pictures. (finally)

these are from my phone, so the quality isn't the best, sorry!!

derek jeter @ the yankees game!

graffiti art me and another artist made

my "tag" name... ha, how emo right?

my friend kraig in little italy

my internship site

yankees.

today I did lotssssssss of stuff!!

Alicia (the new intern) and her family were super nice and invited me to go to a yankees game with them. they had boxed seats, so we had an AWESOME view. it was a lot of fun! we ate hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels... all your typical american baseball food! we also took pictures of derek jeter. I'll try to put some on here, but they're from my phone, so they'll likely be horrid.

after that we did the following things (they may or may not be listed in chronological order):

• empire state building
• grand central station
• sketchy backrooms for purses in chinatown
• food in little italy
• battery park
• statue of liberty
• world trade center (well tried to see it, anyway)
• the financial district
  

JZ.

I saw JZ on the street tonight. didn't know it was him, b/c I'm horrid with knowing who anyone is... but regardless I saw JZ.

the people staying at the loft are soooooooo weird and soooooooo annoying right now. luckily though, there's a new intern here to share the experience with me. yay!

there's someone snoring really loudly and making weird snorting noises right now... thank goodness for ear plugs and ipods. I'm gonna go use one of the two and call it a night... so niiiiiiiiiight!

professional development.

yesterday I ate ate a strange italian restaurant with my friend braden. we had 3 waiters, one who seemed like a robot when he talked to us. another one had a breadcrumb scraper, and the other one was just awkward. it was seriously the strangest italian restaurant I've ever been too. It was so bizzare that I didn't know what else to do other than laugh at everything... poor braden. then I went to hang out in brooklyn, I think I like brooklyn better than manhattan.

in other news...

...today all of the manhattan ALC schools met for a meeting and "professional development." soooo, pretty much I was at my internship all day just sitting there. I enjoyed parts of the day because I met some new staff members and other people from other schools in the area, however some of the "professional development" parts of the day were an absurdly ridiculous waste of time.... I won't talk about them though. I will just say two words: egg-drop and concentric-circles.

there were however some good professional development things... we watched the brown eyes/blue eyes films (that I've seen before) and discussed them and stereotypes/labeling others. the great part about that was hearing all of the teachers at my school talk about how they don't label the kids who come to our site as "bad" and they really try to make our school an accepting place for them to be.... it's re-affirming to know that the staff has that attitude. apparently our school does a really good job at that compared to others in the area, so I'm really glad that I'm at the one I'm at.

:) email me or something, friends! I miss you all!!

so it has been at least 15 days since I've had any sweet tea, and I've been in major withdraw. one of the guys I work with at the school told me I should go to mcdonald's if I ever want any... so I did.

I feel much better now.

someone should open up a southern restaurant up here. I bet they would make millions.

city waterfalls and an outdoor film festival.

today I got up pretty early. I was just going to go to a bagel shop and get a bagel and coffee and read for a bit, but instead I decided to take it to the park along the waterway. I stayed there for quite some time and was gonna go back to my loft, but instead I decided to explore some more. I walked alllllllllllll the way around the southeast parameter of manhattan and found some even cooler places than the one I posted on my blog yesterday. too bad I didn't have my camera with me :( I even discovered two waterfalls!! ha, but they were "city waterfalls." apparently they were recently built, so unless you've been in the city this summer, you haven't seen them!! (cough cough, so come visit me so you can see them!)

one of the city waterfalls

this evening I went to an outdoor film festival. everyone in boone would be proud of me b/c it was all solar powered. the film festival is going on all weekend and tonight's theme was "art and environment." the first film was about an artist named cristo and a creation he constructed called "valley curtain" in rifle, colorado. the second film was running fence and it depicted the long struggle of the same artist (cristo), who built a 24 mile fence of white fabric over the hills of california disappearing into the pacific. here are two pictures of his art:

valley curtain

running fences

overall, I had a good time, and it was a lot of fun to watch a movie outside in between the city and the river.

exploring.

I've been exploring nyc a lot lately. I even ventured out to brooklyn the other night to visit my friend braden for grilling food and spray painting/"tagging" walls on rooftops.

here is a little video I made of one of my new favorite places in manhattan:

the squirrels here are too friendly...

I explored the neighborhood today, and tried to search for a good coffee shop once again. no luck.

for dinner I went to madison square park and ate a shackburger from the shake shack. that place is sooooooo good. I wish the line wasn't always so long, otherwise I'd eat there every day.

while I was there a squirrel decided to befriend me. he first jumped onto the empty chair next to me, which I was cool with for a bit, but then he decided to jump on my table and reach for one of my french fries. I normally don't mind sharing, but the city is kinda gross, and I have noooooooo clue where his little critter paws had been. I told him to go away, but he didn't move at all... next tried to shoo him away with my plastic knife and an intimidating face, but he wasn't scared at all. eventually I tilted my table sideways and kinda pushed him away using a rolled up paper napkin and fork and he fell off then scurried up a tree.

