First Week

Days Three through Eight.

Okay, so I am not the best blogger in the world and my plan to write every day has already failed.  Ah well, what can you do?  So the weather here has been frigid!  Utah definitely never had winds as cold as the winds we get here!  And my coats still haven't arrived yet!  Hopefully they will be here tomorrow.

First, let me just tell you about the food here!  First off, there is a Whole Foods just ten blocks away that I love!  All organic, lot's of vegetarian and vegan, and they have soups, sandwiches and sushi all made fresh every day!  What more could a girl want?  Oh I'll tell you!  Seamlessweb.  Unfortunately for all of you in Utah, you do not have this wonderful website.  Yes, it is a website: www.seamlessweb.com.  What is it, you ask.  Let me tell you.  You log on, and it gives you access to literally hundreds of restaurants in the NYC area.  You pick one, it brings up the menu, you pick the food you want and submit your order and then they deliver your food to you!  Take-out is a fabulous phenomenon!  And there are so many Japanese restaurants and so I have more than had my fill of sushi this week!  :)

Highlights of the week:

Walking Owen to school (a couple of blocks away) is quickly becoming one of my favorite times of the day.  He is such a bright kid!  It's some one on one time where we just get to talk and I get to really learn about him.  Because he is in school most the day, I spend the least amount of time with him, but the ten minutes it takes to walk to school are always a blast.

On Tuesday, Charlotte and I went on an adventure to buy some light bulbs.  It took three transfers (on the subway) and then a ten minute walk to get there but it was a good experience.  I now know how to get to Times Square and will probably explore the area more next week.  I also learned that next time I travel with Charlotte alone, to bring a few toys.  She got tired on the way back as it was nearly her nap time and she cried a bit.  I felt bad for the other passengers on the train but she fell asleep about halfway back and so it was all good.

Friday, Lucas and I took a trip to the Transit museum in Brooklyn.  We got to look at all of the old subway trains, buses, and trolleys that have since been retired.  We also got to look at all of the different bridges of NYC.  Lucas is really into trains and so he absolutely loved it!  He was running from train to train.  He had to sit in every single one and we took a ton of pictures!  After about two hours there, he was so exhausted I had to carry him back to the subway station and as we rode the train back, I had to give him a snack to keep him awake.  When we got to the Canal St. station (the one closest to where we live) we just sat on the bench and watched the trains.  He loves to watch them go by and count how many he's seen.

I braved the snow storm on Saturday and went shopping in SoHo and NoHo.  I'm so relieved I only took $60 cash with me cuz the sales here are fantastic and there was so much I wanted to buy.  But I resisted and I stuck to my list of essentials.  I bought a really cute hat and some rain boots but I forgot to go back to one of the stores to buy gloves and a scarf.  I'll probably run back tomorrow to get them.  I am one step closer to not freezing outdoors here!

Well, that concludes this week's adventures!  Tonight is the CES fireside and then tomorrow for FHE our ward is going ice skating on a real ice skating pond!  lol!  Hopefully, I'll be able to go, but I work a little later tomorrow night so we'll see.  At any rate, I will have plenty of opportunities to meet people this week as Rachel (the mom) has scheduled a couple play dates for me and the kids to play with their friends and nannies.

Oh!  And today some tourists from Texas needed help finding Chinatown and I was able to point them in the right direction!  Yay me!  I'm learning!  :D

Lost!

 Day Two:

So waking up this morning was incredibly difficult.  The two hour time difference is a killer and my bed is so comfortable!  The family decided to go visit some friends in Pennsylvania so they explained to me how to get to the subway station and how to get where I was going and then I was off on my own!  So I made it to the station without a problem, got on the right train and got off at the right stop.  I was so impressed with myself!  I even fond the church relatively quickly (they tried to trick me.  There were two doors.)

