Sunday, March 18, 2012

Theme Dinner

It seems to be that spring has sprung here on campus! Purple and gold flowers are beginning to pop up all around. I’m writing this as I lay in the grass overlooking the puddle on this beautiful 78-degree day! I don’t think there was a single person indoors yesterday as it was also sunny, in the 70’s, and just plain gorgeous. Everywhere you looked, there were groups of people laying in the grass, listening to music, playing Frisbee, setting up volleyball nets to play with, and of course Kan Jam.

This past week was time again for our semi-annual Theme Dinner! This was one of the best Theme Dinner’s I’ve experienced in my three years here. This term’s dinner was inspired by the Asian culture and featured food from a variety of Asian countries. There were fun lanterns and dragons galore, decorated tables to eat on the floor, stage featuring our Martial Arts club, and stations where you could have your name written in Japanese. There were so many food options! Throughout the entire Dining Hall there were different soups, a sushi bar courtesy of Wegmans, green tea or ginger and mandarin orange ice cream, green tea, fortune cookies, and dishes from different countries like the Philippines and Korea. Everything was delicious! The bamboo plates, silverware, and chopsticks were cute to use as well. It was nice to see how many of our international students got involved and were proud to share with us a part of their culture and customs. Here are some pictures of the event!



Sunday, March 4, 2012

In Like a Lamb and Out Like a Lion?

Happy March! It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s time for March with the winter we’ve had so far. We barely had snow here, which is unusual for this area and time of year. The weather last week was all over the place! We had huge snowflakes making our purple bubble a snow globe, warm sunshine, then a huge thunderstorm with lightning that lit up the sky. While I miss going sledding and seeing snowmen all around campus, I am I enjoying all of the warm weather and not having to clean off my car! All of the sunshine and temperatures dabbling in the 50’s has made me eager for Term III.

To have Wednesday’s off and play in the fountain will be great again but I don’t want to wish this term away. I am really enjoying my classes this Term! On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have Child and Adolescent Psychology and Macroeconomics. My psychology class is a lot of fun to learn about growing up and thinking back to our childhoods. Macroeconomics is interesting, especially learning about the different models of the economy and looking at consumption on a large-scale level. It is nice to have the same professor as I did last term for Microeconomics.

Tuesday’s and Thursday’s are my marketing days with Consumer Behavior and Service Marketing. Consumer Behavior is a great class that blends core concepts in Psychology like the big 5 personality traits and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and shows how they appear in the way consumers respond to different marketing strategies. We have a fun group project for that class where we were given basic information like ages, income, and area they live and creating the rest was up to us! It is neat to mold this family to the specifications given to us and think as actual marketers do. Service Marketing is another good class where we learn the process and problems associated with selling a service. This class is going to be helpful in life after college and most businesses are trying to sell a service or an experience, not necessarily a product. Pretty soon it will be time to meet with my advisor and select classes for next term and year!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Tap and Pats

Happy February everyone! What a busy weekend this has been on campus! Friday and Saturday was the Party of Our Lives thanks to the EC Tap Ensemble. The 90’s and 2000’s was the theme of our show this year complete with all of the Bop It, Pokémon, Tamagochi, references you lived through and of course the music you loved. There were the classic songs like Push It, Do You Believe In Life After Love, I’m Blue, We Like To Party, Come On Over, Disturbia, and much more. Here is a back stage picture of Jai Ho, the popular song of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire. Our costumes were authentic as they came from India courtesy of the family of one of our dancers.

It’s always so rewarding to see all of the hard work we put in since the beginning of the year come together. Just because the tap show is over does not mean the fun stops. We performed some the dances after our Saturday afternoon show at Relay for Life where the Party of Our Lives hit the beach! Over $15,000 was raised or the American Cancer Society! The fun of the weekend continued today with our dorm Super Bowl Party! While I was rooting for the advertisements, it was heated between all of the New Yorkers and Massachusetts natives. Hopefully, we’ll all be able to still be friends after the Giants took it all. For now though, it’s time for the premiere of The Voice before we have to return the projector :)

Sunday, January 15, 2012

New Year, New Renovations

Happy 2012! 2011 flew by as did break and things at the college are going strong. We just completed our first week back to classes, clubs, and work here in the purple bubble. While break was pretty snowless, it’s beginning to look like winter! We had our first snowfall- a whole two or so inches but it’s a start!

The first weekend back on campus had a special treat. The Gold Keys on campus got a tour of Cowles Hall! It seems like it has been under construction for a while so it was neat to get an update on how things are going. On all of the tours that are given, we walk (backwards of course) past the purple scaffolding and talk about the history of the college. It was so weird to be on the other side of the fence and walk of the stairs of the entrance.

Our tour began on the first floor where there were some offices and two parlors with fireplaces, which is where Admissions used to be. There are some seminar rooms as well and bathrooms to match the purple and gold extravaganza ones in Meier Hall. In the middle of the first floor is the home of Remembrance Hall in honor of our first president, Augustus Cowles. There will be a statue to honor him that will be 9 feet tall and has the perfect home in the octagon. Next up was the Chapel and it is beautiful! All of the wood work, stained class, and details are spectacular. The first wedding is even on the books for this summer. For weddings and other events, there is a kitchen and a bridal dressing room. Down on the lower level is the home of the Cowles Bin, the hang out spot to many alumni. It will be neat to be there when it’s finished!

One of the most amazing parts of the tour was seeing a lot of the original brickwork still there. It’s nice that the construction workers and architects could preserve so much of Elmira’s honored history while still keeping the building safe and structurally sound, with purple steel beams of course. We hiked all over the building and even ventured up to the highest point in Elmira, the belvedere on Cowles, which is 85 feet above ground. That octagon has been there for what seems like forever. It was crazy to be inside of it! A while back the college community gathered and signed the last two beams to complete the belvedere. Well I can assure you that they made it there safely and the signatures can be seen. Here are some pictures of the construction!