Law school...

One of my fellow interns is currently taking the Kaplan LSAT prep class, and it sounds like death. Probably that will be me next summer when I get home from Madrid. $1300 is a lot of money to fork over, but if I'm really going to do law school, I suppose I might as well do the thing properly.

Not that I have any idea of how well I'll do on the LSAT (or how my thoughts on law school will change over the course of my year in Spain), but let me be pretentious and post a list of law schools I'd like to go to:
BC
BU
UChicago
Columbia
Fordham
Georgetown
GW
Harvard
UIllinois
Loyola (Chicago)
Northwestern
NYU

Basically, if I get in, I should go to the University of Illinois. And save some money, for once. But, as you know, I cherish the romantic notion of going to graduate school in NYC. Boston has always been a place where I've thought about going to school/living. I like DC, although I feel like I need to "get out of Dodge." It really is a small town. And if I got into Chicago or Northwestern, I would have to seriously consider returning to my Chi-town roots. If I don't get into Loyola Chicago, I'm not going to law school (I'm legacy from both of my parents...).

And I have almost two years to worry about this, but I imagine that my year abroad will result in personal growth more than professional/academic, and I don't want to put this off until it is too late. For some reason I feel a fierce urgency to go straight to law school (perhaps because of the fact I'm essentially a sort of unpaid, untrained paralegal this summer?), so I feel like I should really start researching my options and maybe buy an LSAT book. Unfortunately my GPA will not be quite high enough for the Georgetown Law early assurance program since my grades in Spain will not be factored in (probably a blessing on the whole). I used to have such a good GPA! And be so hard-working!

My patella hates me

So, it turns out that my defense mechanism for illness and injury (pretend it isn't happening) doesn't work out too well. In fact, carrying through as planned with one's 4th of July plans may be a bad idea.

So how am I coping? By getting fat, as I can't go to the gym and there's nothing to do in this house, it seems, but eat junk food. Awesome

Possibly the most epic 2 days of my life so far

Well, luckily, I'm home today with a nasty sprain (my clumsiness/klutziness/inability to walk/awkward medical problems could make for an interesting post on their own...), so I can finally chronicle the New York trip.

I'd never really been to NYC before. The summer before my senior year of high school when my family toured nearly every college on the East Coast, we had to pass through New York, although I opted against looking into schools such as Columbia or NYU because I thought New York would be way too overwhelming for me. Freshman year of high school, I took the bus up for a Save Darfur rally in Central Park, but I didn't get a chance to really explore the city or anything, so I really wanted to make it to New York this summer. I convinced my roommate Kayleigh and my friend from home Diane to join me.

We took Megabus from DC to New York on Friday. Megabus is a discount bus service that I believe started in the Midwest (we have more than corn you know) and has recently begun East Coast service. Tickets start at $1 each way if you get them really early. My fare was $28 roundtrip, which is cheaper than the $35 roundtrip on the Chinatown bus, so the trip was really quite a steal.

I was one of the first to board the bus, so I sat down in the handicapped row. I would have obviously moved if someone had needed the seat, but barring that I was just looking for a little leg room. I'm a tall girl, you know. The bus left on time, so we seemed to be in good shape. However, we caught a lot of Friday afternoon traffic between DC and Baltimore. I knew it was bad because Diane was supposed to catch the bus in Baltimore about an hour after it left DC and it ended up being two hours. The driver had put on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King as "in-flight" entertainment, so I half-watched that 1.5x. It was a pleasant diversion.
We finally arrived in Penn Station. We opted to take the subway from there to our hostel. Even though that first night I stepped in the vomit at Penn Station and it took us three platforms before we found the right train that would take us to our destination, I would like to say that on the whole I was completely charmed by my experience with the New York subway system. Sure, it's confusing and way less user-friendly than the DC Metro system, but somehow that just made it all the more charming.

We knew our hostel was a block from the 103rd St. and Broadway subway stop. Diane and I were about to guess which way to head when Kayleigh stopped a stranger for directions. Totally safe on the streets of New York at 1 a.m.

