Impeccably dressed in your second hand vest

wednesday. first day of classes. i had english and i love my teacher. he's like an caricature of a teacher. complete with elbow patches. and he just talks the whole time and goes off in random tangents. plus he has a lot of similar views to me such as good literature is brief and women writers suck. but he got sucky ratings on rate my professor so maybe the novelty will wear off soon.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=23804

that's such a funny website. and everyone here checks it. and changes classes if the teacher is crap.

after i had public speaking. it was awful. we had to do a speech right away. and i wouldn't have minded so much if we could just speak about ourselves but we had to do the stupid pairing off and talking about our partner thing. this teacher also had crappy ratings on that site. and i found out from someone in another speaking class that they didn't have to do a speech first day and they only have 2 speeches to do for the semester, whereas we have 5 more. like wtf.

at night i had free pizza on the 18th floor. but it was cut short by the RA telling us to get our coats cause there was going to be a fire drill. so i went down to to tell my roommate and we take the elevator down to go grocery shopping before it starts so we don't have to walk down 15 flights of stairs.

so i really can't tell tone with these Americans sometimes. afterwards vicky comes into our room and starts lecturing jess and i about the severity of fire drills and she was so over the top i was so sure she was joking and i was laughing. but then after awhile it became apparent that she was being deadly serious and i was like oh shit sorry.

thursday i had a stalker. some guy saw me as i was exiting the building. and was all like "hey good looking" so i ignored him and kept walking. but i sense that he's behind me and don't turn around. and yeah he was following me for about 5 blocks until he caught up with me and then he said "I'M NOT TRYING TO KILL YOU i just want to talk to you" haha so i talked and walked with him just to be nice. he had a giant black poodle who was super cute. but at the end of the street when he asked for my number i said i didn't have one and bolted.

i was heading to century 21 again for the umpteenth time. when i left i saw my first new york city rat. a guy nudged me and pointed at it.

at night i had painting and the teacher let us out 2 hours early cause it was the first class and we had to buy materials. this class should be a breeze she told us we all get an A. and our homework is to record a dream each week. one week we're supposed to observe a shadow and describe it. in WORDS. i had free ice cream for dinner from the lobby.

friday. had a free donut for breakfast from the breakfast table downstairs. the donut was the least sweetest thing i could see. english again. bought a laptop. it's a cute vaio with inbuilt camera and microphone so will be webcamming it up soon when i figure it all out.

i don't know why but i keep thinking I'm going to bump into someone i know on the streets. some guy punched me in the arm and then started waving frantically in my face like i should recognize him. things like that keep happening.

finally met up with allie. we had dinner in little italy. then we walked around saks fifth avenue and rockefeller ice rink which looks so big in movies but is actually the size of your backyard pool.

today is saturday and i did have a science class to go to but i think i'm going to drop out. cause i want to save my science for astronomy! so i think i'm going to replace it with french.

The cigarettes don't have warnings here.

I'm reading this for english.

Letting it sink in.
I don't know why I look so tired and beaten up. It might be my crappy bed.

The rest of my english texts save two that i forgot to get.

In case you've forgotten what I look like.

This chick looks the same.

'Cause there ain't no room in the city today

Sunday I was supposed to move into my dorm. But I took one look at it and went into deep depression. It looks like a prison cell. so I've been staying at the hotel. Sunday night dad and I saw spamalot on Broadway. it was pretty good. they showered us in confetti at the end. oh clay Aiken was in it as well as some other people i recognized but couldn't name.



MLK day we went to the natural history museum. it's actually pretty boring. it's like a giant classroom. we saw the space show but it was so repetitive for the kiddies. but we got to see some dinosaur bones. yay. then we went up the empire state building. it was pretty cool. but i really hate doing touristy things. it's so not me.



tonight is my dad's last night and we had dinner at tavern on the green. it's at central park. it's really pretty, very old fashioned with ornate ceiling and lots of heavy chandeliers. it's like a glass garden house surrounded by fairy light trees. the oysters were delicious but the rest was pretty standard. although i received some very gruesome news. the barista did not know what a macchiato was..and neither did any of the waiters..i tried to explain it but i got an espresso with some milk mixed in and a lemon rind. i thought it was a bit weird but you're supposed to twist it and drop it in your espresso.



tomorrow class starts and I'll have to stay on campus. but i met my roommate today when i was dropping off some stuff. and she seems really nice.

Arrest this man, he talks in maths

View from midtown hotel room.

