Beginning the American Dream

I love this city.

I’ve been here two days so far.

The population of NYC is 8.3mil so nearly twice the population of NZ, but it doesn’t feel too much. I do like big cities and seem to manage to ignore traffic sounds so I may have an unrepresentative view of this but so far it’s felt really great. I think it’s because most roads are one way so you can pretty much always cross the road.

So, after over 24 hours of travelling and meeting a lecturer I know in LA airport – I thought NZ was small, turns out it’s the whole world; seven degrees I suppose – I arrived in New York, minus one bag. I am staying with friends near Columbia who arrived the same day I did and we share our new city exploits. They are amazing.

The first day I headed to NYU for various orientations and attempts to organize my new life here. The campus is, well not really a campus for starters; it’s spread out all over the East village, quite similar to Auckland Uni really. Although I imagine that when uni starts the 70,000 students (!) will make it seem pretty different. I won’t bore you with the details but let it suffice to say it took an hour and a half of lining up to get my ID card so you can imagine what the day was like.

The highlight was definitely seeing Andy De frietas; we had a coffee in this deserted tree line street at this great café really close to the water. There are height restrictions in the village so there’s no skyscrapers and it feels relaxed.

My next day Imet up with Dave Sanford, so I’m definitely feeling glad to be in New York rather than Minnesota where I would have had one visitor or so a year… We met at Times Square and went to a hilarious diner where they sing Broadway when they bring your meals, then we wandered Central Park.

In the afternoon I wandered the Upper East Side and lived out my Gossip Girl dreams. It’s unbelievably flash up there: I saw town houses for rent for $21,000 month (over 2/3s of what I’ll earn in a year here!) and there are so many beautiful cake shops and bakeries – although none were as packed as Starbucks.

That’s all for now. I promise not to bore you with daily updates but am waiting for the shops to open this morning and am so excited to be here and want to share it all with you