i got to penn station a little after noon, found my hotel, freshened up, and walked down 5th avenue to the NYU campus. from there, i walked all around the village, found carrie bradshaw's house, had a delicious little lunch at the soho cafe, and then found the apartment where the lovely heath ledger died [RIP :( ] with death and memorials in mind (not in a sick way, i promise you), i decided to walk to strawberry fields in central park to see the imagine mosaic.
at least 70 blocks later, i found myself sitting on a little bench, watching a little boy place rose petals around the mosaic in a peace sign formation and tea lights inside of it. all of a sudden, the fifteen or so men who had been sitting on the benches across from me started playing beatles songs. i was awestricken. all of them had guitars, except for one man who was playing a tiny drum set, and they were in such high spirits. a couple of random pedestrians came and went, singing along with them, harmonizing, the whole deal. it was incredible! i immediately called erika so she could hear it, and describing to her what was happening made me start crying, and i didn't stop for the entire time i was there. that in itself convinced me that new york was a place i could actually live and flourish. i collected myself, walked down broadway to my little hotel on east 27th, and went to bed :)the next morning, i woke up, checked out of the hotel, and walked to washington square park to eat a nice little breakfast before my 10 AM tour of the NYU campus.
it felt so good sitting there in the sun, my kombucha, fruit salad, and lemon poppyseed muffin in hand, watching all of the people walking by. the tour was.. well, a tour. i'm so stoked to go there though. i know those kinds of situations are basically educationally-based solicitations, but i am hooked. yippee! i bought an NYU sweatshirt, wandered around greenwich village for a little while, and walked back to the nasty, urine-scented penn station and waited for my bus back to boston.this is where things became entertaining :) so i'm sitting in a seat by the window, reading my book, curled up in my new sweatshirt, when a voice asks me, "do you mind if i sit with you?" looking up, i see a quite attractive, tan, curly-haired boy looking down at me. of course i say yes, so he sits down, and before we've been driving for five minutes, the kid is sound asleep. his head is bobbing around violently, in the same way someone trying to sleep in an upright position naturally does. it was so funny to watch this poor guy in my periphs, struggling to keep his head from flailing around, that i pretended to sleep so i wouldn't wake him up with my laughter. in doing so, i actually did fall asleep, and once i woke up again, his head was resting on my shoulder! so cute. i seriously considered waking him up to ask if he'd like to switch seats so he could rest his head against the window and sleep somewhat comfortably, but by the time i had gathered enough courage to do so, he was awake too. the bus driver stopped somewhere in connecticut to give us all a bathroom/stretch break, and from that point until we got to boston, the cute boy and i talked the entire way! i felt like we talked about so much too, much more than any two strangers would or should talk about on a long bus ride. once we got to south station, we realized that we didn't even know each other's names! anyway, it was such a fun and random and exciting situation.
two weeks to the day until jennelle and i head off to california! i'm so excited to go home. after that, it's back to work for a week, and then my dad and i are going to new york again for orientation! once i'm back in boston, i plan on working like a madwoman the entire month of july, and then our lease is up, and i'll most likely be manhattan-bound! condensing the next two months into so little sentences worries me that time is going to fly by too quickly for me to actually wrap my head around everything. that's part of the excitement though, right?
