No rest for the weary! After a wonderful week at home and a 4 day work week I definitely could have stayed in bed all weekend.. but that wasn’t in the cards for this weekend! And boy, let me tell you those 30 year olds can party a lot harder than me, haha.

Friday we kicked the weekend off at the Intrepid for Columbia’s Young Alumni Party. I had been really looking forward to checking out the Intrepid because it is somewhere I haven’t been yet! Plus, if you recall, it’s going to be the permanent home of the space shuttle this summer (starting this Tuesday actually).

The Intrepid is so cool because the museum is actually on a CVS-11 aircraft carrier on the Hudson River. Not only does it store pieces of U.S. history, but it also has it’s own story. Prior to the museum opening in 1982, the Intrepid actually served in WW II in 1943. Today, it rests in the river and stands strong to almost a million visitors each year.

The Young Alumni Party catered to the “younger” crowd of alums over the last ten years so I wasn’t the youngest in the crowd! I took it upon myself to celebrate my own 3 year reunion along with the Columbia kids, why not right? It was great to get together with some of Chris’ college friends, both ones I’ve met before and others that I got to meet for the first time. It was such a fun evening despite the weather shutting down the outdoor portion of the party. Can I add the unplanned rain left Chris and I SOAKING wet trying to hunt down a cab sans coats or an umbrella after the event? Lucky for me, I’m from Washington so a little rain doesn’t scare me.. as long as it is at the end of the night!

For night 2, we were headed up to Columbia’s campus on the Upper West Side. I’ve only been to Columbia’s campus one other time, but absolutely love it. Then again, I’m a total sucker for nostalgic college campuses. I can get completely lost (sometimes literally) in the history and architecture of campuses, and Columbia is no exception. If I put you right on campus you really could completely forget that you’re in New York City because of the community atmosphere.

The evening started with a cocktail hour and dinner, which gave us plenty of time for Chris to catch up with old friends, some of which he really hadn’t seen in ten years. The reunion really left me wondering if University of Oregon puts anything to this extent on for reunions. I know we have an active Alumni association and Homecoming events, but I’m really not sure we have anything like the weekend Columbia put on. Then again, there were 20,000+ undergrads at my college when I graduated and a mere 6,000+ at Columbia, which makes for much smaller graduating classes.

Following dinner, there was a Starlight reception, complete with an ice sculpture of a lion! They also had a dessert bar and a live band. The one thing that was on my mind at the reception though was finding the lion statue I stumbled upon the year before!

BINGO, this lion!

We wrapped up the evening by stopping by some of Chris’ crew’s old stomping grounds before calling it an evening! Fabulous weekend :)

Columbia Reunion Weekend