Church was good.  I even recognized one of the guys who got up to bear his testimony.  He was in my ward over the summer before he moved out here for a job on Wall Street.  Sunday School was probably my favorite.  I went to the Gospel Essentials class cuz the Gospel Doctrine class was full but it was really interesting and the teacher was pretty cool.  Oh and for all those wondering, yes, there are cute boys in my  ward.  Lots.  :D

After church I took the subway home, had a nice conversation with a guy about coffee (he was so shocked that I had never had coffee before).  I get off at Canal Street and I go up the stairs to the street and that's where I had a slight problem...

Yep, I definitely got lost.  I really should have a GPS unit attached to me so I don't have to spend an hour walking around looking for where I live.  It was fun nonetheless!  I just kinda wandered around and got to look at the city.  I finally found my apartment.  Turns out I had been right by it about half an hour before but I hadn't recognized it.  I'm cool like that.

Now I'm just chilling in my room.  The parents are going out tonight but since it's my night off they hired a babysitter so I might play with the kids a bit or just watch a movie or something tonight.  I can't really do any exploring at night because A) my warmest coats are cushioning my PC tower in a box in the computer room at my house in Utah waiting to be sent to me and B) not only does my cell phone not work (I can hear you but you can't hear me) but now it has taken to turning off whenever I try to text.  I told my parents I needed a phone that worked before moving to New York, but somehow my mom having and dad having phones with WiFi was much more important, so my broken phone was replaced with an even older yet equally broken phone.  *Pity sigh*

So the kids are adorable!  Owen is so incredibly smart!!  He's only four but he reads very well, is learning French and Spanish, and is so curious to learn about everything!  And he is very well-behaved.  He always is polite and his number one concern is always his brother Lucas.  He makes sure that Lucas is always having fun and when he does something good, O is always the first to congratulate and praise him.  Lucas is two and so energetic and cute!  He will be so much fun to play with!  He and O are very close and you can tell he really looks up to his older brother.  And both of them adore Charlotte.  She is a happy little baby and she loves it when people talk to her.  She loves making sounds.  Right now she is teething so she likes two chew on anything she can get her hands on.

Well tomorrow is my first actual working day.  I will be going to be around 8 MST because I'm still not used to the time change and I need to be ready by 7:30.  Hope you all are having a fabulous Sunday!  Love you all!!

Arrival!

Day One:

Wooo!  It's finally happened!  Being in Kaysville was wonderful cuz I was able to spend time with all of my family for the holidays but other than that I just felt like I was in limbo.  I was no longer home in Provo and I wasn't yet in New York.  I just needed to be in one or the other.  And now I am!  

The plane ride was long and I only had a 30 minute layover in Houston and the plane I was on so I literally got off the plane, ran to the next gate and hopped on.  So I was pretty stiff from sitting in the same position for 8 hours.  I swear we took the longest possible route from SLC to Newark.  I'm pretty sure we traveled a little into Canada before finally heading east.  And it was pretty windy and so when we were landing it was really rough.  Definitely lost all desire to eat.  And that wasn't good cuz I hadn't eaten all day.

I met the parents, Rachel and Amar, at the baggage claim and we grabbed two of my bags and talked while we waited for the third.  And waited.  And waited... Yeah, it had missed the connecting flight.  Don't ask me how (maybe it had to take a quick trip to the restrooms?).  Anyways, the airlines said they'd deliver it once it had arrived.  

So we went home to their apartment and it is gorgeous!  This place is huge!!!  My room alone is larger than our living room at the Branbury.  They have two floors and then stairs that lead up to the roof.  I took some amazing pictures up there.  I tried to hold the camera steady but it is freezing here!  So the pics may be a little blurry.   I will post them as soon as I can.  My computer is actually my TV as well.  I'm typing this with a portable mouse and keyboard and my monitor is the TV screen.   I also have built in speakers in my ceiling and I can play my iPod, the radio, or satellite radio through.  Oh, and I have a skylight above my bed.  This place is incredible!