Lots to report!!

I had planned to update a couple of times during the last week but things just turned out to be so busy that I didn't get chance. I know that 3 whole people will probably be waiting for this update so here's what I've been up to recently!

I'll start with the last Thursday at Cornell, as a celebration of the end of the program we all went on a cruise on Cayuga Lake, this included a three course dinner, which was very nice and the lake was stunning. Afterwards we retired to the Zeta Psi basement for our final party. We danced late into the night, which made getting up on Friday morning very difficult. So, myself, Fiona and Mihai then set off on our travels. Getting the coach on Friday morning was almost a complete disaster, we were late leaving and got to the coach station 10 minutes before the coach was scheduled to leave. I had booked tickets online (in an effort to make things as easy as possible) but it turned out we were supposed to arrive at least 1 hour early to collect our tickets. The woman behind the counter was the grumpiest person I've ever met and the fact that I was late was obviously the straw that broke the camel's back because she was very annoyed, if looks could kill I wouldn't be here now! So, as we waited for the tickets to come through with no guarantee that they'd be sent in time I realised that I had left one of my bags in the car that had dropped us off! After some frantic phone calls the bus ended up being an hour late, which meant plenty of time for the tickets to come through and for my bag to be brought back down to tme. We missed our connecting coach on the way to Philadelphia so had a 3 hour wait in Scranton (where the American version of 'The Office' is filmed) before finally arriving in Philadelphia at around 7pm.

The hostel we had booked was a few miles out of the city centre in one of the parks and was generally very nice (apart from the mattresses on the beds, they were so thin, fortunately there was an empty bed in our room so I stole the spare mattress and had 2 on my bed!). On Saturday we borrowed bikes from the hostel and rode into downtown Philly, we first met Maria and Sonja for brunch. They were en route from Ithaca to Germany and so only had a few hours in the city. The rest of the day we spent doing general sightseeing, we visited the liberty bell and went on a Duck tour (like an open topped bus tour but in an ex-army amphibious vehicle (Duck) which goes in the water as well as around the streets). we finished the day by visiting the Rocky steps (if you've seen the original Rocky film you'll have seen him run up them) outside the Art Museum. We joined in with everyone else who was running up the steps and celebrating at the top, a la Sylvester Stallone. On our second day we were lazy and got the bus into town. I went ringing while the girls did a bit of shopping. Later in the day we played crazy golf and then ate at the Hard Rock Cafe before finishing the night with some ten pin bowling and pool action.

Next day (Monday morning) we flew from Philadelphia to Chicago, landing at lunchtime. A quick update on American geography... Philadelphia is in the state of Pennsylvania,which is below New York state and the city itself is not far from the east coast, north of Washington DC. Chicago is in the state of Illinois, west of New York and Michigan, the city is on the south-western tip of Lake Michigan, essentially an inland freshwater sea (the city centre has beaches!). We stayed in a very nice hostel in downtown Chicago and our stay included lots of walking, visits to the planetarium, institute of art and natural history musem, a trip up to the top of the Sears Tower (very tall) and a couple of films (Rush Hour 3 and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the second one being part of the Chicago outdoor film festival). I really enjoyed Chicago it is a very vibrant and beautiful city so if anyone is ever in the area make sure you pay a visit!

Up until this point all of my US tourism had involved cities and big tourist attractions, so, for a bit of a change and on the reccommendation of Miriam (who grew up not too far from Chicago) we rented a car and drove up into the countryside for a few days. We stayed in Door County (in Wisconsin, Door County is the Peninsula of land north of Chicago that separates the body of Lake Michigan from Green Bay). On the way up we stopped in the town of Green Bay and visited Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers (an American football team, who happen to be my favourites). We stayed at a very nice (budget) hotel in a little town called Sister Bay. Highlights of the stay included Pirate Adventure Golf, eating at Al Johnsons Swedish Restaurant (complete with a grass roof grazed by goats!) and a trip to Washington Island and Rock Island State park. The scenery was stunning and all the people were really nice, it was obvious that not many British tourists head up there because everyone wanted to know where we were from and why we were there! Also the weather was much cooler than it had been in the other places we had visited and very windy, we felt quite at home!

