A week in the life

Fear not, loyal readers, I have not met a grizzly end on the streets of New York. I didn't even get lost on the subway. I've just been busy doing some vaguely interesting things to tell you about, and taking photos so you can see all the weird and wonderful friends I've made. I have in fact attempted to start this entry a number of times, but ceaseless interruptions you get several posts at once. Last week started of rather slowly, as the weather was still rubbish and I needed to catch up on some sleep, but the sun has at last made a reappearance and the difference is amazing. Features of this week have been finding the Gramercy Diner, a 24 hour establishment that serves some whopping salads and amazing smoothies. Fruit and veg are extortionately expensive here, so spending $6 on a huge salad dinner seems worth it - although we need to stop deciding to go at 1 in the morning, as my stomach is geting rather confused. Classes were intense this week despite only having two days of them - due to the Labour Day bank holiday (I refuse to spell it any other way) we had no classes on Monday. Hunter, in their infinite wisdom, decided we needed an extra Monday, so we had Monday's schedule on a Wednesday, and then a normal Thursday. Monday and Thursday being my most intensive days (classes from 9:30 to 6:30 and 9:30 to 5:00 respectively) I was rather pooped by Thursday night. The upside is that, because Hunter's campus is uptown, I spent an inordinate amount of time lounging about Central Park, with which I am utterly in love. It seems odd to say, but it's definitely my favourite place in the city at the moment, largely because it's such a relief to have somewhere to just be calm in the middle of all the insanity.

Speaking of which - Thursday night a big group of us braved the L train to Brooklyn to locate the bar we'd somehow missed the previous week - famed for it's $1 drinks. Of course carnage insued and because both bars and the subway are open almost straight through the night, it was rather a late on two. Luckily, I don't have class on Friday's, so it was spent largely wandering around 1st Avenue and the East Village, which is literally 10 blocks from the dorms. Friday evening I dragged a few willing victims to go and see 'A Scanner Darkly', which I thought was fantastic, although we all felt someone had been messing with the insides of our heads. Well, I got to stare at Keanu for a bit which is always a bonus. Incidentally, we watched the film at the Sunshine cinema which looks like its going to become my favourite very quickly as it’s in a really great bit of town (East Village area) and has some fab indie stuff on.

I grabbed a reasonably early night Friday in order to prepare for our super special exciting fun bus trip around upper Manhattan (sarcasm alert). In fact, despite our general suspicions that the tour would be awful, it was reasonably entertaining as we all completely ignored the obnoxious (Britain bashing) tour guide and I got to meet some lovely new NSE people. And at long last, you do too!

Jorge, my little Puerto Rican drinking buddy and Kirsten, the lovely lady from Idaho (no, Udaho)

Tyler, from Virginia who loves Batman and looks very fetching in my shades.
Ron, who was in investigative journalist mode for the entire journey. Note the Producers T-shirt.
My partner in crime, Roshni. She's a Wembley girl, so we know about growing up in the, ahem, ghetto. I think I'm actually going to adopt Rosh, or maybe just kidnap her - she's going home at Christmas and not coming back, and I'm not sure how I'll cope without another Londoner to laugh at all the wacky stuff the yanks do. And she lets me copy her homework.
Me and Jorge. Just cos we're soooo cool.

Now, because today is Wednesday (13th) and I started writing this entry quite some time ago, and because I need to leave for class and because a lot (!) of stuff has happened since Saturday afternoon, I'll leave it there for now. Rest assure there are more photos and adventures on the way. Stay tuned folks!