NYC Report

Well, I had a fabulous time in the city that never sleeps, and managed to get a few winks of sleep. Not enough, though, to keep me from getting ill on my return to the homefront. C'est la vie.

Before I forget all the things I did, these things have to be written down!

-Spending a day with an old high school friend and crazily-busy New Yorker Jeff who is a website developer, nonprofit founder and director, and artist of course

-Visiting Little Italy, Chinatown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, South Seaport, Staten Island, Chelsea, the NY Public Library, American Museum of Natural History, watching the Thanksgiving parade from Times Square...

-Seeing a bible from about the year 900, a first-edition year 1611 King James Bible, 13th century Samaritan Pentateuch, year 1333 edition of the Qur'an and many other pieces at the Three Faiths Abrahamic exhibition at the New York Public Library

-Watching an incredible performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by the Metropolitan Playhouse. Each person had 2-5 roles and each actor was amazing

-Watching Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (commonly known as TMLMtBGB which was pretty awesome. Don't worry, they have a more famous troupe in Chicago if you midwesterners want to go. The cost is $10 and the roll of the die!

-Doing a job-shadow at a middle school in the Bronx of my amazing teacher-friend Amber

-Staying up past 3 a 2nd year in a row because of commuting around Manhattan

-BAGELS

-Seeing Wallace Shawn (the Sicilian from The Princess Bride) and some of his friends (Fran Leibowitz, Julianne Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Josh Hamilton, and others) read some of Shawn's writings at CUNY grad-school from the 4th row

-Ice-skating for free in Bryant Park and dodging the other 200 people on the rink

-Thai food, pizza, Chinese food, baozi, home-made cranberry sauce, Butterball turkey and dinner made by an Albanian :)

-Watching a food cart for the vendor because he had to go to the store (he did come back)

There are just so many fun things that happened. I'm thankful that I can go and do them and have friends in so many different places. It's difficult to live so far away from them sometimes, and impossible to live with them all because everybody's so spread out, but while building community in my little town in Michigan I'm grateful to have friends and family to run to from time to time. So this Thanksgiving I'm thankful for my job, friends, family, and so many colorful experiences that those three things have shaped into something that's called life.