would largely be a photo display of sunset at Stewart Park, together with the birds that dwelt in it.
As with Chinese convention, the two of us from Tsinghua joined the procession of SJTU students, and laughed our way for 2.8 kilometers to Stewart Park.
Since we arrived at our Airbnb host very late last night this morning, we also got up very late. We left our host at 1045, for which, my friend comforted me as “standard college student time”.
As expected, CS department of Cornell University basically left all the weekends in the summer program to our own discretion (expect for the first weekend's field trip to Niagara Falls, which was nice since normally one don't easily get from Ithaca to Niagara Falls without a car). Since Ithaca's so rurally located, the only city that attracted us was the Big Apple.
For the whole month at Ithaca, I have been looking for local attractions that’s worth a visit. Since Ithaca (and upper New York in general) is famous for its waterfalls, and Buttermilk Falls State Park was conveniently located just south of Ithaca town, with public transport access, I decided to give it a try.
Also, since we had an early session end on August 5th, so that’s the day.
Since our previous flight AA3365 arrived basically on time at Chicago O'Hare, we were left with 5 hours for our connection. What's more, FlightAware.com told me that our aircraft has quite some delay for its previous flight coming from San Francisco, which meant it's guaranteed to arrive late at O'Hare, so our connection could well be quite longer.
The month-long Cornell program finally came to an end, as the wonderful lady driver of our shuttle dropped us off roughly three hours before departure. Amazingly, the American Airlines Check-in Counters were open, although we waited for like five minutes before two agents appeared.
Since Syracuse Hancock Airport was a modestly-sized regional international airport (hell they got Air Canada Services to/from Toronto), there weren't many interesting planes to spot. So after securities, I killed time, by writing homework essays on my laptop.
Having checked in last night at our Airbnb apartment, I was planning to head out again for some night view shots. However, the rain didn’t seem to stop, we retired to bed early, which means we could have an early start today. Well, 8 o’clock is quite early by college student standards.
The second weekend in US at my discretion, as I was planning somewhere different than New York to spend the weekend.
I was basically choosing between Boston and DC, as I lived in Ithaca and needed to travel to New York first to visit places. The result is that, prices of Greyhound helped me decide on DC.
For the four weeks of summer workshop here at Cornell University, the organizers arranged a day-trip to Niagara Falls on the first Saturday, hoping that we get to know each other. For them, booking the bus to/from Niagara Falls was all their job.
