New York City!!!

Yeahhhh!!!  I'm in New York City, literally in Manhattan!  I can't believe it!  I'm here with Steve and my mom.  Steve has an ACN conference in New Jersey next weekend!  My mom is teaching a Mathematical Perspectives conference this next week.  So, we are crashing with her in her hotel room!  And boy did we ever luck out!  They had to upgrade us because they didn't have a regular one room suite when we checked in, so now we have a two room suite.  In NYC terms I'm sure it would be considered a good sized apartment.  We even have a little kitchen (in a closet)!  Very fun!  I think my favorite might be our very skinny little balcony.  

Even in downtown Denver, I've never seen so many trees on roofs, not to mention that the sea of buildings goes on and on in every direction!  Central Park is truly unbelievable!  My aunt Lara was right, there are literally places in that park where you can stand and not have any idea that you are in the middle of a huge city!  It is amazing.  Fireflies!  I saw fireflies in real life for the first time in my life last night! They are so cool and weird at the same time!  Steve caught one and he sat on my finger with his little butt lighting up every few seconds! They are funny little critters!  

Central Park on a Saturday night appears to be one party after the other.  We walked by the African drums and instruments party where people would gather and shake their thing.  Then around one statue there was a large group of couples dancing the Argentine Tango.  Apparently they hold dance lessons there every Saturday night at 7:30 with dancing after that.  There was a group of rock music roller skaters and roller bladders dancing it up on wheels.  A carnival was being held where the ice skating rink is in the winter!  It was culturally impressive and a lot of fun!

Now I'm sitting out on the little balcony and listening to all the sounds of the city!  The humming of window air conditioners, cars driving by, occasional horns honking and birds singing!  And then it started to sprinkle on me!

We went to church in a very interesting building.  It looks like it used to be a church from another faith, and we bought and converted it.  It looks just like a normal chapel on the inside.  That was really interesting because there were two wards meeting together at the same time.  One of the wards was a singles ward.  It was great, two converts and the ward mission leader spoke.  One of the converts just got baptized and she was Jewish before.  Her talk was fascinating about the similarities between the Jewish and LDS faiths!

Then lunch at an amazing turkish restaurant (very similar to Greek).  Yum!  Best hummus I've ever eaten!

Later Steve and I took off and headed down to Times Square, on our way there we ran through a little rain.  That is Steve standing in the rain and sun, I don't know if you can see the rain in the picture though!  We were trying to catch the last tour bus of the day.  We missed it, but we got to cruise around and check things out.

Here I am at Times Square!  Lots of lights, but not at all like the strip.  Way more moving words and advertisements.  It is a really cool place.  So much energy and so much going on!

This city is so overwhelming! So many things to see and do! We came back up on the east subway, so we walked to the hotel through Central Park. It was nice to end the day somewhere quiet and peaceful!