Union College

The younger teen is considering Union College in Schenectady, New York. You don't know where Schenectady is? Think "Albany area." No flights available to Albany on the desired date; we took Delta to JFK, buying ourselves a three-hour drive....

We arrived in the Empire State about 9:30pm Saturday. While waiting for our luggage, I wondered, "Now why did i think it was a Good Idea to drive tonight to Schenectady?" I figured it out, by the way: I liked the idea of staying two nights in the same place.

It turned out fine -- I don't think we made any wrong turns even though we were driving at night. Google maps told us to go into New Jersey -- probably because I-87 takes a rather roundabout route. Next time I think I might just get onto I-87 earlier, because we had to look for a lot of signs and take a lot of turns to save a couple of miles. We had a couple of surprises driving and at our hotel -- nothing earth-shaking though.

After arriving at our hotel at about 2:00AM Sunday morning (eastern time), it wasn't a happy experience getting up. We eventually did, though, and found a "farmer's market" at an old theater downtown. We walked in, and Irish Dance music was being performed! We had a little breakfast at the Muddy Cup. We found the First Presbyterian Church in time for their 11:00 service. The parking lot was pretty full, a good sign. Inside, we found that the weekly bulletin had missionary names on the front, rather than the order of worship. The music appeals to the older generation (I loved it!) and the sermon was biblically sound.

We went back to the hotel, and the teen took a nap. I did a little web programming -- something to convert an address to latitude/longitude, using Google® maps. We went to campus about 2:30pm. The weather was gorgeous, and the folks at Union gave us a great sales pitch for the honors program ("Union Scholars", they call 'em). We took part of the tour, and had a terrific supper at Castelo's, very convenient to both the college and the Econo Lodge.

That was yesterday. Today my prospective Union-er went to a couple of classes, and we heard a presentation on "ethics throughout the curriculum" given by a philosophy prof and an engineering prof. Lunch with faculty/staff was great, and then we went over to the Visual Arts building and chatted with the acting chair, Prof Matthew. We left very impressed.

We drove to Saratoga Springs this afternoon, making just one wrong turn. It's quite wet here. We'll see about Skidmore tomorrow, and then home....