After driving back down to Chicago on Saturday morning we all went our separate ways, Mihai flew to New York for a couple of days before heading back to England, Fi has gone to visit friends in Virginia and I got on a coach to Georgia. It was a very long journey (left at 4:15pm Saturday and arrived at 1:20pm Sunday) but now it's over and I'm in Athens, Georgia with Miriam. So far I haven't done much but it's been so nice to be able to relax after the hectic week I've had! It is very hot here in Georgia (over 100 degrees Farenheight) but thankfully the house is nicely air conditioned :). Iam here until next Wednesday and then I fly back from Atlanta to Gatwick. I will try to get round to updating before I head home, but if not then I'll see everyon really soon!

Thanks for reading :)

Stephen

Fiona and I with Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia

Downtown Chicago

The Chicago skyline reflected in 'the bean'

Me outside Lambeau Field with a giant inflatable Packers helmet

Beach on Rock Island, Door County

Finishing at Cornell

Time for another update!

Well, it has been a while since I last wrote here but I did warn you last time that there wasn't much going on. Actually, I have been keeping myself busy. The last couple of weekends have been less hectic than the ones before but I think I needed some time to just relax before the final 3 weeks of travelling. I have now finished in the lab, my project turned out alright although I spent a lot of time trying and failing to get techniques to work. However, the lab project was not the main reason I came over here so I'm glad that it's over but at the same time it was quite interesting. Outside of lab we've been doing plenty of fun stuff. We went up to the campus observatory the other week on a celar night and got to look through their telescope, we were able to see Jupiter, the telescope was powerful to show some of the cloud features and we could also see the 4 largest moons (just as specks of light).

Fi's boyfriend (and my old housemate) Phil came to visit for the week so we had fun times then including a basement party and a trip to the cinema to see Die Hard 4 (which was great). We have also recently seen Hot Fuzz and The Bourne Ultimatum. I had already seen Hot Fuzz so I knew it would be good and The Bourne Ultimatum was also enjoyable, if you like the first two then it's a must see. We have also made a couple more trips to Monday-night karaoke in Collegetown and other time has been spent working on presentations, having BBQs, watching DVDs and other every-day activities.

Having been in America for a couple of months now I have to report that many of the prejudices I had before I came have been dispelled, it's really not that bad over here. Having said that there are a few things that lived up to expectations and a few others that I have uncovered. I can think of 4 main ones.

1. There really are a lot of FAT people over here. Now, I don't mean to be nasty, but in most cases there really is no excuse for it, just eat less and exercise more! It's a sad thought that we're going the same way at home

2. Related to number 1, food over here is rubbish! Generally it comes pre-processed and in massive quantities, my biggest issues with food over here are a) bread, here (unless you buy freshly baked bread) it is stodgy and sweet and horrible. b) Chocolate, Hersheys is just nothing compared to Cadburys (although on the plus side the 1Kg bar of dairy milk that I got from duty free on the way back to Cornell from RVC lasted me until last weekend!) c) Squash (i.e. juice drink), they don't have it over here so I'm forced to carry gallon bottles of fruit juice and 12 packs of cans back home from the nearest shop (about a mile away).
Food, is redemed by restaraunts though, all of the restaraunts I have been to have been really nice and you always get value for money. Maybe I just need to shop in expensive organic shops over here to find the nice food

3. Television. We haven't really watched much TV over here other than movies (mainly because all that ever seems to be on is Baseball, news and non-funny comedy (Friends (it's finished, get over it!), Everybody loves Raymond, Will and Grace etc.). But when you do find something that you want to watch it is interrupted by adverts every 5 minutes. And the adverts are awful! In the US they are allowed to advertise prescription medicines on the TV so 50% of adverts are for medication of some kind (diabetes, pain killers, viagra (accompanied by a load of 50 year old men singing 'Viva Viagra!' etc.) but even worse are the adverts for local companies, which are all filmed with camcorders and feature the most wooden acting you have ever seen. In addition to being on every 5 minutes the ads often tend to be repeated, so you end up seeing the same advert about 10 times an hour. Even when the program you are watching starts the networks are constantly advertising their new 'hit shows' along the bottom of the screen. GRRRRRR!!! Can't wait to get back to the BBC! But while we're on the subject of the BBC, there is a channel over here called BBC America, so, they have the opportunity to show America the best programs that we have to offer. What do you think they show all day? Antiques programs! Just like daytime BBC1, Bargain Hunt, Cash In The Attic, Car Booty. It's a crime! No wonder all Americans find us Brits slightly amusing, the only thing they've got to base their opinion on is David Dickinson!

