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Blogger: Claire
Class Year: Sophomore
Academics: Honors Program, History Major
Sunday, August 2
Hello from New York City!
It’s so exciting to finally be in the city that I have ALWAYS wanted to visit! I was seriously singing Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” in the days before we left, and I know for a FACT that I was not the only one! Getting here was quite an experience, though: we spent almost 24 hours on various trains, including Amtrak and the subway. I’ve never been on a train before (or a plane for that matter), but I thought Amtrak was better than the charter buses I’ve travelled on previously (definitely more leg room, but still not enough to be able to sleep very well—at least for me). We had lovely pre-packaged burgers and pizza that were just heated in the microwave on board, and I think everyone was pretty much ready for fresh food by the time we got to New York! But we just had to make the best of our situation; we were apparently going half-speed for a lot of the journey because of flash flooding or something weather-related. Nonetheless, we arrived safely at Penn Station around 3 in the morning on Saturday.
First impression of the city: hot. Obscenely hot (temperature-wise). And we were underground, which I would have thought would be more cool, but apparently not. The subway stations were much of what we saw when we got here. (I was amused to see that there are mini Kmarts in some of the stations, including Penn.) Not everything went exactly smoothly, though; apparently with the subway cards, once you swipe them and your card is charged, you have to go quickly. However, sometimes it will lock you out if you don’t do something exactly right. Well, I was one of the lucky ones to be locked out, and I got to crawl under the turnstile on my hands and knees. I received a very close look at the subway station’s floor! Luckily, it didn’t happen to anyone else. Eventually, we emerged from the excruciatingly hot subway stations (if you’ve seen Little Nicky with Adam Sandler, the subway stations could really be an entrance to Hell. I really can’t imagine what they would be like if it were any hotter than it is now.) in Brooklyn, and it was literally a breath of fresh air. Not only was it much cooler, but we were also on our way to showers and bed!!!! I’m pretty darn sure that most of us slept like the dead Friday night (or, I guess, really Saturday morning).
Saturday was pretty much spent in Central Park. We started off walking around, and as we were stopped for a quick break, some of the boys discovered a humongous rock; naturally, they decided to climb to the top, which was sort of amusing to watch. Right after that, we stopped at the Central Park Carousel and a few of us decided that we wanted to take a ride. I can honestly say that that carousel was one of the fastest that I’ve ever been on; the speed of the rotations was pretty high compared to some of the other ones I’ve been on in my eighteen years of living. It was very fun. After that we went a little bit deeper into Central Park and found the famous fountain that has been in countless movies, but, alas, no one was filming today. :( We also saw a bunch of people dressed up in costume including Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and a man in a dress and a feather wig. Sites also seen included Strawberry Fields (John Lennon’s memorial) and the Dakota Building (right in front of which was where he was killed).
We also got to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also known as “The Met.” We explored for two hours or so, and we got to see some pieces by some very famous artists. I went through some of the European paintings and sculptures with a few other people, and we saw some Monets, Van Goghs, Seurats, and many others. It was pretty cool to see some famous paintings up close and personal! We also saw some very old armor (like what the knights wore), Egyptian hieroglyphic stuff, and some designer gowns that were in a special exhibit. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get through the entire Met in two hours, and it’s also very hard to do on only a little bit of sleep, but we got to see some good stuff while we were there.
However, the biggest adventure of the day was by far toward the end of the day. Most of the group decided to go and get dinner in Little Italy right after the Met. Dr. Bodle and Dr. Barkley still had to something at the Met and then go back to the retreat house, so we decided to head out on our own. The plan was to get dinner in Little Italy at a restaurant that a museum worker at the Met suggested. He even was nice enough to give us directions! We went to get on the subway, but it turned out that the first train that came was too crowded for all 12 of us to fit on together. Two people ended up on that train, though in different cars, while the rest of us just waited for the next one. We were going to meet up with them at the Houston (actually pronounced HOUSE-ton) stop to head on to Little Italy. HOWEVER once the rest of us got onto the next train, we discovered that there was no Houston exit. Uh oh. Once we figured out we really needed the Bleecker exit, we realized that the two people on the train before us had no clue that that was the case, and with virtually no cell service in the subway, we couldn’t get a hold of them. So to make a long story short, we spent a long trying to get a hold of these two people and figure out a central meeting place, and once everyone was finally together, we couldn’t even find that restaurant. It was getting late and everyone was hungry, so we just split up again in smaller groups and went to different places to eat!