I want to make new friends here, preferably ones without fur that won't steal my french fries...

sunday.

ok, I could have been more creative with the title of this blog post, but alas... I was not.

I slept in till noon today. it was nice not to have to get up at 6am to make it to my internship site on time OR to have to be up by 9am so the maid could clean.

all of my new loft guest friends who had been here for the whole week left today so I had no more entertainment from autumn or random lunch/dinner/tea outings with keenan. I became somewhat bored hanging around here so I decided to take out this deck of 52 cards of things to do in NY that brandtly gave me, and do whatever the card said. I drew one titled "Greenwich Village II" but then took cards "Greenwich Village" and "Greenwich Village III" along with me too.

sooo... with my cards in hand (well, pocket) I ventured out into manhattan, and hopped the N train down to 8th street, the heart of Greenwich Village... well, maybe it was the R or even W train. I'm not sure...I just know it was yellow. I'm still not that cool of a new yorker b/c I refer to trains by their color instead of their number.

once in the village, I walked around a whole lot and checked out some of the things that were listed on the cards... avant-garde bookshops, used record shops, bakeries, parks, etc! I tried out two coffee shops (b/c I'm determined to find a good one) but didn't really have much luck. one place was horrible. the other had an awesome atmosphere, but the coffee wasn't that great. I bought a book at one of the bookshops and plan on reading it this week since I'll have a lot of free time.

I finally found a blanket!

so lately I've had lots of free time, and have used it wisely by RESTING! summer school is now over, so I have off from my internship till august 25th!!

today I ate lunch at rosa mexicano with my homeboy keenan (a guest here at the loft). it was soooooooooo good!! and also a very very cool looking place. they made guacamole right in front of us! it was fun.

after that I decided to go to central park. I walked around forever trying to find a place where there was hardly any people or any concerts going on, but that was impossible. so, I just gave up, sat on the lawn and listened to my ipod for a bit... took a nap... then read for a bit. it was a nice relaxing day.

ha, at least until I went to century 21 to search for a blanket. someone I work with recommended it to me. that places was insane! wayyyyyyyy too many people. luckily, i did find a nice blanket, and some awesome jersey knit sheets for my bed.

yay for starting to get more settled into this place!! :)

update.

to be honest, I didn't really like my internship the first two days I was there. it was cool to meet the rest of the staff, however right now there's nothing to do b/c it's summer school and there are no kids there. I can't wait till school starts after labor day and that there's more to do. Today was better though than the first two... I talked more with the para and some of the teachers about what the school was like, what the kids were like, etc.... so now I'm a bit more excited about being there.

after I was done with work for the day, I hung out with my friend braden who just got back into town. he met me near my loft, then we went at ate pizza. after that we walked to union square, then walked down to soho. since we were already that far down, I was like "let's just walk to 1st street"... but we never found it, and the streets changed to names. then somehow we ended up walking to chinatown. since we were there, I was like "let's walk to little italy" since braden had never been there before... then I remembered a cool tea place I'd been to with my friend kraig, so I dragged poor braden back to chinatown to search for it. after we found the tea place, I drank some wonderful passion fruit black tea, and I was like "let's find some water"... so we went searching for either a giant fountain, a river, or even the ocean. somehow we made it to the brooklyn bridge and just decided to walk over it because neither of us had been there before.

so pretty much we walked around manhattan all evening and ended up in brooklyn not knowing where we were at. it was a fun little adventure, and eventually I made it back to my loft in manhattan... somehow!

I finally know why new yorkers are so angry.

today I went searching for the summer school site of the school where I'll be doing my internship at. I also discovered why new yorkers get the rep for being mean and angry. it's b/c they can never get anywhere they want to go. to get to the summer school site, I had to "cut through" times square. all the tourist were sooooo annoying... not because they were tourists, but because they would just stand in the way and not move. I mean, if you're lost and confused, it's ok... it happens to me all the time. however, please just stand to the side against a building. you don't need to stand in the middle of sidewalk with your entire family of five linking arms like some sort of barricade. in addition to my tourist obstacles, there was something crazy going on on broadway (the street that I was supposed to walk down for many many blocks.) I couldn't figure out what it was, but there was lots of people wearing dominican republic stuff and they were all either singing, screaming or dancing. the police even had the streets blocked off so you couldn't cross them, but eventually I snuck through one cause I had already walked 8 blocks out of my way and didn't feel like walking 10 more. sooooooooooooo over an hour later, I FINALLY made it to the school I was looking and had some coffee at a coffee shop nearby.

this evening I bought some groceries and went out to eat at the famous carnegi deli with the loft director and a few appalachian alumni who were frequent guests at the loft this summer. it was a fun little outing, and I discovered that the deli has AMAZING cheesecake.