4. People clap at the cinema. Something I'd never experienced before and it really get's on my nerves. We went to see the Simpsons movie, I thought it was very funny but people were clapping at every little joke! I really don't understand it. You don't clap when you are watching the TV, why do it in the movie theatre? Almost as annoying as when you get a bunch of chavs in the cinema in England making noise the whole way through.

Well, the idea of tha was to pad out this post a little bit but I ended up writing more than I intended I think! Like I said, I've actually quite enjoyed it over here so don't get the wrong impression ;)

As of Friday morning I'll be off on my travels for a few weeks and then I'll be heading home, landing in Gatwick on 30th August so I'll see all you guys at home in the not too distant future! I'm sure I'll have plenty to write over the next few weeks. And just because I havent been doing much for the past couple of weeks doesn't mean I don't have any photos to share! Here are a few from around the campus.

Stephen xx

McGraw Tower, this has a carillon in it and plays tunes
One of the many towers on campus

This is the waterfall down from Bebe Lake (complete with traffic cone). I walked past here every day on my way to lab

Another building I walked past a lot, this one has an amazing garden

Good old Zeta Psi

New York

Last weekend I finally got the chance to visit New York properly, having already been there 3 times but only seeing the interior of JFK airport, the subway and the coach terminal each time. Again, I got to New York by coach, at this rate I'll be able to drive the route from Ithaca to New York without a map before I leave!

I left around midday on Friday and the journey was very uneventful, we hit some traffic on the way into NY and finally arrived at about 6:30pm. The hostel was thankfully easy to find and close to a subway station. We were staying just off Broadway in uptown Manhattan in West End Studios Hostel. The place was nice enough (our room was anyway) but the woman on reception didn't seem to speak much English, initially she put me in the wrong room but finally it was sorted. Another group from the course had travelled down to NY the day before and we were all staying in the same hostel, so after meeting up with them we went out to a club for the night. Entry was free before midnight so it was a cheap but fun night out. On the way back we started to realise that the subway system in NY is actually rubbish, very confusing, badly organised and too infrequent. Having travelled on the London Underground quite a lot in the last year I've been used to walking onto the platform and never usually having to wait more than a minute or two for a train to turn up (obviously there are times when this is not the case but on the whole you don't usually have to wait at all). In NY we generally had to wait 10 minutes or so for a train to even turn up. Very frustrating when you only have a weekend in the city, every minute counts!

On Saturday I decided to buy a 2 day sight-seeing ticket which included open-top bus tours, a ferry to Liberty Island, a ticket to the Empire State Building observation deck and a cruise around the harbour, all for the grand total of $77. There were two companies offering similar itineraries. We chose the blue bus, this turned out to be a mistake, the blue buses only came about once every 10 minutes and tended to be full, whereas the red buses came about once every 2 minutes. So, if you ever go to NY and want an open-top bus tour go with the red company! Anyway, once on the bus the tour guides were very good and we could get on and off where we wanted. I was joined by Ciara, who is on the course here at Cornell and is studying in Dublin. Our first stop was at the Empire State Building, we had to go throus airport-style security checks (as you do for pretty much everything over here) before we could join the queue for the lift. As with a lot of touristy things over here you don't just wait in one long queue, we had to queue to get through security, there was then another queue to buy tickets (which we bypassed as we already had ours), a queue to get the lift to the 80th floor and then another queue to get a second lift to the 86th floor where the observation deck actually is. Then we had to queue twice to get the lifts back down again. Overall the whole thing took us about 2 hours but fortunately it was a beautiful clear day and the views from the top were amazing.

