Megan…NYU Graduate?

My trip to New York with Carly was so much fun! We left Friday evening and while the airplanes we flew in were awfully small, we got there safely. I was actually okay on the planes. I prayed for a safe trip each time before we took off, and looked out the window and read magazines to ease my nerves. When we got close to NYC it was dark, so the cities were lit up below us. I took a couple of pictures of the lights from the plane. We landed about 30 minutes early and set about finding Metro Cards so we could ride the subways and busses. Carly and I approached a gentleman in a red blazer who appeared to be airport personnel, so we asked him if he could tell us where Metro Cards were sold. He refused to answer our question until we said hello and asked how he was doing. We found that to be pretty typical of New Yorkers in the service industry. I guess it’s some sort of initiative to improve the image of New York. We were directed toward a Hudson News stand, but the woman there was incredibly rude and no help at all, so we just wandered toward the bus and taxi lanes outside of the gigantic JFK Airport.

We were walking toward a row of taxis when this guy came up to us and asked if we needed a taxi. Stupidly, we said yes, so he directed us to an unmarked van, took our luggage and placed it in the back and we took off. Luckily, he was a nice guy who did this on a regular basis, but Carly and I were both wondering where our bodies would be found. Thank God this guy was legit. By the time we got to our hotel and checked it, we were so tired we just ordered pizza to the room and went to sleep.

Saturday morning we woke up early and caught the hotel shuttle to the Neptune Diner next to the subway station with service from Queens to Manhattan. We had a pretty good breakfast and bought our Metro Card. The lady at the front desk of our hotel said that we could buy one 7 day Metro Card and both use it, but when Carly slid it through and then handed it to me, the terminal said "JUST USED", so I ended up having to buy some 1-day passes. We took the train into Manhattan and started walking around.

We probably walked about 10 miles during our trip! On Saturday we walked around Central Park for a while, then just started walking throughout the city. We saw Rockefeller Center, Trump Plaza, Times Square (which was huge and crowded and noisy…it cannot be explained…one must experience Times Square to understand the sheer chaos), the Naked Cowboy (who is actually wearing briefs), and the Theatre District amongst others. For fun we went to the Museum of Sex, which was kind of interesting, kind of raunchy. They had three exhibits: animal sexual behavior, sex in movies/TV throughout the 20th century, and the history of sexual study. It was definitely something that you could only find in a large metropolitan city. While walking through the biggest city in the country, someone saw Carly’s OSU shirt and yelled "O-H!" to which we replied "I-O!". It pleased us greatly. We ate lunch in a deli and dinner in a Chinese place, then caught the subway to the bus stop where we’d catch a bus to the airport and a shuttle to the hotel. The subway train was crowded and Carly and I had to encroach upon this poor guy in the corner. Every time the train would take off we’d get pushed into him and we kept apologizing. After about 3 stops he took out one of his earbuds and said "You’re not from around here, are you? You’re too polite!" so we struck up a conversation and flirted with him. He was originally from Seattle, but drove out to New York about three years ago to go to grad school at NYU studying organizational psychology. Carly mentioned that I was currently taking a class in that, so we talked a bit more. Our stop was right before his, so we ended up getting off first, but he was so nice (and really cute) and we totally didn’t even find out what his name was. We decided he looked like a Mark, so that’s what we referred to him as.

Sunday morning we took a subway out to Greenwich Village and walked around. We visited Washington Square Park and then walked through the neighborhood the characters on "Friends" were supposed to live in. We had amazing hamburgers in the Five Guys restaurant and then took a subway to Ground Zero.

We were expecting to be able to see into "the pit" at Ground Zero, but it was all blocked off with big signs showing what they were building. Carly and I felt very cheated out of an emotional experience at Ground Zero. We wanted to pay our respect to the victims by feeling some sort of emotional connection, but it just looked like the Greene in terms of the pictures hanging up explaining what they were building. Across the street was an old cemetery with gravestones from the early 1800s. Carly and I both like exploring old cemeteries so we walked around. I commented on how close this church was to Ground Zero to not be damaged, yet the sign out front said the church had been around since the 1700s. There were some signs in the cemetery showing the church around the time of 9/11 and the memorials that people created on the fence of the church. But still, nothing really tangible. Carly noticed that the church was open, so we went inside. There we discovered the St. Paul church and the role it played in the recovery effort. Inside the church there were displays with teddy bears donated by school children for the children of New York City, missing signs from those who couldn’t find loved ones after the attacks, patches from emergency personnel agencies around the world showing solidarity, cots that the rescue workers slept on, supplies donated for the rescue effort, funeral cards from those who died in the attacks, and a big American flag with all of the names of the victims written on it. It was so moving and emotional. It was probably the best part of the trip to see true Christian compassion in the face of pure evil.

After Ground Zero, we walked into Christopher Park intending to sit down and figure out where we wanted to go next, but this guy walked up to us and said "It’s beautiful ladies like you that make me wonder why I’m gay" so we kept moving. Speaking of gay, I made up a game called the Factor Game. We saw so many blatantly homosexual people on the streets of New York we starting picking out gay factors. For instance, if a guy is wearing a tight pink shirt, way-too-fashionable shoes, and talks with a lisp he has 3 factors. Some people had too many factors to count, and some factored off each other. It was a fun little game. Anyway, we walked through the Financial District and realized that Wall Street is so much more boring in person on a weekend. The street was very narrow and nothing was going on. We walked down to Battery Park and saw the Statue of Liberty from a great distance. It’s much smaller than I expected. While walking to the Sphere we saw three guys in spangled leotards who had a big crowd gathered and music playing, but they didn’t do anything. They just kept standing in a line with their hands up as if they were about to start a dance routine, but then they’d tell people to come closer and get back in that pose. It was dumb. We saw the Sphere, which was a statue that was located between the Twin Towers and survived the attacks with very little damage. There was also an eternal flame, into which someone had stupidly thrown a guidebook that wasn’t close enough to the flame to catch fire. From there we took an express subway all the way to the Bronx at Yankee Stadium. We didn’t even leave the platform because earlier we had slid our Metro Cards for the wrong side of the subway and it wouldn’t let us go through the right side ("JUST USED") so we had to crawl under the turnstile. We didn’t want that to happen again so we stayed on the platform and got some pictures. The Yankees were actually playing then, so I was within mere yards of Derek Jeter! We took the subway back into the city and had Gray’s Papaya for dinner, then walked through Central Park some more before going back to the hotel.

Monday morning we woke up at 6:15am to catch the shuttle to LaGuardia (we stayed at the LaGuardia Aiport Hotel but flew in and out of JFK). Then we waited for the Airport Shuttle to take us to JFK. I was very nervous that we woud be late, but we got to the airport 45 minutes before our 8:50am flight only to find out that it was delayed until 9:10am. Our gate had several flights leaving from it, so we ended up not flying out until 9:55am. Then we had to go straight to our flight at Baltimore, and then had enough time to eat at the Wall Street Deli in Atlanta before catching our flight back home. I was up until midnight putting 125 pictures online so I allowed myself to sleep in this morning because it felt so nice to be in my own bed!

So what about NYU? Carly thinks it would be really cool for me to go to NYU for grad school. I did some research and doing a full-time graduate program would cost about $200,000! However…there is an M.S. certificate program in Strategy & Leadership that can be completed in 2 semesters and can be done online. It might be a good way to get my feet wet in grad school, earn a certificate from a highly esteemed college, and transfer into a full-time graduate program if/when I have time to do so. Also, it would be a great excuse to go to New York again for graduation. I’ve requested information in the mail so I can learn more.

I guess it’s official:

I <3 New York!