A Very Long Car Ride

Sunday (yesterday) we packed up the car, and headed from Forest all the way to the Big Apple. I must say, it was a very long car ride. About 8 hours to be exact...and I did absolutely nothing productive. But come on! Give me a break! I had been up until 4 or 5 am the night before finishing my packing. Basically the entire car ride consisted of me gazing out the window, drifting in and out of sleep, and occassionally listening to some Portuguese tapes. About an hour out of Allentown, PA, it started to smell. Yucky horrid cow manure smell, even worse than Forest! I thought we had it bad, but man...I feel sorry for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

A bit of backstory: my dad had gotten one of those new navigating devices for Christmas. Great, right? Well...until we actually gott to NYC. Turns out my parents didn't specify 8th street Manhattan, so the thing started to take us to Brooklyn. We ended up having to pull over to figure out why we drove onto and past Manhattan. Anywho, we finally got to the hotel (Hampton Inn on 8th and 51st) and went to dinner at this Mexican fast food place Chipotles.

This morning my parents and I went down to Soho to take a tour of NYU (after a frustrating subway journey). I like it a lot, methinks. Very different from Columbia, but cool nonetheless, and I got my picture with the Washington Square Arch! After the NYU tour, we met up with Wes and all four of us went to Rockefeller center for some lunch. They didn't charge us for our sandwiches, but I didn't feel bad because places like that cafe overcharge for everything. We then went to the NBC store, a Starbucks (where we saw Edward Hibbert! The Wizard from the TV Once Upon a Mattress, he was in the Prestige, and plays the Director in Curtains), and Barnes and Nobles near Lincoln Center. I thought I saw Sean snogging his girlfriend in Lincoln Center, but alas it was not him, I could tell by the shoes. Sorry Sean! I know you have more class than that...I think =P!

Sean had given me this girl Martina's, another AFSer, phone number. She called me and I met up with her at their highschool for the end of their Opera Workshop rehearsal, then her, sean, two of her friends and I went to get some food and talked near Lincoln Center. She seems really cool, I imagine we'll get to know each other pretty well over the next 6 months.

After talking, Sean walked me back to my hotel and then my parents, wes, and I went to John's Pizzeria and my mom, wes, and I went to Rockefeller Center again to see the tree all lit up.

Quite a good day, I'd say. Tomorrow we're gonna hit Columbia, Fordham (?), The New School, Chinatown, Soho, perhaps do some shopping, see Sean and Martina's opera workshop...you can't run out of things to do in New York. I love this city...