Introduction
After a couple of weeks, the academic year is getting up to speed. More assignments are coming in and classes are increasing their level a bit. However, it is still important to me to make some time to see New York and meet new friends. In this post, I will tell you a bit about some activities I did during the last weeks.
Baseball Game
During the Columbia University Life presentations, it was strongly recommended to us to visit a baseball game. They said it was a big part of American culture, and therefore I thought I couldn’t miss out on it. However, my family and friends who had been to a baseball game before all told me it is a very slow and boring game. Luckily for me, I discovered a student organization through some Columbia University Life recommended events, planning to go to a New York Mets game with a larger group of students.
I thus went to this game with some friends I had already met before, and I have to say that it really surprised me positively! First, we discovered the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens, which was on the way to the Citi Field, where the Mets play. Afterwards, we continued to the baseball game, where we met a lot of new people while watching the Mets actually win the game.
It was fun to actually see multiple home runs, since they were pretty exciting and during the calmer phases of the game, it was nice to talk to your friends and meet new ones. All in all, it was something I would certainly recommend doing in the US, although I think it would be quite boring alone.
Trip to Rockaway Beach
During the first week of classes, the weather in New York was still excellent, 35 °C and sunny every day. So since it still felt like the peak of summer, I decided to go the beach after my morning class. After about 90 minutes on the subway, I arrived at Rockaway Beach, which I chose because it is less touristy and crowded then Coney Island. Here’s a picture of the boardwalk next to the Atlantic Ocean:
After a walk along the boardwalk and on the beach, I settled down to relax and warm up for a swim, since I really dislike cold water, but did want to scratch swimming of my bucket list. However, the water was much warmer than I expected! Probably because it was already towards the end of the day and the sea was pretty shallow where I swam. After drying up and continuing the walk along the boardwalk, I started to head home and to do something different, I chose to take the ferry back to downtown Manhattan. The views along the ride were amazing, first Coney Island, than the Statue of Liberty and finally the skyline right after sunset. This is what that looked like:
Some Other Activities
Before I went to the baseball game with that organization, I also went to a game evening to meet new people. That was really fun and I met very nice people there. We were even all from different universities within New York. I have met up with them a couple of times more to have drinks.
Next to that, there were also a couple of social evenings and coffee hours organized by the engineering student council and by the electrical engineering student organization. Those were very fun, and I always have a great time with other fellow engineering students!
When the weather was nice, I also went on a walk in the Northern part of Central Park, since I hadn’t been there yet, and it is pretty close to where I live. That was really beautiful and relaxing, it’s nice to have some quiet while living in the bustling city. That region is more natural and there are some hills for example. Here’s a picture:
That was it for this post! After writing this blog post, the time has come for me to start catching up with the course assignments again. Thank you for reading and see you soon!