Friday ate breakfast at yet another diner..these are the free newspapers they have everywhere on the streets. after went to the world trade center site, which is just a construction site, i was kinda expecting some sort of museum maybe we missed it..

Then we went to the statue of liberty. it's actually kinda far from manhattan. it's 15 minutes on a ferry.

Liberty fries on liberty island.

Oh finally got my film from Sydney fest developed. it was 8 bucks and you get 2 sets of prints a free photo CD and a FREE disposable camera! how good is that?

Then we went to south street seaport museum there's a exhibition on called Bodies. http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/ it was reallly gruesome. it's real bodies preserved and dissected so you can see the insides like skeletons and organs..the coolest was the dissection showing the nervous system where they cut away everything except the brain, eyes, and the web of nerves..at the end i got to hold a real human heart, liver, bone..but the coolest was the brain..it was really heavy.

Finally arrived at times square. it's so invigorating being there.

Saturday went to Macys. i bought a new parka to replace the one i was wearing..it was so cheap it felt like stealing. cause everything's on sale.

I move into my apartment tomorrow. i haven't seen it yet. i'm expecting the worst.

Let's suck more blood, let's work 3 hours a day

I'm not taking a lot of pictures. I'm really tired and still jet lagged I think. The weather doesn't help. it's freezing and it gets dark at 4pm, like really dark. And I have really long days and by the time I get home after dinner all I want to do is sleep. I've been going to sleep lately before ten and I was waking up at 4am before but now like 7ish. If I keep this up I'm going to be a normal person with normal sleeping hours.

So I had orientation on Wednesday for international students. it was nice cause we all knew where we were coming from with the extreme exhaustion and whatnot. i was sitting next to these two exchange students from Chile. we had to go round and introduce ourselves and most everyone were graduate students doing business. not a single other person was doing English. there's a girl from UTS on exchange and she's living in the same building that I'm going to be moving into. unless she moves out, she couldn't stop complaining about how awful her room is. i also talked to two other people who are living in the same building and so far I'm the highest on 15th floor. YAY. orientation was really long and boring. it was the whole day. and then at night i had exams but by then i was so exhausted i couldn't concentrate. i think i did alright on English but i walked out of maths.

today i did a lot of boring errands such as opening a bank account and blah. but i also registered for classes. so I'm taking English, public speaking, science and painting. oh and good news..all my credits from UTS are counted so i can possibly graduate in 2010. yayy.

anyways the super awesome thing about new york is the food. you can walk into anywhere and even though it may look dodgy the food would be great..like today dad and I just went into a random Japanese place for lunch and it kinda looked like a ticketing booth but the food was the yummiest Japanese I've had in a while..

oh and i strolled through century 21, which is a discount designer department store near my uni. things there are uber cheap..like 90% off depending on what it is. there's a lot of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, dkny, juicy couture, Michael kors, nothing too exciting and most of the stuff is pretty crappy..but you could find some things if you had the time and patience.


Lower Manhattan.


The view outside my room midtown.


Totally exhausted and cold.

Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see

Finally here! And finally escaped the longest Monday EVER. Over 40 hours of Monday. UGH. Dad thought it'd be fun if we took a later plane because our one was full. So we spent like a whole day just bumming at the airport but we got upgraded to business class, which was pretty cool, sitting in your own little fully recline-able capsule.

New York is nice. The streets are really, really wide and the buildings are so pretty. And the people are either super duper friendly or kinda rude. Oh and it's freezing!

Today went to uni and finally discovered that I do, in fact, have accommodation. YAY. no park benches for me. I'm going to be living just around the corner from my school.

Right now I'm staying somewhere midtown. it's so easy to find your way around. all the streets are grid-like and numbered consecutively. and the subway is completely straightforward as well. you can buy a metro card for a week, it's unlimited and you only swipe on your way in. one time when I was looking for my metro card, this guy asked if i was alright and insisted that he swipe me in with his. so i guess if you want you can just swipe in whomever you want and be a saint.

i keep catching glimpses of the Chrysler building and it's so inspiring. i went to central park today and 5th, park and Madison ave. but i was in the totally wrong spots i think..

oh the food is really yummy here and the portions are humongous. and its super cheap as well. dad and i have been to this 24hr diner downstairs twice now. and this really tiny cafe on Madison. it was completely packed and totally NY. i had matzoh ball soup a la Carrie.

sorry I'm barely coherent..I'm like completely brain dead and i have orientation tomorrow and placement tests!!!!! they're totally going to think I'm more of a retard.

missing you guys heaps
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