I start my internship tomorrow morning at 8am. I'm sooooooooo excited about it, that I probably won't be able to sleep tonight. I look forward to finally meeting the counselor who I'll be working with and getting to meet some of the students as well.

target.

why is it that I can never live in a city where there's a target??

today I tried to "settle in" to my new place... however that's hard to do when you can't buy anything you need. I bought a new pillow at macy's (thanks little bro for the giftcard!) and then tried doing what apparently is impossible... to find a pillowcase in manhattan!! who knew it'd be so hard? I searched and searched all day and couldn't find one. this is why I wish there was a target here.

oh, and I got asked to be a hair model today... it made me laugh.

my address.

if you would like to mail me anything, here is my address:

XXXXX XXth Street
XXXXX, NY XXXXXX

***editors note***
I did have my address listed on here, but then I realized that everyone in the world can see it, NOT just my family and friends who I gave my blog link to... SO, I took it off because I don't need any more stalkers. if you want to mail me something, just comment on here and I can send it to you OR if you want to send me something as a surprise, be smart and figure out a way to get it from my lil' bro, sis, or 'rents.

these vagabond shoes, are longing to stray...

so I made it to NYC!

after the misery of being stuck on the same plane for over 5 hours (a majority of this time was spent NOT in the air) next to a man eating smelly fried chicken out of a plastic walmart bag, I finally made it to JFK!! the airport was confusing, but somehow I managed to find my way to the airtrain, and rode that to jamaica station. once at jamaica station, I met my lovely friend kraig and he was amazingly wonderful and helped me figure out how in the world to get to my loft. pretty much that whole first day was a blur. visiting nyc is lots of fun, but moving here is something completely different. it's kinda overwhelming knowing that you're not going to be leaving for a loooooooong time... there's just so much to do, and I don't know really where to start. I still really haven't gotten settled into where I'm staying yet, but I'm going to try to do that either today or tomorrow.

I started working here at the loft right away. I had to get up really early friday morning and meet with the director and go over policies and procedures. I also met the cleaning lady who speaks only spanish, so that was fun trying to communicate with her. after that, the director sent me on a few errands for the loft... she gave me the addresses of a few places I had to pick things up at (hardware store, the cleaners, etc.) I still didn't know the neighborhood that well, but somehow I managed to find everything. I felt kinda like anne hathaway's character in the movie "the devil wears prada" when she was running around new york on errands, and not having a clue what she was doing.

after work was finished on friday, I walked around the neighborhood for a while just looking at what was around. I then walked and found the school where I'll be interning at, and took pictures of it on my camera phone. it looks really cool, so I'm excited about starting there on monday!

later on that day, I met up with my friend kraig and he showed me some cool things in the city. we went shopping at urban outfitters, american apparel, and some other random places. we also went really far into central park, where I've never been before to this really cool fountain and an empanada stand. we ate empanadas, stared at turtles in the pond, and waited around for this random male violin player wearing a midriff t-shirt and pleated skirt to play violin. he is supposedly really awesome at violin, but he was on a break, so I never got to hear him play. after central park, me and kraig decided that we wanted to go on an adventure in search for the perfect asian tea house, so we were off to chinatown!

you would think that there'd be billions of tea places in chinatown, however there were not! we found one called "teariffic" and just decided to go there. it was very modern looking (so not your typical authentic tea house) which was disappointing, but the tea was really good. i ordered passion fruit black tea! (to all my tea loving friends, if you visit me here, you'd love the tea at this place!)

it was getting late and we were hungry, so we then went to little italy to eat some homemade pasta at an outdoor italian restaurant with checkered table cloths. that was fun too! then we hopped on the subway and hung out at union square park. there we watched this rap group rap for a while as they filmed a video for youtube. they were actually pretty good, well one of the guys was anyway, so I'll look on youtube later and see if I can find the video, and then post a link on here.

overall, I've had a great first two days here... they've felt kinda bizarre, but still it's been lots of fun. right now I'm "working" and waiting for a guest to arrive. if he ever gets here to check in, I can leave the Loft and go explore the city some more.

stay tuned for more updates! I miss you all!!

start spreading the news...

I'm moving on thursday, and then starting my internship on monday.

everything is happening so fast!!

I bought a giant suitcase today... now I just have to figure out how I'm going to fit 5 months worth of clothes in there.