Campus

ARRAY | The 5 Cornell Reasons to Study Abroad

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I spent last semester studying in the far-off land of New Zealand. Now I’m back and it’s time for that self-hatred inducing study abroad post where I tell you how I made meaning out of fleeing the country for a little bit. When I left, I told myself that I wasn’t going to be one of those obnoxious people who went on and on about how study abroad changed them, but then my publishing deadline came a knocking and I realized that I had nothing to write about, and suddenly putting out my experiences seemed like too easy a topic to pass up. I’m hoping that I can say a couple things about my time that go beyond the usual self-discovery stuff though, and instead tell you about how studying abroad shifted my perspective on Cornell life. 1) Pretty much every other place outside of the arctic circles is nicer than Ithaca.

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | My Travel Bucket List

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Thus far in my twenty-year tenure on this planet, I’ve traveled to quite a few places–within the United States, I’ve been to Portland (Oregon), Reno, Yosemite, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, New York City, Boston, and Atlanta. Internationally, I’ve been to France, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Taiwan. However, there are a still a few places I’d really like to spend some time in before I kick the bucket, so I’ve gone through my own travel bucket list and condensed it to five travel destinations that may not immediately pop into one’s head. Vietnam

Traveling throughout Taiwan, where my mother spent most of her childhood before immigrating to the United States, was an unforgettable experience for me because it not only helped me to understand why she had such pride in where she came from but also allowed me to learn about my ethnic background. As a result, I’ve made it one of my life goals to travel to the other countries to which I owe my cultural heritage: China, Laos, and Vietnam, but if I had to choose one, it’d definitely be Vietnam.

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | The Summer of Love Experience

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Before the contemporary hipster existed, there was the hippie of the 1960s. (Ironically, the term “hippie” was derived from the word “hipster,” which referred to the jazz cats of the 1940s.) Perhaps the most notable year for any hippie is 1967, whenduring which the Summer of Love took place in San Francisco. Hippies from around the country arrived in Haight-Ashbury and the adjacent Golden Gate Park, which, as I write this piece, is hosting the Outside Lands Festival for the weekend. Because this summer—the summer of 2017—marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, the city of San Francisco has been heavily promoting what has been (if you will, my fellow Warriors fans) dubbed the Summer of Love Experience, much of which revolves around a special (if not once-in-a-lifetime) exhibit of the same name from the de Young Museum, which is opportunely located in Golden Gate Park. And so, on this installment of Travelin’ with Jacqueline, we shall be traveling to not only to another place but toalso another time.

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Spring Break NYC – Part 2: Museums

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As a college student, it’s important to be aware and take advantage of the student discounts that places like clothing companies, restaurants and especially museums offer, because it’s going to be more than forty years until you can get a senior discount…forty-plus years of dreary adulthood in which you are expected to pay full price for everything—the horror! Seriously though, it’s always nice to save some money, so I whenever I go to a museum, I have my Cornell ID ready. During Spring Break I visited three museums, all of which offered student discounts, but I will only relate my experiences at two of them—the Museum of Sex and the Guggenheim.  
MUSEUM OF SEX
233 5th Avenue, NY, NY 10016
5 / 5 stars
On Saturday, after brunching at Friedman’s, James and I decided to walk to the Museum of Sex, which is a great place to visit if you don’t find the other huge art museums in town as appealing, hate the crowds that typically occupy spaces in such museums or just want to explore the history of sex. The first floor of the museum currently has an exhibition called “Night Fever,” which is about the disco scene in the United States, especially New York City, during the 1960s.

Travel

BANDI | Destination: Montreal

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As fall break rapidly approached last semester, my friends and I were faced with the single greatest recurring struggle of our generation: where to spend those four precious days of freedom. Most of us could simply go home, sure, but where was the fun in that? Montreal promised an international adventure, a foreign language and a discount drinking age of 18. So we loaded our bags into the spacious trunk of my VW Beetle and set off toward the City of Saints. A note: the streets of Montreal were not meant for easy driving.

Travel

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Coit Tower

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Hello there, my fellow Cornellians! As you will have already noticed, this week’s edition of my blog will not cover any sites or events around Ithaca. Due to how busy I’ve been as well as my longing for warmer, sunnier weather, I’m jumping back to the West Coast – more specifically my hometown of San Francisco! As much as I wish I had flown back home this past weekend, all the photos in this blogpost are ones I took this past summer, during which my high school friends and I decided to do as many touristy activities around San Francisco as possible. This silly challenge was conceived after we returned from freshman year of college and realized we had never done most of the things for which San Francisco is famous.

Travel

BANDI | RIO DE JANEIRO – OLYMPICS, ART, AND A STROLL THROUGH THE STREETS

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As our Uber weaved its way through the busy streets of Rio de Janeiro, the signs of the recent Olympic Games were littered everywhere. Although the banners had been taken down a month prior, logos announcing “Rio 2016” were still stamped across roads; huge signs strung across souvenir shops boasted their Games-themed merchandise; freshly-painted murals covered building walls. Along one line of storefronts, a series of circus-style paintings illustrated the Games—Athens, Beijing, London, Rio and, finally, Tokyo.  

After five years of preparation and over 500,000 visitors, you’d think the city would be ready for a break. But the citizens of Rio are used to the spotlight, and it seems like they barely have time to take a breath before plunging into their next world spectacle: the annual Carnival.

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Portland – Part 1: Summer

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This past August and December, my parents and I traveled to Portland, Oregon, where we ate like kings, dressed to kill and took a myriad of photos like the tourists we were. Due to this last fact, I am dividing my account of our Portland adventures into two blog posts–one about our summer exploits, and another about our winter shenanigans. The summer weather in Portland is very pleasant and reminds me of San Francisco: either sunny or overcast, but never hot. But before I get into what we actually did in Portland, I should tell you how we got there. In late June, my parents were talking about how they wanted to take Amtrak somewhere, anywhere really, to see beautiful landscapes while relaxing on a train.

Blogs

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Blue Bees

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Like most people, I don’t find insects particularly interesting, but I thought I’d attend a West Campus-scheduled Cornell Insect Collection Tour on Sunday, September 25 with my SA Erin! The Cornell University Insect Collection is located in Comstock Hall and is one of the world’s biggest insect collections. As you will see from the myriad photos that are to follow, I really enjoyed myself. I saw so many beautiful insects and learned about methods of insect preservation. One of the first organisms we were shown was water bugs!

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Antique Arcade

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Hello, all you beautiful people! I hope prelims, papers, projects and just life in general are all going well for you this week, but if they haven’t been, I’ve got the perfect momentary escape for you—San Francisco! I’ve lived in San Francisco my entire life, and only after spending my freshman year in Ithaca did I come to appreciate my hometown and how integral it has been to my identity, be it through my Asian heritage or my liberal views. Be that as it may, upon further reflection, I realized that I never took time to explore what my city has to offer, so when I returned to San Francisco this past summer, I made it my mission to do all the touristy things I never did. I definitely accomplished my personal goal because I ended up:

ascending the Filbert Street steps to Coit Tower;
visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Legion of Honor;
discovering the Stow Lake waterfall in Golden Gate Park;
traversing the Golden Gate Bridge; and
wandering around Fisherman’s Wharf.