New Twists and Turns

Today was filled with plenty of new surprises. Class began with a video conference with two graduates of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration who now work at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. With about 2,000 rooms Opryland is the largest non-gaming convention hotel in the world and they call all their employees “STARS”. It is a very unique facility and I recommend checking it out. The architecture of the building truly is amazing.

However, in May 2010, the hotel had been flooded and they are currently working on restoring the property, with the opening day set in November 2010. They told us what kind of jobs they had around the hotel before the flood and afterwards in terms of all the restoration that has been occurring, and especially because the hotel has not been open. They discussed how their education at the Hotel School, and the work experience they got from their time working at the Statler Hotel, prepared them to enter the workforce.

After the video conference, Mark and Reneta surprised everyone by giving us a 3 hour extension on our individual reports! Instead of being due at noon today, they gave us the opportunity to turn it in at 3 p.m! This meant I spent all of our available office hours (from 10:30-3:00) working on my report. I worked very hard, and hopefully that will come across as Reneta grades them this weekend. Unfortunately, this time extension also meant that the hotel students were not able to go to the museum with the Freedom and Justice students today.

After finishing at 3 p.m., I ate lunch, tried the bus for the first time, and then relaxed in my dorm until dinner time. It seems that the food at Appel has been going from average to terrible, with a few bright spots every so often.

Then, Ithaca’s unpredictable weather decided to play a trick on us. As we finished dinner, it began to RAIN! It had been so hot and sunny outside but by the time we finished eating dinner it began pouring rain, thus causing everyone to run to back to the dorms. A few minutes after getting back to our rooms, Andrew G. came to my door inviting me to go play Frisbee with him, Alex, Andrew W., Chris, and Chris’s roommate Forrest. It was a lot fun, but short lived, as about 15 minutes after we began, the Frisbee got stuck in a tree.

Tomorrow, we have a big day ahead of us. We are meeting Mrs. Kaplan at 7:45 a.m. to begin our drive to Colgate University, where we have a scheduled tour. So the questions stands, what will our last weekend at Cornell will bring?

Pictures of Statler Hall (a.k.a. where the hotelies have class everyday):

I just thought I would include these partly because I haven't posted any pictures recently, but also because Statler Hall is absolutely amazing! The facility is truly state of the art.