Glad to go but more glad to stay

Cassie asked me today whether I'm glad I'm coming back to the UAE in the fall, and the answer is yes. I'm super excited to be joining a church family at UCCD (Lord willing), to see how the kids I babysit have changed over the summer, finally eat at Zaatar wa Zeit, survive another National Day...ya know, just live in the UAE. Cassie's excited to be going to Paris too.
Study abroad is usually something to get excited about--it's hard to make the change, but worth the challenge. At this point for me the opposite is true. I've traveled a lot and I love it--transition is easy. It's committing to a place that's hard. Sustaining relationships through hard times, taking responisibility for citizenship where you live, living in a place long enough to make enemies, to get bored with your same-old same-old routine, to see the limitations and grow complacent about the possibilities.
But I beleive stability is good, and biblical, and it has some unexpected benefits. As I said (without a hint of the facetious, naturally) in my Global Ed application essay was that "I want my citizenship to be not just global but responsible."
I take a long time to get to know people, a long time to open up. I feed off the emotional atmosphere around me so if that environment's not so upbeat, I'm in trouble. I'm just starting to grow in my faith, and trust God that even if it means missed opportunities to be cosmopolitan (what does that mean?), I'll be sitting under the teaching of great men of God and sharing meals with my CLG and maybe taking some practical steps towards being an adult as well. (You know, internships and maybe even BUYING A CAR.)
As Cassie said, this moving around thing is hard but life's in a pretty good place if we have so many memories and so many things we know we're going to miss. I'm looking forward to hearing about my friends' experiences abroad and glad I get to welcome them back. But I'm also glad I get this chance to make me think about the things and people in my life I'll miss--and to practice holding onto them.

Yay for a Reading Life

Armed with a Nook and inspired by Cassie's 2012 resolution to read all of Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century, I'm working my way through a similar list. Why this one? No real reason. I just like the looks of it. Thanks to a literary childhood and high school English, I've already knocked 19 off the list.

1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein (thanks to my dad, explored it for the first time in 2nd grade)
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell (This one's thanks to getting locked in a dorm room at UWCiM with nothing to do but read this book.)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
7. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
8. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
9. Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
10. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
11. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein
12. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
13. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
14. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (although I think I'd already heard it quoted in it's entirety over the course of my childhood--again, thanks, Dad.)
15. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (and I must say, I'm glad that one's out of the way)
17. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
18. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

We'll see what's next. :)

Today marks the end of an era. I got today off work (staff luncheon with seating too limited to invite interns) so I splurged on a ticket to the matinee performance of Phantom of the Opera.  I remember being introduced to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical at a junior high sleepover, surrounded by the same group of girls with whom I danced choreographies to songs by The Cheetah Girls, wore bubble shirts and slap bracelets, and made funky monkey merchandise. I wasn’t actually as touched by the stage version of Phantom as the movie or the original book, but now that I’ve seen it on Broadway, I feel like all my junior high dreams are fulfilled.

Dear NYC,

First a disclaimer...I like you really really a lot. But I'm not a New Yorker. MY gut reaction is to hold doors for anyone in the immediate vicinity, smile at people on the street, and refer to people at sir and ma'am. I HAVE moved past constantly staring at the skyline and have picked up the skill of taking mental pictures of the more eccentric pedestrians for later review rather than blatantly staring...I suspect Yannick and Tom are growing weary of me suggesting they should ALSO try to acquire this skill.  I guess the past few days have been kind of an exercise in forcible assimilation. Too much encountering pushy strangers in the subway and glimpsing the chaos of a Manhattan work environment. The other at dinner Josh got called out by a guy who thought he was being stared at when Josh was actually just staring off into space. Now honestly, New York. The urban reality of constantly brushing shoulders is constant interactions of urban life are energizing but also wear me down.

The other night I went jogging to the East River...a proud accomplishment for a non-runner. It's absolutely gorgeous...views of the piers, and the Manhattan skyline curving around to the Brooklyn Bridge. Pretty much enough to make me fall in love with you again. And then some guy came up to me and said, "ExcusemeI'mreallysorrybutdoyouknowifthere'saplacearoundhereIcanurinate??". And then a couple of nights ago, I went to a building downtown, the facade of which had games someone had projected for people to play. And yesterday at work, I found out a gigantic moose head fell off the wall spewing a shower of arsenic and formaldehyde around the room. So now a hasmat team has to come clean all the bits of his face off the floor. And last night, I got to mingle (rather awkwardly) with Denzel Washington's daughter and the cast of the Royal Shakespeare Company at a cast party. Yes I did. So I guess there's an awesome eccentricity to city life which makes all the rest worthwhile.

