Note: I finally have my personal laptop! Previously, I was trying to blog from my fema laptop, which was a horrible, awful, stupid piece of junk. This had been written for awhile, and I'd been unable to post it, but here it is, complete with pictures and everything! Enjoy.
After my last post about data entry, I’m sure you’re
thinking, “Days off? Why would they want days off? Data entry and property
inspections are probably the most fun
thing there is to do in New York anyway.”
You’re right. Unfortunately, the man says we can’t come in
Saturday and Sunday, and so we don’t. So let’s see if I can remember all the
excruciatingly boring things we’ve done on the weekends since we got here.
Our first weekend here...
….a few of us went into the city with our teammate, who’s
from the Bronx and had a doctor’s appointment there. We ended up getting to
meet her mom and brother, too, which was awesome. I like meeting my teammates’
families ( I met my other teammate’s mom and sister who live in Queens, and am
going to Massachusetts to another teammate’s house this weekend and will get to
meet her fam). It explains so much, while raising so many new questions. We
also tend to get in a rut where the only thing we know about our teammate is
their AmeriLife and we have a vague idea of what they were before that, but
really not a lot. Meeting their family gives a little bit of insight.
After her appointment we took the train down into Manhattan
and wandered around a bit. We made a stop at the Museum of the American Indian,
and then checked out a street fair that was going on outside of it. We decided
to walk around and find a cheap bar to hang out in while we were waiting. Since
“cheap” and “Manhattan” don’t usually show up in the same sentence, this was
difficult. As we were walking around, we stumbled upon Les Halles. Having read Kitchen Confidential last year, I recognized it as the restaurant where
Anthony Bourdain used to work. Seeing as how my life goal is to become Anthony
Bourdain’s protégé and take over for him as a host of a TV show where I get to
travel the world and eat delicious food, I was excited to have found his former
employer, who probably still keeps in touch with him and could recommend me as
his predecessor. Really, I just wanted a picture. But then we saw a sign out
front that said “Happy Hour - $2 Shrimp, $1 Oysters, $5 Beer”. Lucky us, that
sounded within our price range, so we decided to pop in. It was very swanky,
and I’m sure our waitress picked right up on the fact that we were not about to
drop $100 on a gourmet meal. She gave us menus, and after seeing that the apps
were in the upper teens, we gave them back and said, “We’re just here for Happy
Hour,” and each ordered a beer.
“You have $2 shrimp right now, right?” my teammate asked.
The waitress nodded. “OK, I’ll have that.”
“And how many would you like?”
“Umm….how many comes in an order?”
“As many as you like.” The waitress saw the cogs turning as
we processed what she meant. “Each shrimp is a dollar,” she confirmed.
“Oh. Hmm…..And you have $1 oysters?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never tried oysters. I’ll take one of those.”
“Just one oyster?”
“Yes, please.”
We devoured the complimentary bread basket because all we
had eaten for hours was a bagel. And then this was delivered to us:
She enjoyed her one oyster very much, and we decided to move
on. I’m sure our waitress was very disappointed that we didn’t hang around.
We walked down to South Street Seaport, and it began to
rain. Being of very high intelligence, we chose to sit outside on the pier. The
umbrella over our table had one job, and it failed miserably. After one drink
we were soaked, but decided to wait it out under the leaky umbrella instead of
going out into the rain to the subway. Finally, we gave up on that and made our
way back to Melville.
On our second weekend here...
….we decided to take a tour of Brooklyn Heights with a
company called Free Tours by Foot. Just like it sounds, the tours are actually
free. At the end, you pay the tour guide what you think it was worth. Seeing as
how we’re all broke, this seemed like a nice idea.
The tour was exactly what
you’d expect to get from a tour that cost $30. Our tour guide was funny,
knowledgeable and friendly, and we learned a lot about the area. Also, our tour
guide loved us when he found out we were in AmeriCorps. He kept telling the
Australians and Israelis on the tour about AmeriCorps and what we do and how awesome we are for volunteering our time.
He
pointed out some interesting things on the way, like the house Beyonce and
Jay-Z almost moved into, subsequently
driving up prices on the whole street, the house where Truman Capote used to
live in the basement, and a stop on the Underground Railroad. The tour ended at
the Brooklyn Bridge and we walked over the bridge and headed to Chinatown. We
got some food there, then walked through Little Italy.
Our tour guide had suggested we take the free Staten Island
Ferry if we wanted a nice view of the Statue of Liberty, so we did that at
night. It was a really pretty ride. After that we headed back home. AmeriCorps
was nice enough to provide us with a metro card that gave us unlimited rides
for the month. This really helped to get around the city for free, and usually
we were able to take the van into Queens where we could get on the subway,
instead of taking the Long Island Railroad, which cost $6-9.
On our third weekend here...
….a group of us came back into the city. Me and a teammate
walked through Central Park and attempted to do a Harry Potter geocache in the
park. However, we were not smart enough to figure out the puzzle, and after
about 5 minutes, we gave up and just took a walk.
Our next stop was the Highline Park. It used to be an
elevated track of the New York Central Railroad, and now it’s been converted
with plants and artwork into a really beautiful elevated park.
After a stroll
there, we headed down to Brooklyn, because I found some Georgian restaurants
there, and this will probably be my last chance to get authentic Georgian food
for a while. It was quite a long train ride, but it was worth it.
