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!!