Friday afternoon... after getting chewed up and spit out by a neuroanatomy final, what is there to do on the first beautiful spring day you're allowed to enjoy?
Chase a dragon across campus and watch it fight with a phoenix. Of course.
Among the more random traditions of Cornell is Dragon Day, hosted by the architecture and engineering schools and enjoyed by all. Apparently, a little over a century ago, the architecture students decided that they needed to have their own day, and they selected the Friday before St. Patrick's Day. They started by making large mechanical snakes, to honor St. Patrick, but eventually it morphed into a dragon and thus became Dragon Day. The dragon marches across campus powered by first year architecture students, then winds up in one of the quads and is burned while the students dance around it.
Even better is what happens when the engineering students get jealous. Their tradition is apparently not as old, and it still taking shape, but *usually* they build a phoenix to meet up with the dragon on its march (they made a knight a few years back... har har). This year's phoenix was really gorgeous, though the 20-odd foot tall dragon rearing up and flapping its wings at the bird was pretty awesome.
Just another day on the Hill... sometimes even the vet students get to be Cornell students too!
Pictures because my cell phone camera did not do it justice:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March09/DragonDay09.html
Cornell Daily Sun coverage (they didn't burn the dragon this year, sad!)
http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2009/03/18/beast-escapes-fire-annual-dragon-day-festivities
And yeah I know this was last week... between work and a million other little things I've been busy, plus I adopted a cat yesterday so I've been kind of involved in that! More on her at a later date :)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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