Mix and Mingle!

A beautiful sunny day in the park

Today was our first official meet and greet for our cohort at the beautful Arlington Park in El Cerrito. It was a nice, calm and relaxing day for our cohort, their families and our chaperone Ms. L to get together and get aquainted with everyone. While, sadly, one of our cohort, was unable to attend due to a prior commitment, the rest were able to get a better sense of who it is we will be spending a full month with during our trip.

It was nice to finally get to meet the entire cohort instead of just knowing them through their emails. While I did know a few from the interview session, it was still nice to have the majority of the group together and be able to meet the rest in a more casual setting. Everyone was really nice and very friendly. I look forward to embarking on my great adventure to Columbia with them all and sharing many great experiences.

After enjoying a delicious array of different types of pasta that everyone brought, Ms. L began to give us some details on the trip. She explained the schedule and how the first week would be really intense from the start, with college tours in the morning and dinners in the evening. Ms. L then proceeded to give us her own personal rules for the trip. She is a very strict person when it comes down to knowing where and when we are going somewhere. In a way it gives me a sense of comfort knowing that the person who will be in charge of us for a full month really cares a lot about all of us.

The Cohort in all its glory

We then proceeded to discus the details about the life on campus. We talked roughly over the amount of time we would be spending in class. Beginnig at 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, then from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM Ms. L explained how almost about 30% of the students who would be attending the summer program at Columbia were international students from all over. I became very excited at the thought of being able to get to meet new people from entirely different countries and to learn a bit more of the culture behind them. Apart from students there would also be a college-age person who would be in charge of us during our stay in the dorm rooms. There would also be many excursions during our free time hosted by the dorm’s Resident Assistant.  It was also made very clear that the school libraries would play a huge role during our time at Columbia and that we would be doing a lot of research and writitng. From my own experiences on the debate team I understand that reaseach can take a lot of time to do properly so I can already relate to the amount of time we will probably spend in the libraries. Already the same excitement I felt when I was admitted into the ILC began surging within me and it almost began to feel like a fantasy to be given this opportunity.

Then we touched upon what what our first cohort assignment would be, Ms. L described how each of us would need to create a list of our top ten locations to visit. At that moment, my mind began racing with the endless possibilities of what to visit. Being Manhattan the adventure can be endless with there being so much to see. One condition that was imposed upon us however, was that at least one of the locations had to be a museum of some kind. Ms. L said that this would not be too hard, since there is a museum for practically any subject a person is interested in. At that moment the thought that my dream of visiting the "Big Apple" was finally coming true and that the places that I would see on TV I would actually have a chance to visit.