We stayed at Hostelling International-New York. This trip was my first experience with a hostel (definitely a good experience to have before going to Europe). It was also my first experience with trying to pack lightly, and I failed, although I'm not sure how exactly I could have lightened my load that much. I'd recommend it. It was $40 a night, which I don't think you can really beat in NYC, and it's easily accessible by subway. We checked in and went to our room. The lights were out and someone was snoring profusely. I hate snoring. Hostelling International-New York supposedly is the biggest hostel in the world with 600 beds.

The next morning, Diane and I had the most delicious bagels and cream cheese ever (sorry Great American Bagel) from Broadway Bagels. I discovered that prices are indeed higher in NYC than elsewhere, as the medium iced coffee from McDonalds that would have cost $1.86 in DC was $2.16.

We all met up at 10 a.m. for a $10 all-day tour the hostel runs. We figured all-day meant it would run until 5 or 6. We then met Jerry, our tour guide, who informed us that the tour would go until midnight, and the promised "lunch in Chinatown" would actually be at 5:30, which for Diane is a pretty late dinnertime.

Jerry is an incredibly interesting character. He must be more or less 70 years old, and he does these intensive walking tours twice a week. By the end of the day, the group was quite ragged and tired, but he never seemed to rest. In fact, he walked really fast so that the group had to half-jog and weave in and out of pedestrian traffic to keep up. If I'm half as fit as he is at that age, I'll be doing quite well. By the end of the day, his corny jokes were starting to grate, especially on Diane who he seemed to take the most liking to.

We set out from the hostel armed with all-day subway passes and in my case, two different types of sunscreen and two types of granola bars. We took the train to Brooklyn, where the tour began. We looked at Borough Hall, and I was interested to learn that the five boroughs were once all independent cities. Jerry had us all stop at the Garden of Eden, a gourmet market, so that we could stock up on foodstuffs to carry us until Chinatown. We walked around Brooklyn Heights and saw a lot of pretty brownstones that must be extremely expensive. We walked along the Brooklyn waterfront, which provided us with beautiful views of the Manhattan skyline. We also let ourselves into a locked park to use the restrooms.

Caught off-guard on the Brooklyn Bridge:

To get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, we walked the Brooklyn Bridge, which was a neat experience. I was glad that I dressed as I did for the day, in a tank top and a light cotton skirt, but that skirt was causing minor problems as the breeze on the bridge hit it. Many of the hostel guests and therefore fellow tour-mates were international. One was from the Czech Republic, so Kayleigh tried to talk to him, since she is studying abroad in Prague next year. His English was not so good...he is either a professor or a student at Charles University.

One of the first sites of note we saw in Manhattan was Ground Zero. I don't really know what to say about it. I guess in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the cosmopolitan city, the giant hole in the ground is a reminder that life can't be taken for granted.

Next we walked by Wall Street. Which is where I won't be working after I graduate. Because getting a good job out of undergrad is overrated.

Roughly next we took the Staten Island ferry. Jerry promised a tour of the boat, but by this time Diane and Kayleigh were pretty beat and opted to just sit down inside. I had never seen the Statue of Liberty before, so I stood outside against the railing and tried to take pictures. The only problem is that my skirt was once again causing problems. We realized when the ferry landed at Staten Island that we had no idea where Jerry was or how we were supposed to meet up with the group. We caught up with them, and were greeted with "Ave Maria, jeez it's good to seeya" about a hundred times from Jerry. We hopped back on the next ferry to Manhattan.

Again, we ditched Jerry and the group. This option became slightly more problematic when we arrived in Manhattan, as we did not find the group easily. We had to run up/down some stairs and outside in the Battery before we caught up, losing Kayleigh in the process. We walked along the waterfront for a while. New York would be such a fabulous city to be young and in love in for the summer...although I suppose that's true of nearly any city.




