A Slice of the Pie of Life

Doing the District3

Greetings from Washington, DC! Life here is pretty awesome and busy, so I’ll do an update of all of the highlights of the past week.

I moved into the lovely Cornell in Washington (CIW) center last Sunday, conveniently located in the Dupont Circle area of DC. The neighborhood is really great with lots of stores, restaurants, and adorable little brownstones. The CIW center is very nice too; the first floor is dedicated to classrooms and administrative space. The upper three floors are apartments for Cornell students. Our apartment is really cute and the closet space is much bigger than expected (a key factor for any young professional woman).

We’ve had a lot of fun the past few days exploring the city. I’ve lived in suburbia all of my life, so it has been exciting residing in an urban environment. I went with Emily and Sarah, my two DC roommates who lived on my floor freshman year, on a fun shopping trip into Georgetown. We did an evening bus tour of all of the monuments and found out about tidbits of DC trivia and history from our guide; the city is beautiful at night. As well, we checked out one of my favorite places, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Despite that limited exhibits are opened – the museum is closing for a two year renovation in September – we still checked out important sights like Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, Lance Armstrong’s bike, and Julia Child’s kitchen.

Even though all of the students participating in CIW are from Cornell, I hadn’t met most of them before this week. Everyone is pretty friendly, and it kind of feels like freshman year again (class of 2010, I can relate!) We go out in big groups at night to movies and various other locations in the city, get semi lost on the Metro together, and generally have a good time. The staff here is great too, providing suggestions ranging from what subway to take to work to where the best running paths are around the city. One of the main factors that attracted me to CIW was the positive feedback I heard from other students who completed the program. Many students say their semester in DC is one of their favorite aspects of their Cornell career, and so far, I can see this proving true for me as well.

Posted under: Fall 2006