Next we got back on the bus to Chinatown, where we got off for lunch and to take photos of the amusing shop names (such as 'Nice One Bakery Inc.' 'Happy Time Cafe' and 'New Big Wang Restaurant'). We then wondered down to 'Ground zero' although it is now looks more like a building site than a disaster area, there is really nothing apart from the big empty space and a few nearby buildings still surrounded by scaffolding to suggest that anything major happened there. I think my only disappointment after visiting NY was that I didn't get to see it when the twin towers were still standing, the skyline must have been spectacular.

We then planned to get on the ferry to Liberty Island but the queue was very very long (so long that we didn't even bother finding the end of it before we decided not to bother), so instead we spent a couple more hours on the bus tours and then walked back to the hostel through Central Park, which is massive and a very pleasant place to find in the middle of the city. That night we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. We had to take our shoes off before we went in and the tables were sunk into the floor so that you actually sat down on the floor to eat rather than on chairs. We ordered plates of raw meats and cooked everything on a little barbecue in the centre of the table, it was all very exciting and the food was very good. After that a group of us went into Times Square (absolutely breathtaking at night, like Picadilly Circus but 100 times bigger and brighter) and ended up at 'Ripley's Believe it or Not', which is basically a museum of weird things (man with no legs, two headed cow etc.)

On Sunday we left the hostel early to get our ferry to Liberty Island before the queues got too long. We only had to wait about half an hour. We didn't actually get off the ferry onto the island but had brilliant views of the statue and also of Ellis Island nearby, where the immigrants used to arrive in NY. Once we were back on land we wandered up to Wall Street, and while Ciara and Emily took the bus tour around Brooklyn I managed to get a ring at Trinity Church on Wall Street and then had a stroll out onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Not only is the bridge amazing, but you also get really good views back onto the Manhattan skyline, so the walk is well worth it if you are ever there!

Unfortunately it was then time to head back to the coach station and then back to Ithaca. As you can tell by the length of this post I had a really busy weekend but I feel like there is so much that I didn't get to do, of all the cities I have visited so far I thought that NY was the most vibrant and exciting, I really would encourage everyone to visit at some point if you haven't already! We were also really lucky that the weather was so amazing, it was sunny with clear blue skies all weekend, which made it all the more enjoyable.

Hope everyone is fine and dandy. The next few weekends I'll be hanging around Ithaca so may not have too much to report but after the program finishes in 2 weeks time, Fiona and I (plus another girl from the course) have planned a mini-holiday to Philadelphia and Chicago followed by a short road trip up to the Great Lakes. Then after that I'll be heading down to Georgia for a week and a half to see my friend Miriam. So, plenty of excitement on the horizon! I'll finish off with a few photos as usual.

Stephen xx

The Empire State Building, currently the tallest building in NY

Central Park, right in the middle of the city

Two headed cow at Ripley's Believe it or Not

The Statue of Liberty

The downtown Manhattan skyline, the WTC towers would have been pretty much in the centre of the photo, just to the left of the black skyscraper and would have been soooo much taller than all those other buildings.

Boston!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for... The latest update!

So, last weekend a group of us took a trip to Boston. This time I wasn't driving so it was a nice relaxing 7 hour trip down, there was no traffic and we had some good fun in the car. We arrived in Boston at about 12:30am and after a bit of confusion after being given the wrong keys and waking up the other 5 in the group (who had left earlier) we made it into our rooms and got some sleep. Next day we were up and ready for some sightseeing, we walked into the Downtown area from the hostel and had a look around the big park in the middle of the city. After that we walked a bit of the Boston Heritage Trail before getting lunch at a seafood restauraunt (which was very nice!).

After lunch we made the short trip up to Harvard University, quite similar to Cornell, lots of nice buildings, plenty of trees and a very studious atmosphere. I tried my best not to get annoyed by the fact that I was essentially looking around a college exclusively for kids with rich parents (Cornell is essentially the same, but none of the rich kids are here at the moment).
We had decided in the morning that we would try and get tickets to watch the baseball that night, the Boston Red Sox were playing the Toronto Bluejays. Gameday tickets went on sale at 5pm, 2 hours before the start but by the time we got there at around 4:30 the queue for tickets was already very long. Anyway, we decided to wait and try our luck. The line moved very slowly but by about 6:30 we had made it nearly to the front. They were obviously running low on tickets because officials kept coming and counting along the line. Finally we were at the front (I mean right at the front, no one else before us) and they sold out. At this point, after queueing for 2 and a half hours, I was not best pleased, but the ticket man assured us that if we waited until 7:30 they would release unclaimed reservations and we would be able to get in.

