The Campus Made For A Prince

Our first train of the day

We had an early start this morning. Audrey and I woke up around 6:20 AM to get ready and headed downstairs for breakfast at the hotel. I ordered a Belgian Waffle and she had the American Breakfast. We met up with the rest of the group around 7:30 AM and walked over to the train station for our trip to New Jersey. There were some complications with the train scheduling so we ended up having to wait a while for our train. We had to take a lot of different trains and make transfers with unexpected delays, so we ended up missing the informational session before the tour we had scheduled for today at Princeton. We had to wait almost an hour for our last train which was only a five minute ride to the campus. The taxi would have cost thirty dollars for all six of us for just a three minute ride so we decided to wait for the train. I guess taxis are just as expensive here as they are in California.

Blair Arch and one of the dorm buildings

We arrived at Princeton exactly as the tour was starting in the Blair Arch, the biggest arch on the campus. Our tour guide told us that acapella groups sing in the arches during the evening, and you can hear beautiful music throughout the whole campus which I thought was very impressive. The whole campus looked like something out of a fantasy novel with it's huge castle-like dorm rooms, lion and tiger statues scattered around, and large fields of grass. While the tour guide was very informative and obviously very intelligent, he was not as animated or entertaining as the guide at UPENN. And although the campus was gorgeous and there were so many opportunities, I did not feel as "at home" as I did during the UPENN tour. It was very picturesque, though!

After our tour, Mr. Hillyer took us out to get some ice cream. I found that they had sea salt and caramel flavor, my favorite type of chocolate which is very hard to find where I live. This was very exciting to me. The man at the counter told me that it was somewhat popular on the East Coast. It's funny how even the simplest thing such as a new ice cream flavor which I loved made me feel like the East Coast is somewhere I'd want to spend four years of my life. Of course, it's not just the ice cream, there's a lot I find appealing here. 

We arrived back to the Sheraton roughly around 5:00 PM and had dinner in the very nice restaurant attached to our hotel. We went over the day and made some decisions about tomorrow's events as we ate. We also learned about Chinese culture from Jun, which was relevant because the restaurant had a mix of all types of Asian cuisine. I had a Pad Thai dish and a Thai Iced Tea. Like always, there was much more on my plate than I could eat. It seems the serving sizes here in Philadelphia are much bigger than what I'm used to!

At the end of the day, I am very glad we got to see Princeton because I loved comparing it to UPENN and I'm sure I will enjoy comparing both to the campuses we will tour in the next couple days.