Everything that we did today was a big part of the New York experience to me… From getting locked out of the subway to riding the Central Park carousel to experiencing fine art in the Met to trying to find our way to an unknown restaurant. It’s tiring, but still a TON of fun! I have a feeling that this coming week is going to be one that I’m NEVER going to forget, and being able to document it will make it that much more memorable!
Tuesday, August 4
The last two days have been absolutely jam-packed with stuff to do! From visiting Elizabeth Seton’s old haunts to doing the whole tourist thing and seeing Times Square, we’ve been having BUNCHES of fun! Sunday morning and afternoon was spent walking around Manhattan. It was very rainy in the beginning, but everyone was armed with their umbrellas and we all were ready to tackle some huge puddles. One of the first things we saw was St. Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Church, the oldest church in Manhattan. Here’s a fun fact about St. Paul’s: it is the site where George Washington came to pray after he was inaugurated president; they still have “his” pew on display!! St. Paul’s was also LITERALLY in front of the World Trade Center (when it was there, of course). Incredibly, the church was not damaged at all on September 11th, and actually became a refuge for the rescue workers. There were many, many memorials that were saved and put on display in the church, and it was quite sobering.
After walking around Manhattan a bit more, going to mass at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Shrine (which was teensy-tiny, and kind of triangular in shape, but VERY cute), and passing by the incredibly Gothic Trinity Church, we went to the South Street Seaport. It still has its cobbled roads and some pretty cool-looking ships in the harbor, but it also offers a bunch of shops and a few restaurants, including the one where we had lunch called Il Porto (and they have AMAZING tiramisu!!!). I think the rain added to the seaport atmosphere, if that makes any sense. It was just pretty cool to walk around, despite being offered Coach bags and Rolex watches by guys pretending to talk on cellphones. But again, that’s part of the New York experience.
That night, we experienced perhaps what is considered to be the most tourist-y of tourist attractions: the circus that is known as Times Square. I was expecting things to be pretty big, based off of what people have told me and, of course, from pictures, but I was never expecting THAT. Everything is GINORMOUS and there were all sorts of stores, from the requisite Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood to the M&M’s store and the Toys R Us with the Ferris wheel in the middle of the store. It was SO crowded with other tourists and at least a billion street vendors, that it was almost disgusting yet completely fascinating at the same time. I was most definitely on sensory overload by the time we decided it was time to return to the retreat house.
Monday morning, we were all up bright and early so we could catch the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Apparently, if you don’t go really early, you might never step onto a ferry the whole day, even with tickets. When we returned at 12:30, there was an INCREDIBLY long line that went all throughout Battery Park. But anyway, the Statue of Liberty was pretty cool to get to see up close, even if it is nearly impossible to get tickets to the top. Ellis Island was also really interesting (but of course I would think that—I am a history major after all…). They had stuff like a wall of the different types of money that the immigrants had with them and examples of all of the health and mental testing people coming into America had to do. There’s also a place where people can look up family members that entered America through Ellis Island; me and a couple other people were fully prepared to dole out $5 to see our ancestors’ records, we discovered (after waiting in line for a while) that our family did not enter during the limited period that is on file. :( But that’s ok. It was still pretty cool to see.
However, our afternoon activity tied in the most with what our class will be studying—we were able to tour the United Nations. Our tour guide was Aaron, and he took us around an exhibit to see some of the things that the U.N. focuses on, including disarmament and improving conditions for better health. When Aaron started to talk about the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, our class had a pretty good idea, since Jim and Buffy prepped us so well! Although our tour was pretty limited, we did get to go into the General Assembly room. We also found out that since the U. N. is on what is actually international ground, they have their own police force, not to mention their own fire department and post office! I sent a post card back home with an official United Nations stamp! It’ll be interesting to see what markings the post office uses when I return home.
After dinner that night, everyone pretty much got to do whatever. I returned to Times Square with my buddy to find a New York City sweatshirt and I <3 NY T-shirt and also to run back into the Hershey’s store. We then went to Macy’s (which closed 10 minutes after we arrived there), just to say that we have been inside the largest store in the world (by the way, their purse selection is to DIE for!!!!!!!). We were going to go to FAO Schwarz, that famed toy store with the huge stuffed animals, but we decided that we were too tired and returned home to rest (and to blog). It was a good thing we didn’t try to go, because apparently they close at 7 and it was almost 10 at night (some other people the hours out the hard way). However, we are planning to try going tomorrow while we are exploring Manhattan!
Another two days gone by, and we’ve still got a lot to do (which is DEFINITELY a good thing). So far, I’m pretty much getting the whole I <3 NY obsession… My, oh my, that stuff is EVERYWHERE!!!