Sure enough, at 7:30 we managed to get 10 tickets, all together in the same row for $23, so the half hour wait turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we all got to sit together and our seats were centre field, a long way from the actual action but good to get an overall view of the field.
I was at the end of our 10 seats and so was next to an American woman and her husband, this turned out to be a very good thing as I had no idea what the rules were and she was happy to explain. So, baseball is kind of like rounders but more complicated. It was so much fun, the vendors really do come around the seats selling popcorn, hot-dogs, drinks etc (and even throw a few of the less-messy items to you in your seat) and there are plenty of little bits of music and chants to keep you entertained. One of the Bluejays' players came in for some heckling, he was catching in the deep in centre field, so was just infront of us, and the crowd kept chanting his name. Veeeernon... Veeeernon... Veeeernon... YOU SUCK!! He seemed to take it pretty well though!

In the end the Red Sox won 9 runs to 4 and I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Afterwards half of the group went out clubbing. I had suspiscions that they would be out late so decided to stay in as I was pretty tired and sure enough, Fi came back into our room at 4am. It turned out they had found a Disco bus and partied the night away driving around the streets of Boston!

On Sunday we decided to go to the Boston Aquarium, which turned out to be well worth the money, all the usual things you'd expect from an aquarium plus a special exhibit on jellyfish and the two coolest fish in the ocean, the weedy seadragon and the leafy seadragon! We also went to the iMax theatre at the aquarium and saw a 3D film about sharks. Then it was time to head home and back to another boring week in the lab. But don't worry, the next exciting trip is only a couple of days away. This weekend we are heading to the Big Apple, so watch this space for another update soon!

Stephen xx

The big park in the middle of Boston

Fiona and I hanging out with John Harvard

Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox (in white, batting in this photo)

Vernon Wells, he got a lot of stick!

A leafy seadragon!

Niagra Falls/Toronto Report

Hello everyone,

Here is an update on how the trip went. We set off on Saturday morning in our shiny hire car (A Ford Taurus). we actually got a free upgrade because the economy car I had booked was not back in time. So, I had an automatic with cruise control, all I had to do was point it at Toronto and the car did the rest. Fortunately the journey to Niagra was pretty uneventful, I managed to stay on the right side of the road at all times and was cruising nicely, disregarding the stupidly low freeway speed limit of 65mph (in Canada it is 100kph, or 60mph, I wonder how anyone gets anywhere at that speed...). Surprisingly, most people seem to stick to 65mph and I was overtaking far more than I was being overtaken by, a far cry from the UK where if you are doing 75 you get overtaken by pretty much everyone else!

Anyway, on the way to Niagra we discovered a small problem, 2 of this girls had forgotten their I-20 forms. The I-20 is a piece of paper that you need to get a student visa. Despite the fact that you cannot get a visa without one it is still necessary to carry the loose piece of paper around with your passport everywhere you go (a stupid system if you ask me). Since we were already over an hour away from Ithaca I made an executive decision to not turn around and we carried on with the assumption that the missing piece of paper could be got around.

Unfortunately it couldn't, we got turned back at the border and had to wait an hour for the girls to see the immigration control to explain what had happened (interestingly there never seemed to be anyone wanting to get into Canada but loads wanting to get back to the US, there were no queues at the Canadian checkpoint but the one back into the US was always tailed back over the bridge.

Anne-Marie and Elva were both very good about having to stay in the US for the weekend. Fortunately we had decided to cross in Niagra Falls itself so they just stayed there on the US side and had a good weekend anyway. The other 3 of us went back over into Canada and saw the falls from that side, which arguably has better views.

The falls themselves are amazing. I often find that famous tourist sites can be a bit of an anticlimax but Niagra is not, the sheer size of the falls is breathtaking and the scenery is just amazing (see photos). Also, everything seemed to be reasonably priced, a bottle of water only cost $1.90 (about £1) and the Maid of the Mist boat tour was only $14 (£7) In England I'm sure everything would have cost at least twice as much. So, we did do the boat tour and although the trip was pretty simple (just go right up to the falls, get very wet and then turn back) I thought it was well worth it, seeing the falls from down below was awesome and it's hard to imagine how people have the guts to go over in barrels!