Also, New York, your people have managed to make riding a rush hour subway, which involves standing with your crotch probably in the face of the person who nabbed a seat on the bench in front of you, and impressively un-awkward interaction. Well done on that one.

Sincerely,
A Resident Trying To Melt In The Pot

I Walk the (High)Line

I love it when people get creative with city spaces. I refuse to see urban decay as anything but an opportunity for imagination, and one of the coolest ideas I've seen so far is NYC's High Line. Until recently, it was an abandoned elevated railroad track quickly turning into a bad part of town. Section by section, it's being renovated and transformed into a walkway and park along the Hudson River.

BUSY WEEK (...I only blog when they are). On top of what I mentioned before has been piled a visit to the Brooklyn Bridge (cliche, but still one of my favorite spots in Manhattan when you walk out to the middle before looking back at the skyline), applying for jobs, a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (can't compare to the ones in the Lou!) a weirdly trashy mermaid parade on Coney Island (at least mildly amusing until a kid started projectile vomiting into the crowd right in front of me), a comedy show at Amy Polar's former club (Upright Citizens' Brigade-only one guy was funny and the others were unbearably crude), a visit to the Whitney museum, jazz in a park near the Hudson River, tramping around Brooklyn trying to get directions to an outdoor concert (try watching your friends ask "which was to go to cross the river" when you're here and see what kind of looks you get), atrip to ToysRUs in Times Square (turns out Obama was right down the street!). Some of us had the idea that it would be AWESOME to take advantage of the long sometimes-dark hallways in Sama to start a laser tag league. So Alex, being epic as he is (imagine a gentlemanly Gene Kelly who sings Phantom of the Opera in the stairwells but also has mad science skills and an equally epic girlfriend) ordered some on eBay and they arrived yesterday. My aim could use some work but yeah. We so excited.


The best thing is that I believe all of the afore-mentioned were free! (Well ok-the best part is that I get to do all of it with my NYU peeps, but the fact that it doesn't break the bank helps.) Summer in NYC is great for that, and my roommate Claudia is a champion bargain-hunter. But I have been doing A LOT on top of my internship so today I'm taking it easy. Started the morning with Starbuck's (ordering a non-fat Java-Chip Frappacino but asking for whipped cream on top defeats the purpose, doesn't it?), and plan to curl up in bed and hide from this dreary day. And I'm not getting up until my mind quiets down (these tangental thoughts (expressed in blogposts through excessive parenthetical statements) are driving me crazy).

PS-I'm being caught off-guard when various NYU staff realize I'm from Abu Dhabi because the general response is, "Oh! ...You're one of them!" Yes. I am one of them. For better or for worse, 'til graduation do us part. I'm sure they're just curious (I would be. I can be nosy as all get-out.), but when they just leave it at that I feel like I should pull out an abaya or start spewing Arabic in answer to the inquisitive looks on their faces. Oh, well. So much for New York being anonymous. 

Park Avenue Armory

 Washington Square Park (the park with the arch is the closest thing NYU has to a "center of campus") is totally transformed from the desolate wasteland it was when I was here in January. I have yet to go there and NOT see people lounging on the grass, playing various instruments, or...walking around in the empty fountain.

 Yesterday I scoped out the place where I'll be interning, and checked out Central Park since it's only a couple of blocks away. First recognizable thing I saw was Balto!!! So many childhood memories of watching the animated film and seeing a shot of this statue at the end....

 Also walked down a lane at the end of which sits Robert Burns. I first  heard of him when I was in Scotland, his native land. On Robbie Burns day, Scots often gather to recite his poetry and eat haggis (sheep's stomach stuffed with minced meats) - which to be honest, was far more memorable than the poetry. Still, I'm adding him to my summer reading list...

 Views from Central Park of what I call the swankier part of town...

...aaaand, my place of internship...ness! Park Avenue Armory takes up a whole city block and is just as fantastically castle-like on the inside as on its exterior. Aside from preserving this quite cool historic site, they host very unique art exhibitions and performances. The big attraction while I'm there is a set of performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company...day 1, and I can already tell there is WAY more work required to put on these kinds of events than I would have guessed. But that should keep us busy - I'm excited!

Last night, we NYUADers also went to a Yankees game...where they pummeled the Rangers

Tom and Aly's first experience with Cracker Jacks...good times for the rest of us.