Thursday, August 6
The last couple of days have definitely taken on a more serious tone, or at least they have in the mornings. We are spending our last few days in New York focused on the Millennium Development Goals, or things that the United Nations are really working to solve. This whole course is really about looking at the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs) in not only their global contexts, but also their local ones. On Tuesday morning, Sister Mary Jo Toll, SND, came to the retreat house to talk to our group about human trafficking. While eradicating human trafficking is not specifically a MDG in itself, it ties into many of them. This talk was incredibly eye-opening, and the whole human trafficking issue DISGUSTS me. In a nutshell, children and women living in a state of poverty are basically being abducted through fraud (for example, they are promised money and a better life, and many times the opportunity to receive an education) or by force. These people are then sold cheaply to others who then use the trafficked people as very cheap labor (domestic slavery and slave labor in fields and factories), essentially as products for commercial sex exploitation (prostitution—both young children and women), and as unwilling organ donors while they are still living (we heard one horrific story about an abducted child being found later… minus one kidney). Apparently slavery is even more widespread than it was in the middle of the transatlantic slave trade. There is a lot of trafficking here in New York, but the scariest part is that Buffy said that the Cincinnati airport is actually a big hub for human trafficking, as well. We’re learning more about that later in the course. I really don’t want to depress anyone TOO much, so I’m moving on.
Wednesday morning, we listened to Sister Caroljean Willie, SC, fondly known as “CJ,” and we got to hear about her work as an NGO, or Nongovernment Organization Representative), and as a result, her hands-on work on the MDGs. CJ just returned from Africa, where she got to see a great micro-financing program in the works (this is a way to help eradicate poverty, which also happens to be a MDG). Through this program, called Jamiibora, people can get a loan to start a little business in order to make more money, and hence emerge from poverty, as long as they have a little money saved. For example, if a person has enough money saved, they can get a loan to buy a few vegetables, which they would then turn around and sell at a higher price. Then, they could buy more vegetables and sell those, and continue to make money. This program has helped an INCREDIBLE amount of people, and it is very inspiring to hear the stories of those that have overcome their poverty. It instills a sense of hope for the future of so many more people living in poverty. Later that day, we went with CJ to the United States Mission to the United Nations, where we had a private briefing with Peggy Kerry (John Kerry’s sister… and OH MY GOSH do they look alike!!!!!), an NGO liason, and Hugh Dugan, a United States delegate to the UN. It was interesting to hear them speak of what the United States Mission is really focusing on in regards to the UN.
Other things from the past two days include exploring Greenwich Village which not only has many bohemian roots, as is evident from the types of shops that line the streets, but also is the home of a VERY delicious bakery called Rocco’s (but the Bonomini bakery in Northside will always be nearest and dearest to my heart…). We also visited the Strand Bookstore (not in the Village), which apparently has 18 MILES of books!!!! It’s really astonishing to see how many books can be crammed into one store and still have some sort of order. Wednesday night we really split into groups and did our own little things. I ended up going back to the Strand, then to Times Square (for the third time this week, but it’s still kinda fun to look at everything) and then across the Brooklyn Bridge around midnight, which was exciting. The New York skyline from the Bridge is breathtaking, and I think I got some great pictures of it. I tried not to look down through the slats on the bridge to the highway below or I would have gotten dizzy and started freaking out. I’m definitely not a huge fan of heights, but you can’t really tell you’re up high unless you look down. Still a great experience.
Thursday is our last day in New York, and it makes me sad. I’ve enjoyed my time here IMMENSELY. I think our schedule is pretty busy, and it’ll be interesting to see how much we can cram into a space of a few hours…
Friday, August 7
Today (Thursday) was our last day in the Big Apple (and I still don’t know why it’s called that…). We had a jam-packed schedule so we could fit in everything that we were unable to do earlier this week, and I think everyone will be dead asleep on the train at some point tomorrow. We get to leave the retreat house by 5 in the morning to catch our 6:30 train. HOPEFULLY there won’t be any flooding problems so we can get back to Cincinnati in less than 22 hours. That would be wonderful!!!
Anyway, we started out the day at the “Sure We Can” Redemption Center, which is run by Sister Ana Martinez de Luco. It is basically a recycling center that enables some homeless people to make a little money by collecting recyclables. Sister Ana herself actually has chosen to live among the homeless, and it was interesting (to say the least) to have another perspective on homelessness; one that is from someone who has CHOSEN to live in the streets. She told us about how her homeless friends have many, many, many reasons for being homeless and that she has learned much from them. I think because Sister Ana’s aspect was so different, it is going to take some time for people to really think things through. I do know that there are some people who don’t necessarily agree with some of the things that Sister Ana divulged to us. Me? I’m still mulling over what Sister Ana said.