At this point, we finally headed to Chinatown. It got a little drizzly, but luckily it never ended up raining on Saturday. We walked around Chinatown for a while. NYC Chinatown is very large, obviously dwarfing "DC Chinatown," which is an ornate arch, a block of Chinese restaurants, and American restaurants and the Verizon Center with Chinese lettering. I still think that Chinatown in San Francisco is more impressive than NYC Chinatown. Jerry took us around, stopping at a gift store to show us all of the items available for sale with Chairman Mao's image on it; I think Diane was about to die of embarrassment. We also stopped at a Buddhist temple, and in my opinion this stop at least bordered on insensitivity. I had expected the temple to feature impressive architecture, but instead the temple was a modest storefront. Our group took over the space, where one man was trying to worship. It felt awkward and uncomfortable.

Finally, we sat down for dinner, our "delicious meal in Chinatown." The food was nothing to write home about, but I was hungry enough that I practically licked the plate clean. I remarked at that point the day was a test of how much I could walk and how much I could eat, and I still think that accurately summed up the experience.

After Chinatown, we walked around the adjacent neighborhood of Little Italy and pretty much wondered why we hadn't eaten there instead. We also walked around SoHo, which according to Jerry wasn't as impressive as it normally would have been because the brief rain had sent all the artists packing. Next was a walk around East Village, and by this point we all realized that Jerry was having us do a lot of unnecessary walking. In fact, he confided in Diane that we "seemed like an especially energetic group" so he was having us do more walking than usual. The only thing that was keeping most of us going at this point was the promise of a "delicious fruit and ice cream dessert." However, after a half an hour detour to Little India, we were taken back to a Coldstone Creamery we had already passed. I was bummed, as I've been to Coldstone before and was not a fan. At first I wasn't going to order anything but then I decided that I had definitely earned the calories. After I started eating, I realized that I had received a small but been charged for a medium as the small dish had been placed in a larger one to prevent drippage. I thought about going back to the register, but the person in line in front of me had argued that she had ordered a kid's size and been charged for a small and the employee had thrown two quarters out of the tip jar her way, obviously annoyed, so I decided to live with it.

Re-energized at least somewhat, the dregs of our group set out again. At this point we were pretty much down to the core. For me, by this time the tour had become a bit of an out-of body experience. All my body knew was to keep walking, and I'm not even sure how much of the scenery/what Jerry was saying I was actually taking in. Everyone in the group kept exchanging knowing glances and talking about how crazy Jerry was. Thing was, as tired as we were, by this point none of us wanted to leave. We had definitely gotten our $10 worth, yet we all I guess wanted to keep going, or at least felt like we had to since we had made it that far. We spotted the Empire State Building. We also looked at the Flatiron Building from about five different perspectives. It is a beautiful building, but I think I would have appreciated it more if I hadn't been so worn out by that time.

After walking what felt like half of the streets in all of Manhattan, we took the train to Times Square, the last stop on the tour. In my opinion, Times Square is a disgusting monument to mass consumerism and overconsumption. But I guess seeing it is an essential part of the New York experience. Jerry took us into the Marriott Marquis Hotel, a fancy hotel right in Times Square. He wanted to take us up in the elevator. The hotel has an elevator system where you punch in the floor you want to go to and then it assigns you to an elevator to prevent everyone from packing into one car. Once in the elevator, there aren't actually any buttons. Jerry had punched in the number for the top floor several times, but obviously our elevator was still overcrowded. One woman had the audacity to comment that "in the Las Vegas Marriott you have to show your room key to security to get in the elevator at night." One guy in our group commented, "Oh, yes, it keeps out the riffraff." It was pretty funny at the time. We got to the top, something like 45 stories up, and the look down was a bit terrifying. Then Jerry pointed out that as there were no buttons in the elevator, we would just have to wait in the elevator until someone pushed the floor we wanted to go to. The elevator ride then became like a thrill ride. I laughed deliriously and when we got out (perhaps because of a rush of blood to the head) I suggested doing it again. And I was serious.

As the tour was leaving the hotel, we said our goodbyes to the group and to Jerry to head to Junior's, which according to Kayleigh is the best cheesecake ever. I had a piece and maybe it's because I was full and hot and gross by this point, but I don't even remember liking it. And I'm a bit of a cheesecake fanatic.

