First let me say to all you guys who came to the party last night that you’re better friends than I’ve had in a long time — really. You guys are amazing, and it was wonderful to feel that I’ll actually be missed. Maybe that seems overly self-deprecating or whatever, but honestly, it meant a lot to me that you came, and made me laugh and fall over when I was bowling (Rich, Jake and Aaron). I’ll miss you guys, all of you.
I was so worn out that I immediately crashed out on my Oakland – Dallas leg, then woke up, changed gates, bought an NYT and the new issue of the Atlantic, read the NYT, got on my new plane, and fell asleep again. When I awoke, the captain was announcing that we were just passing over Philadelphia and were approaching New York. I looked out my window and saw a bunch of house, fields, freeways and rivers. I had no idea what I was looking at, nor could I orient myself — I didn’t know what direction we were coming from. Some water appeared and grew wider and wider, and then finally I saw what so many New Yorkers-to-be saw upon entry: Lady Liberty. And there was Lower Manhattan, and the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building, and I tried to guess where the WTC site is but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint it from the air. But wow, New York is huge, even from the air! Fortunately the flight path on the approach to La Guardia takes you right up the East River, crossing over all the bridges and even flies right up and around Shea Stadium before landing at La Guardia.
A $30 cab ride later (Rupa, how did you get them to bargain to $15?) I was at 420 W. 119th St., at the University Apartment Housing office. Apparently I was supposed to have made an appointment with them, and when I didn’t, I had to wait 40 minutes before I was handed a stack of papers to sign. I walked across the street to another office, where another woman led me around the corner to my building. I waited in an oversized black leather chair next to a new Psychology grad student named Lauren from Washington DC who was also waiting to get into her apt.
Six keys in my hand, a backpack on my back, a rolling bag on my front, and a duffel for each hand I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. The apartment is laid out like a long rectangle, with my room and the bathroom on the opposite end as the the front door. Ian, my roommate, has a room near to the front door, and between the bedrooms is a small kitchen/living room/dining room/lounge — it’s small, but perfectly manageable. My room, perhaps 2/3 of the size of my old Berkeley room, gleamed with new varnish on the hardwood floors. My window faces north overlooking 120th St at Broadway.
Ian showed up about 20 minutes later, and he mentioned that there was some perfectly good furniture that had been tossed out behind the apartment building — so we scored a couch and coffee table for the common room, and I got a desk with a shelf thingy to put on top of it.
By 5 pm, Jon, the husband of my Mom’s elementary school friend (and 9/11 survivor) Denise showed up as planned, and we subwayed downtown towards Wall Street and puttered around over there and eventually made our way to South Street Ferry and walked up the Hudson River and through Battery Park for about an hour. New York is a very lively place in the summer. There were joggers, chess players, basketball players, suit-types, homeless-types, kids wearing iPods and everyone else mixing it up along the evening summer riverside breeze. Eventually we ended up at a dimly lit, but swanky Italian restaurant called Ecco — I had pretty good mussels, a hearty plateful of rabbit and gnocchi, and a Napoleon (sorta a cross between a millefoglie and a cannoli) — I was stuffed. We also by happenstance met some girl sitting at the bar who was Senegalese, and I busted out with the Wolof. I ended the evening by getting Jon and Denise’s hourglass shaped lime green lamp table. As Jon said: “Green is the new pink and pink was the new black.” Right.
All in all, it was a good first evening, and I’m kinda tired so forgive me if my descriptions aren’t amazingly vivid.
I’m going to shower (sans shower curtain), and curl up in my sleeping bag and figure out how to procure a bed, groceries and other household items tomorrow.
My feet are really dirty.
