The trip to New York was uneventful except for my initial surprise of Ithaca's dinky airport. There are only six gates--which are just doors that lead outside. Apparently, as people continue repeating, Ithaca is out in the middle of nowhere. Cornell, as a campus, is very dramatic. Gorges and waterfalls cut across steep hillsides that are littered with some of the older Gothic buildings. The faculty was very easy going and the research being done is even more interesting, but knowing me, I'll probably leave it to the last moment to decide where I want to go.
The grad students were hilarious. You had to wonder if they were all drunk by the way they were carrying on. And yes, there was lots of alcohol, including the wine tasting tour (apparently wineries are prevalent). It's a wonder that none of the prospectives were smashed.
I also had to room with a nudist from Florida who kept talking for several hours on the phone with her fiancé. Evidently, she's trying to decide between going to Caltech or Yale while her fiancé is deciding between Caltech and Purdue. I tried blocking the rest of the mushy conversations by reading papers and going to sleep (I'm good at sleeping through practically anything).
Flying back made me nauseous though. I nearly overslept, but I suppose I shouldn't have worried. The Ithaca airport didn't open their security checkpoint until 6:45 AM even though the first flight was at 7:00 AM. Getting out of LAX was really crazy. Just after I grabbed my bag from the baggage claim, the entire terminal was evacuated because of a bomb threat.