After we were finished with Sister Ana, we went and had lunch at this little Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn that just opened this past Monday! The owner was EXTREMELY excited to see us and gave us free cheese quesadillas while we waited for our food. I was so stuffed, I couldn’t even finish my chimichangas and had to bring them back to the retreat house. By the way, the guacamole was EXCELLENT!!
After lunch, we all split up and went different ways (once again). My group ended up going to Times Square to see about Broadway tickets for part of the group. We walked up to Midtown Manhattan and got to see all of the designer shops. We went inside Tiffany and Co., which was really neat. I’m a HUGE Audrey Hepburn fan, so it was fun to go in to the store that is such a big part of one of my favorite movies (Breakfast at Tiffany’s for all those who don’t know). After that, we walked down to FAO Schwarz and looked at all the toys. We then walked down to the subway station (and passed the Plaza hotel on our way—also loved Eloise when I was younger, so that was very exciting as well!) to go down to Chinatown! We looked through the shops with all of the knockoff purses and cheap jewelry, got offered bootleg movies, more Rolex watches, and Coach and Chanel handbags, and finally grabbed something to eat at a little Chinese restaurant (again, VERY yummy). After that, we split up into smaller groups so one part of the group could go see Altar Boyz (they got promotional tickets for $40 bucks a pop! Great deal!!) while my buddy and I went to see Avenue Q. Oh my GOSH, that was HILARIOUS!!!! Our seats weren’t bad at all for being the cheapest we could find ($86 each… actually not that bad, and TOTALLY worth it!), and we both definitely enjoyed it immensely.
The other group that I was not part of at all ended up going to Coney Island, which I am hearing was not in the best part of Brooklyn and also pretty dirty. They went on the Wonder Wheel, which is apparently not your average Ferris wheel and a LOT of fun. They also went to Chinatown (and probably had a similar experience that we did) and then bought some groceries for the train ride tomorrow (because train food is pretty foul).
We all came back to the retreat house afterward to pack, shower, and sleep a little (and blog, for me). It’s really hard to believe that we’ll be back in Cincinnati on Saturday. I had BUNCHES AND BUNCHES of fun on this trip, and I am so excited that the Mount could offer a course like this to its students. I don’t know that students attending a larger university could get a similar experience to the one that we did, particularly because of the dedication of our two amazing professors/tour guides/stand-in “Mom” and “Dad,” Buffy and Jim. This was most definitely a memorable week, and one that I will recall with GREAT fondness. Good-bye, New York!!!!!!
Final Thoughts: September 30
So it’s been almost two months since we returned from New York, and I still find myself wishing I were there. Is that bad?? Not necessarily, I guess. I think New York is one of those places where you can easily get addicted to the energy that surrounds the city (after all, it IS “the city that never sleeps”…), and when you’re a college student up until all hours of the night just dying for a last kick of energy to get you through the final page of the paper you’re writing, New York starts to sound pretty darn good. But it’s MORE than that, too. Maybe it’s because I’ve always wanted to go there since I was little, and now that I know what’s there, I want to keep going back. Who knows? All I know is I LOOOOOOOVED my time there!
My eyes were also opened to many things while in New York. The human trafficking issue is one of them that still really stands out in my mind; I keep thinking that while I am comfortable sitting on my bed writing this blog, there are all of these people out there who are being forced to do unspeakable things just so they can live. It really makes me want to do something. I think that Jim and Buffy must have guessed that something like that might happen, because adding the Service Learning to the course gives us a chance to help people in some way. I started volunteering at CAIN last week, and I am helping people living in poverty receive emergency assistance. I’m so excited to have this opportunity because I get to SEE what a difference I am making! The travel study really helped to enrich my education, and I have a feeling that I will continue to see the effects of the trip past this semester; sometimes it takes getting out of one’s normal environment to understand what is really going on in the world. It certainly is going to enable me to view things from different perspectives in my work as a history major! I am very thankful that the Mount and the Honors Program has provided this chance for us to experience the wonder that is New York City, and I HIGHLY recommend that anyone who has the opportunity to do a travel study to DO IT! It’s so much fun, you’ll meet more people, and, best of all, you’ll get to experience something completely new and exciting!
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