So, after finishing up at Niagra we made the hour and a half journey along the shore of Lake Ontario to Toronto. Toronto is the biggest city in Canada and is probably best known for the CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the world (over 500m). So, obviously we went up it. We decided to go up on the Saturday night (which turned out to be a good idea as it was stormy on Sunday) and we made it just before the last lift went up at 11pm. The main observation deck is at 346m so you get a pretty good view. There is also a glass floor that you can stand on and look straight down at the ground. Overall, the novelty factor of being in the world's tallest tower was nice but it gets old pretty quick (and there are other buildings which are not as tall but have habitable floors at higher levels), looking at a city from high up is the same regardless of whether you are 250m up or 350m.

The hostel we stayed in was nice but the air conditioning didn't seem to be working so I had real trouble sleeping. The next day I went ringing at Toronto cathedral and, as usual, was warmly welcomed. After that we (myself, Sarah and Sonja) wondered around the city, shopping a bit, eating lunch etc. until it was time to head back.

The journey back was pretty uneventful, we had to queue for about an hour and a half to get back into the US but apart from that there were no hold ups. This week it's been back to the lab and I also managed to injure myself whilst swimming in the gorge yesterday evening, I managed to slice a couple of my toes open on submerged rock and am consequently walking with a bit of a limp but hopefully it won't slow me down too much for this weekends exciting plans.... Which are... A visit to Boston! So, I'm sure you'll all be waiting with baited breath to hear about that! In the meantime here are a couple of pictures from the weekend just gone.

Hope you are all keeping well.

Stephen xx

The Horseshoe (Canadian) falls

The American falls, the separate cascade on the right is the Bridal Veil falls

A closer view of the Horseshoe falls with the Maid of the Mist boat and the rainbow that accompanies the mist whenever the sun is out

The CN Tower in Toronto. It is so tall that is almost seems unreal!

Slow week, not much news

So, I had a pretty lazy weekend and therefore there is not much news to give. On Sunday a few of us went to the ornithology lab, borrowed some binoculars and wandered around the woods trying to see birds. We didn't see too many but the ones we saw were quite colourful. The most colourful one was probably the red cardinal (see photo)

That was the most adventurous thing that happened this weekend. Next weekend we've organised a trip to Toronto/Niagra falls, which will hopefully be amazing. I am driving the hire car, which could be quite interesting!

Tonight we went to watch the 4th July fireworks, we watched from a hill on Cornell campus, the display was actually a couple of miles away so I couldn't get any decent photos but the display was brilliant and must have been even more amazing close up!

So, it's a national holiday here on Wednesday and I think we are having a BBQ, which should be good fun. I'll update again soon, probably after the weekend. Hope you are all well!

Stephen xx

Hi Everyone, Time for another update.

I'm currently in the lab with a 20 minute break while my experiment runs so I thought I'd let you know what I've been up to the past few days. On Tuesday Fiona and I set off at 6pm on an epic journey back to London, We got the coach to New York, then the subway (really hot, dirty and full of weirdos) to JFK, then a 6 hour wait in the middle of the night for our flight at 7:30am. Once we made it back to Heathrow we then sat on the Picadilly line for an hour and a half until finally we got to Cockfosters and were picked up and given a lift back to RVC. We made it back at about 10pm UK time, so, that's a total journey time of 23 hours, during which I got very little sleep! On Thursday we had to give a presentation on our project and then have an oral exam to finish off our degree. In the end Fiona got a 2:1 and I got a First, the others on the course all got 2:1's or Firsts so everyone did really well!

After that we had a BBQ and got some well earned rest. Friday was also a restful day with a shopping trip to St. Albans and 10 pin bowling in the evening. On Saturday we flew back to New York (on separate planes this time) then coached it back to Ithaca, this time we made it in 20 hours, a distinct improvement! So, now I'm back at Cornell and I'll be staying here until the 10th August now so I should have a chance to settle in properly. I'll keep you all updated on any exciting times over the next few weeks. Hope you are all well!

Stephen xx