So far so good.
My heart is in the work… — Andrew Carnegie
After mile 1,000, David and I have successfully arrived in Pittsburgh on Monday. Life has jumped started itself as I hopped into two orientations in the next four days, and have started to take advantage of the free buses in Pittsburgh with my free CMU student card.
Pittsburgh has been amazing so far. The food diversity has been a real blessing as I missed affordable Asian food, and that has been abundant in Pittsburgh as a big college town filled with international students from Asian countries. But it does not stop there – it looks like Pittsburgh is very much more of an Eastern European influenced town (lots of bratwurst, beer, sauerkraut and pierogies), but also filled with South American and African influences. It felt like a smaller, less hipster albeit still so New York with more affordable prices. Pittsburgh also seemed to have lots of museums (Andy Warhol was a native to Pittsburgh and a CMU alum; all the Carnegie Museums are also here) and we get to get in for free with my CMU card, which is very nice compared to the limited functionality of a Holy Cross ID. I instantly started to like Pittsburgh not only because of the food, but also because of the subtle steel industry past references, the history of the city, and lots of picturesque views.
My view on a commute to CMU’s main campus through Schenley Park
The Pittsburgh Technology Center has been also very cool. It is designed to be themed with different things, and each corner, you could find some old posters, some old computers, some new characters, some student works. The decorations definitely sparked more laughters than empty white walls (which were on the 4th floor where University of Pittsburgh’s research labs are at). We get to have the space mostly to ourselves which is nice because I don’t have to share all the resources with the CS department at CMU, but we are also secluded from restaurants and students from other programs. Eating is also a real problem as I figure out how to eat between food trucks and lunch deliveries from Chinese restaurants.
I started school two days ago! I had Fundamentals of the ETC, Building Virtual Worlds, Visual Story and Improvisational Acting for classes this semester. So far I have had the first two classes. In Building Virtual Worlds we will be pumping out projects/games every two weeks and I will be a sound designer for the semester! So far it seems like a wild ride. Preparing for all of my meals is proving to be harder than I thought even after Holy Cross’ Apartment plans but I think it’ll be alright (living without dining dollars has been interesting so far…). Having my first assignment today as well. The professors and saying that we have to fail a lot in order to learn, which seems to be excruciating but also true.
So, so far, so good. Hope it’ll be a fruitful and fun semester!