Coming (back) To America - Part 1

I stepped off the plane at JFK Airport in New York at about midnight. Fortunately the subway runs all night (but about once every half-hour), and after travelling on the train for an hour and a half, got to my hostel real sleepy.

The next morning I went with above bed bunkmate from Sydney and went to see Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty, the Staten Island Ferry and Wall St. Although it was nice to those landmarks with someone, I could have preferred better company.

Me and my not-too-social travel companion on the Staten Island Ferry

But the rest of my time in the first week in New York was spent in the following ways:

• Looking for an apartment to move into. Searching through Craigslist to find decent, affordable housing is a needle in a haystack. First day of searching turned up a hole of an apartment in the middle of a rough part of Brooklyn and a cramped apartment (example: the kitchen, dining room, and living room are the same room) in the middle of the gayest street in the gayest neighborhood, Greenwich Village. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think I could get used to the 2 xxx shops on either side of the door into the building. Luckily the next apartment fit the bill perfectly, and I had to take it.
• Studying for my physical therapy license exam. It was the strangest exam I have ever taken: 250 questions in 5 hours done on computer covering my entire uni course along with extra stuff they supposedly do in the US (but actually totally irrelevant). The results were supposed to take 2 wks but because of Christmas holidays would eventually take one nerve wracking month.
  
• Hanging out with Dan and his friend Andrew from Melbourne. We ended up getting hostels within 5 min walk from each other. That meant revisiting those landmarks I saw before along with others. It was an great time trying to keep with these travel freaks. They made friends wherever they went, many of whom came approached them because of their accent! Amongst the madness of hanging out with these bloody rock starts included these highlights: ice skating in Bryant Park, going on a our own self-walking tour of Seinfeld-related sites, dancing on the huge floor piano from the movie "Big" at toy store FAO Schwartz (by the way, you can pick one up for $250,000 - you can by a soft smaller version for cheaper), and the Christmas tree (f-ing huge) lighting ceremony at the Rockefeller. And to top it off, Dan and I ran into Hugh Jackman and his kids in Central Park! Dan said G'day (I was chicken).

Dan trying to mug someone on the ice - look for the flailing arms

At the Rockefeller Centre

So I moved into my apartment, said goodbye to my travel buddies, and the day after I took the PT license exam, came the arrival of Ruth...

DN