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An image of a rainy afternoon on a crosswalk in the middle New York City

This past weekend I was able to take a Dartmouth-sponsored trip to New York City with my housing community. What does "Dartmouth-sponsored" entail you might ask? Everything from transportation and hotels to excursions and food was covered on the college's dime.

Check out the view from my hotel room:

A window image from the 25th floor of the Mariott New York Courtyard hotel in New York City on a rainy afternoon
We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriot East Side—my room was on the 25th floor

After settling into my room, later that night I got to go to my first Broadway show—Funny Girl starring Lea Michele!

An image outside a Broadway musical venue at night on the New York City Times Square strip
An image of front row seats inside a broadway musical venue in New York City
We had amazing seats!

Following the Broadway show, I got to spend a day exploring the city with my housing community friends as well as experience a 5-course Eataly meal:

Image of a 5-course meal menu at the restaurant Serra by Eataly in New York City

  

An image of our South House excursion group at our restaurant table about to feast
You can't tell from this picture, but the restaurant was on the top floor of the building!

I also made time to take a journey through Chinatown and grab a meal from Mei Lai Wah, a classic Chinese bakery spot for traditional buns and rice noodle rolls.

POV Image of my friends and I taking a stroll through Chinatown in NYC on a rainy day
The weather could've been better, but Chinatown was still fantastic

Overall, the trip was amazing and I'm extremely grateful that Dartmouth has the ability to sponsor these kinds of events through the housing community system. If you aren't too familiar with Dartmouth's housing system, basically each first-year student is sorted into a random housing community (out of the six houses I'm in South House) and that ends up being one of your various on-campus community hubs for things like spirit events, dorm location,  and in this case off-campus activities. If you're interested in more of the specifics, check out one of my Q&A posts where I delve into more of the nuts and bolts of the system: housing-communities-dartmouth

Housing communities at Dartmouth are a really neat way of fostering close relationships with peers and faculty and are generally pretty underrated in my opinion. It seems like as my time at Dartmouth progresses, I'm introduced to more and more perks of being in the housing community. For instance, fall term I had a lot of great experiences with my UGA (undergraduate advisor) and community dorm dinners, and come spring term I'm now getting fully sponsored trips to NYC as well as other cool things like housing community clothes and discounts to nearby restaurants in downtown Hanover. Not to mention I think housing communities are an incredible resource for participating in otherwise inaccessible, spontaneous trips away from campus! : )

Your friend,

Garrett

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