Good morning, internets! I opened my shades this morning before beginning this blog post (how surprising!), and what to my wondering eyes should appear but ANOTHER weekend snowstorm?

Winter at the Castle is so much more beautiful now that they've taken the construction out of our backyard.

 Though I claim to hate winter as much as the next Cornellian, there’s something unquestionably beautiful about snowfall (especially from my Hawai’i-born perspective). Still, I’m glad that I don’t have to go anywhere this morning.

Fortunately, the skies stayed clear yesterday when a few members of my Cornell fellowship and I headed over to the Johnson Museum for the Museum Club’s “Great Gatsby Night.” As I’ve surely mentioned before, I adore Jay Gatsby (I even wrote my Common App essay on how much I’m in love with him–I’m serious) and the Museum, so it was a perfect match.

I was a little aG(h)AST by the painful mistake on the program (can you find it?), but no matter.

Typos aside, I was quite impressed. There was twice the amount of food I’ve ever seen at a Johnson party, and, in traditional Cornell “dry” after-hours event fashion, MOCKTAILS were also available. Readers, I’m not quite sure how widespread the notion of mocktails is outside of Ithaca, so I’ll explain. For some reason, Cornell thinks the best way to discourage the underage drinking culture is to ply students with fake beverages. It seems a little counterproductive to me, but hey, I’m not complaining! Even though I’m a teetotaler, I’ve discovered that I love mocktails: I think it’s because soda was rather forbidden in my youth, so that crazy two-parts-ginger-ale one-part-iced-tea thing really does it for me. Adorably, these were no ordinary mocktails, either–I had my choice between “The Daisy” (essentially a super-fancy Shirley Temple), “The Carroway” (some strange lemonade mix) and “The Gatsby” (which, ironically, I don’t think I ended up trying).

My favorite part of the evening, though, was when my intern skills proved useful. While leading my friends through the “Lines of Control” exhibit (a special pan-museum collaboration between the Johnson and the London-based group Green Cardamom that explores partition through multimedia art installations), I had a lovely chat with a temporary security guard, who’d spent his shift looking at the wall labels and was eager to share his knowledge. After I explained to him that I worked there and shared his enthusiasm for the exhibit, he later sent a couple of information-hungry students my way for further directions. There’s truly nothing I enjoy more than actually knowing things, you know?