We then struggled with finding a subway stop that would take us back to the hostel. I think we were all looking forward to taking what would potentially be the best shower of our lives and then collapsing in bed, but upon returning to the hostel we saw children running around in the hallway and heard really loud music on our floor. Apparently the hostel had rented out the "ballroom" on our floor for a quincenera or something. It was pretty damn loud for 1 a.m. I'd also like to say that when I was five I wasn't allowed to run around unsupervised or be awake past like 8 p.m. It would have been nice if you needed to use your key to get into the bathroom; not to keep out the "riffraff" but rather so there would have been toilet paper in the morning.

Sunday morning we wanted to head out early so we could get to the Metropolitan Museum right as it opened at 9:30. We got bagels again from the same place (damn I could really go for some of that cranberry walnut cream cheese again!). We were debating on how best to get there, either subway and bus or subway and walking across Central Park or taking a cab, and the cab ended up winning. It was only $3 a person, which was actually cheaper than the subway and bus route would have been. I had budgeted time as if we had been taking public transportation, so we got there before 9 and had time to sit down in Central Park for awhile. There were lots of dogs.
By the time we headed back to the museum at 9:25 there was a sizable line. I decided to do my best to see as much of the museum's permanent collection. I practically jogged through the Egyptian collection. I then began looking at the European masters collection of paintings, then looking through the Impressionist works and the modern art. The painting I liked the most was Madame X by John Singer Sargent:

I then met up with Kayleigh and we went up to the Jeff Koons sculpture exhibit on the roof of the museum. We ran into Diane and I stole half of her sandwich for lunch. The roof of the exhibit provided beautiful views of Central Park and the city. At this point, Diane decided she wanted to stay at the Met and I decided that I wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art, which is funny because initially Diane had planned to hit four museums in a day and I had been the one who had planned on staying at the Met for the whole day. Kayleigh didn't want to go to MoMA but she tagged along with me because she didn't feel comfortable making it back to the bus on her own.

At MoMA, I saw an incredible Salvador Dali exhibit featuring his paintings and films. It was the first day the exhibit was open though, so the crowds were heavy. It was incredible to see The Persistence of Memory in person. Although the painting was smaller than I had expected, I was able to notice the details such as the ants. Unfortunately Starry Night is out on tour. With my remaining time, I tried to take in as much of MoMA's permanent collection of painting and sculpture as possible.

Once the museum closed, I went over to the Rockefeller Center to meet Kayleigh. We ended up walking all the way back to MoMA to catch the train to Penn Station. We had dinner at a restaurant nearby, and I thought we were running late as we grabbed smoothies at a Dunkin Donuts, but as it turned out we were just fine in terms of time. When we arrived, we noticed two lines for Megabus but only one bus. That bus, as it turned out, was headed to Boston, and ours was caught in traffic. Everyone in line was getting antsy, but I guess you really get what you pay for. Megabus was still the cheapest option by far compared to flying, taking the train, or driving, so the delays were livable. I ended up sitting behind a woman who had the seat cranked all the way back over my knees, which is even more annoying on a cramped bus than it is on a cramped plane. Now, perhaps it's because I'm tall and have two bum knees, but I find leaning back on your chair to be unnecessary and incredibly rude. By the time we made it back to DC, it was about 1 a.m. so the Metro was closed and we had to catch a cab.

I got five hours of sleep that night if I was lucky, but surprisingly the exhaustion didn't catch up with me until Tuesday. And, as it turns out, with my final exam, my knee sprain, and the holiday, I only made it in to the internship two days this week...

So, overall, I had a blast in New York. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. While the city certainly is large and somewhat overwhelming, I think this weekend brought me past the point of completely writing the city off on account of those factors. I could definitely see myself going to law school there. And right now it's seeming as though I'll go to law school right out of undergrad, so I may be a New Yorker in two years...

I think I probably walked about 26 miles on Saturday. If Jerry would follow me to Europe next year, I could see all of the off-the-beaten track sites in Europe and probably lose about 30 pounds. I just hope my knees make it :(