The Journey Continues

Good morning!
It is exactly 8:00 in room 1907.
I woke up pretty early, and I've been looking out our window. It's great to be on the 19th floor. You can see everything, but it is like a pop up book rather than a map.
People are already bustling. Walking to school and work. A bunch of trucks have been driving around to deliver fruit and stuff. Taxis are everywhere already. I wonder if taxis have routes, where they drive around in circles until someone flags them down, or if they just randomly drive.
I think being a taxi driver would be kine of fun. Hearing your clients conversations. Wondering who they are and what they're doing and why they are here. I kind of like taxis. You know, in the taxi last nigh, there was a little taxi weather report on the screen, and they had this little lavender bunny bounce around the weather charts and stuff. It was so darn cute!
Pigeons are walking around....
Wow. So many people in New York. It's weird that I'll even maybe see some of them again. And they don't even know I'm here watching them.
...
I so did enot think of that while we were walking around yesterday!! Hmm. Normally I'm really aware of things like that. I will certainly be today! With so many windows, that will be a little overwhelming. So many windows. So many cars. So many people!
And all these doorst and stuff on the roofs! I pretend there are secret labratories behind the doors on the roofs. I've also been making stories for people living in the apartments behind the windows above the sto re across the street. I have them all written down. It's a soap opera waiting to happen!
I also discovered that the buses have numbers on them, like Chicago. I'll post a list later. see you after Chinatown! At least I think that's what we're doing first....

9:37 at Hotel Beacon
Wow! That was a long day!
I'm sorry I haven't updated, but this is the first time I have been home all day. I'll break the day up into sections. I guess I will publish this post after each one so you guys can ca tch at least one of them. Hopefully.

THE SUBWAY
Uuuuuugh!!!
Sooooooooo crowded. Ugh. And loud. And crowded.
There were so many people all going places. When we got on our first train, it was so packed that we barely managed to squeeze through the doors. I mean, not Tokyo packed, but crowded. very. I was in that ackward position where I couldn't quite reach any of the poles and I kept bumping into people. Eventuallyafter a couple train transitions, I managed to snag a seat on a slightly emptier train. On the next stop, the person next to me left, and I slid into the middle of the seat, feeling satisfied. Then the train pulled out and I slammed into the little barrier thing. Hard.
Several people were busking in the station. That always depresses me, even if they're happy middle class folk. I feel so guilty for not supporting them when they are giving me this music!
Anyways, I freaked out at the thought of entering the subway again, but on the way back it was rather empty and I enjoyed it. I really like motion, actually. Riding in cars, trains, planes and buses is just fun to me. We managed to stay on one local train the entire way back. It s longer on the local train, but I enjoyed it.
There's something that just seems so comforting about that being your routine to get to and from work. The subway. Public transportation. In your business suit and all that. With coffee or a scone or something that you picked up on the way.

LITTLE ITALY
Little Italy was cool.It was vey pretty and full of color. It was also full of restaurants. I'm not sure how any of the restaurants survive. I mean there is nothing but restaurants. No Italian shops or anything. Tons of restaurants.
And the guys outside the restaurants were just really annoying. They would stand outside and are all "Wanna eat here?" I mean, they were very polite (and in some cases, Italian) about it, it was just so irritating!And pointless.
I mean,you can see that I have turned down every other guy on this street. That could be for two reasons. Three, I guess.
1. I don't like Italian food.
2. I am already planning to eat somewhere. If that's you, great, you do not have any reason to ambush me. If not, you jumping out at me will not make a difference! please stop wasting my time!
3. I'M NOT HUNGRY!!!
Little Italy was cool, though. Nice and cultural. Bright and colorful.

CHINATOWN
Chinatown was extremely big! There were lots of stores with small fronts going deep into the building. They were full of sparkly colorful fans and carvings and such. Here was occasionally some stuff that wasn't really Chinese, like tourist shirts and stuff
Chinatown smelled very good. There wasn't a ton of restaurants, but the ones that were there made the streets smell nice over the heavy traffic.
We ate in a very small place. It was small, but popular. Lot's of people came there after us. It was good! I had a noodle soup with beef and herbs and stuff. The restaurant was really cool, because you could see this little staff cooking the entire time!
They would come out of the tiny kitchen thing with bowls of stuff and mash it and add seasoning on the little counter outside or whatever. This wasn't really to put on a show - they were just being efficient of space.
And then the guy in the kitchen was Hans pulling all these noodles! It was amazing. He would take some dough and just pull it into dough strands. Then he'd bring the strands together and pull husbands apart and the noodles would already be twice as thin! It was amazing. He was extremely good at it. The noodles and the soup tasted delicious.
Btw - I totally ate all the noodles with chopsticks! It was hard. I've eaten stuff with chopsticks before, but these would all wriggle out, so I had to lean low over my plate.
Anyways, then we left and kept walking, and came across the Chinatown Icecream Factory, which we had read in our little touristy book thing had the beat ice cream in NYC.
And it totally did. It was delicious! My too flavors were mocha chip and almond cake. They were both excellent, but I think I enjoyed the almond better.
We bought a dragon fruit and some large grapes from a little market someone had set up on the street.

LOWER EAST SIDE
We had a tour of the Lower East Side scheduled for 2:00, but on the way, we ran into this other small tour going inside the remaining preserved tenement building - 97 Orchid street.
We went inside and it was really cool. There was all this really old woodwork and tile patterns. Some nice metalwork on the ceiling in doorways. There were these oil paintings on the canvasy walls. The stairs were fun. You could see it was all dented and polished from being used decades.
Tenement buildings, for those of you who have forgotten your fifth grade education, were where immigrants would pile into tiny apartments with very harsh living conditions.
The tour guide was very good.
Then we met up with our own tour. We met up at this center with a bunch of books that was this education center about the Lower East Side. Then we walked around looking at architecture and temples and such. We talked about tenement buildings and construction and living opportunities and schools in Lower East Side, mainly since immigration.
There were a ton of different places of worship for many different religions. Some temples held multiple religious. The tour guide talked about Taoism and Confucianism, and I was very satisfied because I had just learned about those religions! Apparently today was a holiday (I am afraid I am not certain of the name of the specific religion. I don't want to
accidentally say the wrong one.) We saw incense burners outside this one Temple hooding a mix of religions. It was very interesting. We had actually seen people burning these shiny gold and silver envelopes in this oven earlier. Out on the street. I suspect that was for the same holiday.
We also passed a large synagogue that some photographer had built. It was pretty impressive. There was a large circular window with a design. The photograph had rearranged a Star of David to look like a camera shutter. That was great. It was subtle.
The architecture was very interesting - how it changed with the time. People just kept wrecking the old stuff and building up, higher and higher.
It was very cool, but it lasted two hours. Agh. My feet were dead, so we took a taxi to the Brooklyn Bridge, even though it wasn't that far away.