The place was called Tbilisi Restaurant, and as soon as we
walked in I felt like I was back in Georgia. My favorite Georgian song, Ramdeni Malodine was playing on the
speakers, and a big table in the corner looked like they were at the tail end
of a supra. We had the adjaran khachapuri, a bread in the shape of a boat,
filled with cheese, egg, and butter, the eggplant rolls filled with walnut
puree, mchadi, a fried corn bread patty, and khinkali, or Georgian dumplings. My
friends loved it, and in true Georgian fashion, we were all completely stuffed
by the end. It only came out to about $10 per person, too, which was insane for
the amount of food we got. And, our waitress was awesome. She talked to me
about Georgia, and after I told her where I was living, she didn’t really
believe me when I said I enjoyed it… She also came over and told us we were
doing it wrong when we were eating the khachapuri. Apparently I never learned
how to eat the Adjaran kind correctly, so she grabbed our forks and knives and
did it for us. Then she stopped over later to double check that I was showing them
how to eat the khinkali the right way.
Deep in our food comas, we boarded the subway back to Queens.
On our day off because of a gas leak in the office...
….yes that happened. Apparently there was a gas leak in the
office in Woodbury where we work, so we got the day off while they took care of
it. We took that time to go into Manhattan and check out the Metropolitan
Museum of Modern Art. I’d been there when I came to NY in the past, and was
excited to go back, because it’s one of my favorites ever. After spending a few
hours there, we walked around and tried to find a cheap place to eat on 5th
avenue (ha!). Then back to our good ol’ extended stay hotel.
On our fourth weekend here...
….we did team stuff. On Saturday we had an ISP (independent
service project) which is AmeriCode for volunteering somewhere other than our
project. We are required to do 10 hours of ISPs relating to disasters, so we
signed up to work with an organization called All Hands that works with
disaster survivors. We went to a woman’s home in Island Park to help her clean
and gut her garage so that they could sanitize it and get rid of the mold. This
woman was awesome. We were ready to get to work when we arrived, but she
insisted that we come in and sit down for some bagels and coffee. After that,
we started helping her clean out her garage and sort through the stuff she
wanted to keep or give away. We then packed the ‘keep’ stuff into a storage
unit in her garage. Once the garage was completely cleaned out, we started
tearing out all the shelves, drywall and insulation. By the time we got all
that done, it was about lunchtime.
We had all packed lunches, but it turns out our Italian
hostess had been preparing us homemade pizzas. It was absolutely delicious. She
made sausage, cheese, mushroom/eggplant/sausage, and sausage and onions in
white wine sauce pizza. Upon her insistence, we sat for a long time around the
table. Her Italian mother was there also. She didn’t talk much, but when she
had something to say she said it. She saw my team leader eating goldfish
crackers and said “Why you eat this? This is not real food! This is junk!”
Later, she turned to us out of the blue and said, “You like-a the pope?” It was
classic.
We went back to work after lunch, but it didn’t last long.
After about an hour, her mother started sticking her head out the window
saying, “Coffee’s ready! Come drink coffee!”
We went back inside and she had coffee and espresso ready
for us. And blueberry pie. And apple pie. We got very spoiled. But I think we were able to get a lot done for her, and helped her move a tiny step forward in the long recovery process.
On Sunday we did a team SLI, or Service Learning Initiative. This can be a broad spectrum of things, and this one was a community and cultural SLI. The team went together into Manhattan to visit the 9/11 Memorial. This was the first time I had seen it, and I thought it was a great tribute to those who passed away. My favorite part was the Survivor Tree, a pear tree that had survived the attacks and was then replanted in another park. After the memorial was built, they transplanted it back.
After leaving the memorial, we visited Trinity Church, walked down Wall Street, and then headed to Chinatown for lunch. We went to a place called Wo Hop, which was recommended to us by our tour guide from the Brooklyn Heights tour we had taken. It was in that basement restaurant that I had the best Chinese food of my life, the Roasted Duck Chow Fon, for like $6.95 or something. Amazing food seems to be a theme of my time in New York.
On our fifth weekend here...
...a few of us joined our teammate Ana, on a trip back to her hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts. She had taken a few days off and gone home earlier, and we met her on the weekend. Unfortunately we were cursed by the bus gods, and had a terrible time getting there and back.
We booked Megabus on the way there, and ended up missing our bus, because the employees told us to get in the wrong line. Then they told us we'd have to pay for new tickets and leave the next morning. After bombarding their tiny customer service call center, we got our tickets transferred over to the next bus to Boston, without having to pay extra. We didn't end up getting in to Boston til about 4 a.m., but luckily Ana and her mom are awesome and still came to pick us up.
The next day we headed to the beach at Cape Cod and got to enjoy this...
Then we stopped in Plymouth to try some real New England clam chowdah. We were practically licking the bowls. We also got a chance to check out Plymouth Rock, or what they claim was Plymouth Rock.
Then it was back to Ana's house, where her family had prepared a feast for us. Lobster, crab that her dad had caught that day, shrimp pasta, and of course s'mores around the bonfire for dessert. A great end to the day.
The next day we went into Providence where we were taking the Greyhound back to NY. We walked around Providence for a little bit - it was Sunday, so it was a bit quiet - and then we got in line for the bus. Unfortunately, when we'd made it to the front, the bus driver informed us that he had 2 seats left and 5 of us left. Thank you, Greyhound, for overbooking your bus, and leaving us on the side of the road. They sent us on another bus an hour and a half later. We then got stuck in traffic for a good 2 hours on our way through Connecticut. When we finally got back into the city, it was much later than we had anticipated, and we didn't finally get to Melville until after midnight.
Lesson learned: most major bus companies in America suck.
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And that is what we did in New York when we were not staring at computer screens.
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