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My day, mostly in dialogue:
-Morning. No buses, and a potential TB injection if I could only make into campus for my appointment, and a monumentally bad mood. I complained down the phone to Shim, I complained down the phone to the South African Siren (I figure she needs a pseudonym, by now). When the bus finally came, it was crammed with approximately twelve thousand first-year undergrads and a vuvuzela.
(Quoth the Siren: "It's cultural, Iona! You are, like, oppressing me!")
Text to her: "oh god oh god hell is other people".
Text back: "oh god I am living in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants".
-We miss the free pizza for international students, thanks to combination of buses, TB injections (which I didn't actually have to have) and the marching band that stopped traffic. I ask myself several times along the way why I am going to a football game. No easy answer presents itself.
-Eventually, we make it to the homecoming game, perch ourselves in the stands and are immediately handed free Cornell t-shirts. Refuse to put mine on until beaten around the head by a giant red foam finger.
Discover, that some distance behind us, there actually is a person with a vuvuzela. Dissuade Siren from going up there and proposing marriage.
Quoth Tobermory: "So, right, there's a field of guys with huge shoulders running around, and then there's a bunch of girls cheerleading in stupid ra-ra skirts with stupid red ribbons in their hair, and feminism is totally over and we don't need it any more, right?"
"Right," we agreed.
"I don't get it," I said, after a while. "They sort of run about, and then throw themselves at the ball, is that it? And every so often they sort of bend down and look ready and happy about potential imminent buggery... this is the sort of thing that's going to get us deported, right?"
"No," said Tobermory, "this is what will get you deported."
"You know what," sighed the Siren after a while, "we really should have printed off the rules from Wikipedia before we came."
"It's something to do with the end zone," I said, knowledgably, and one of the non-international students took pity on us and started to meticulously explain what was going on. Which was good in one way, but did mean we didn't have the fun of jumping up and down and making a noise whenever we felt like it. (We'd got in the habit of watching one guy in the front row. When he got excited, we got excited, and banged things together and pointed foam fingers.)
During this explanation a guy in a baseball cap tapped me on the shoulder and said, "This is your first American football game?"
"How could you tell," I said, as dryly as possible, turned around and went "..." for a while at the receding back of my constitutional theory tutor.
...yeah. Academics with social lives, who knew. Further dissuasion re: vuvuzela ("Yeah, I brought one from home, and you know, introduce myself with it: only my mum and my sister said maybe I shouldn't if I wanted to maybe make friends.") and then the marching band came on.
I went home at half-time, did some work, drank some coffee, ate some food, felt much better about life, and then realised I had two packages of food from Shim! Twenty-four Galaxy bars, strawberry laces and packet sauce! And while I was staring at them, another friend called, told me she had a dinner-date and needed company while she flailed. I went over, took some of the chocolate - she gave it one look and said, sit down, drink tea, STAY FOREVER - and I sat down and drank English breakfast tea, which I do not normally drink, but is a great panacea for missing home and we talked about nothing while she made an apple pie. It smelled wonderful, and we made plans to go to the Ithaca annual apple festival - she says there will be more pie and maybe real cider - and somehow I think it will be like the game, difficult to enjoy entirely unironically but lots of silly fun, regardless.
Despite the homecoming game and the apple pie, it's been a day for alleviating homesickness. Still here, still here.
-Morning. No buses, and a potential TB injection if I could only make into campus for my appointment, and a monumentally bad mood. I complained down the phone to Shim, I complained down the phone to the South African Siren (I figure she needs a pseudonym, by now). When the bus finally came, it was crammed with approximately twelve thousand first-year undergrads and a vuvuzela.
(Quoth the Siren: "It's cultural, Iona! You are, like, oppressing me!")
Text to her: "oh god oh god hell is other people".
Text back: "oh god I am living in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants".
-We miss the free pizza for international students, thanks to combination of buses, TB injections (which I didn't actually have to have) and the marching band that stopped traffic. I ask myself several times along the way why I am going to a football game. No easy answer presents itself.
-Eventually, we make it to the homecoming game, perch ourselves in the stands and are immediately handed free Cornell t-shirts. Refuse to put mine on until beaten around the head by a giant red foam finger.
Discover, that some distance behind us, there actually is a person with a vuvuzela. Dissuade Siren from going up there and proposing marriage.
Quoth Tobermory: "So, right, there's a field of guys with huge shoulders running around, and then there's a bunch of girls cheerleading in stupid ra-ra skirts with stupid red ribbons in their hair, and feminism is totally over and we don't need it any more, right?"
"Right," we agreed.
"I don't get it," I said, after a while. "They sort of run about, and then throw themselves at the ball, is that it? And every so often they sort of bend down and look ready and happy about potential imminent buggery... this is the sort of thing that's going to get us deported, right?"
"No," said Tobermory, "this is what will get you deported."
"You know what," sighed the Siren after a while, "we really should have printed off the rules from Wikipedia before we came."
"It's something to do with the end zone," I said, knowledgably, and one of the non-international students took pity on us and started to meticulously explain what was going on. Which was good in one way, but did mean we didn't have the fun of jumping up and down and making a noise whenever we felt like it. (We'd got in the habit of watching one guy in the front row. When he got excited, we got excited, and banged things together and pointed foam fingers.)
During this explanation a guy in a baseball cap tapped me on the shoulder and said, "This is your first American football game?"
"How could you tell," I said, as dryly as possible, turned around and went "..." for a while at the receding back of my constitutional theory tutor.
...yeah. Academics with social lives, who knew. Further dissuasion re: vuvuzela ("Yeah, I brought one from home, and you know, introduce myself with it: only my mum and my sister said maybe I shouldn't if I wanted to maybe make friends.") and then the marching band came on.
I went home at half-time, did some work, drank some coffee, ate some food, felt much better about life, and then realised I had two packages of food from Shim! Twenty-four Galaxy bars, strawberry laces and packet sauce! And while I was staring at them, another friend called, told me she had a dinner-date and needed company while she flailed. I went over, took some of the chocolate - she gave it one look and said, sit down, drink tea, STAY FOREVER - and I sat down and drank English breakfast tea, which I do not normally drink, but is a great panacea for missing home and we talked about nothing while she made an apple pie. It smelled wonderful, and we made plans to go to the Ithaca annual apple festival - she says there will be more pie and maybe real cider - and somehow I think it will be like the game, difficult to enjoy entirely unironically but lots of silly fun, regardless.
Despite the homecoming game and the apple pie, it's been a day for alleviating homesickness. Still here, still here.
