Everyone should take a look at Steph's Secrets of a Korean High School page, which highlights one of her lessons from the Changpyong school. It seems very popular to worry about studying and getting fat. I think if I were a teacher this would be the best part of the job.
I'm going to go all crazy-ordered because I have a random assortment of pictures that I wish to feature. These are from Sunday. Enjoy.
I passed this learning center on the way to the subway and there were three things about it that made me laugh. First, the drill sergeant-like ordering of Math! Reading! Success! We will not tolerate failure!
Secondly, I'm not sure if they were invoking students to 'come on' and learn with everybody else, but if they were and they intentionally spelled it like 'kumon', that's weird.
Finally, that child's face really looks like he is enthusiastic to begin his studies. Super-excited. Rah.
The entrance wasn't any cheerier.
Fodor's had recommended Magnolia bakery, so with trusting faith we headed southward and stood in a really long line during a drizzle since the entire bakery is the size of our kitchen. They even had a bouncer that let in small groups as soon as enough people had left. The excitement really heated up when this kid in front of us tripped and fell over absolutely nothing but then started to bawl and kept crying long after anything could have possibly hurt. His mom made various threats but to no avail.
Mmm, the icebox peppermint pie was deeelicious. And then, after I was picking off some of the crumbs from the cupcake liners, this old guy chastised me like I was five years old for throwing some to the pigeons.
It seems as if there has been an odor problem in the area.
So... the Guggenheim! Fun! It was one of the few places that we had to pay admission, but it was worth it because of the free audio tour. I love the free audio tour with a fiery passion. It makes the museum about a hundred times more interesting to me.
Travis looked really, really cool with the headphones on.
I enjoyed the ramps. They had stairs available, but only fools would take the stairs when such a ramp was offered.
This evening we stopped by to get tickets to Asssscat, since I'd read that it was a fun thing to do and more important, the 9:00 show was free if you got there early enough. Free? I'll take it! I figured that it was some college improv show that may not be very good but entertaining. I was so wrong - Amy Poehler hosted and there were people that I should have recognized there. And Jim from The Office! Jim! He's cute! They were all very funny and I would go back.
I want to put up some pictures mainly of my food but it's 1:34 in the morning and I am excited about spending the third night in a row (thanks Continental!) without roommates. Good night, all.
I'm having an exciting and lucky voyage so far, and it seems that every bit of bad news is followed by great news.
Bad news: JFK airport is really, really far away.
Good news: We got the right subway; then I risked a bus in midtown Manhattan and it took us right near the hostel.
Bad news: The hostel room is kind of hot.
Good news: The windows open; even after getting upgraded from a 6-person to a 4-person room, in actually it got even better since our other bunkmates never showed and thus gave us a private room. Sweet!
Here are the bunkbeds with the two-inch mattresses. They're covered with plastic, which can be a little distracting with all the rustle, but I was so tired last night I could have slept anywhere. Travis is the shapeless lump on the second top bunk.
Larger view of the room. It has a mirror!
Bad news: We got really lost trying to find the MoMA.
Good news: We eventually found it; it was free Target night so we didn't pay anything; our ticket also gives us free admission to PS1.
Bad news: I got really hungry walking around the museum. Really hungry. Then we had to walk around forever to find a suitable eating place.
Good news: It was a fantastic eating place. I ordered the lasagna and it came in this cute little dish and had spinach pasta. I would have taken pictures of everything but it was fancier than we had expected and I believe photographing the food would have seemed out of place. Travis got the salmon, which was super tasty. We also got a side of onion rings, which looked like onion shoestrings but came with some very good garlicky sauce.
Bad news: We went way past our stop trying to find Sing Sing, a cleverly named karaoke bar.
Good news: We managed to find our way back without much hassle and rode in a brand new, state of the art subway car that had the stops listed electronically on a panel above the seats.
Also, we had a homeless person in the car.
Oh, look. Here's Travis and me enjoying a subway ride.
Zzzz, five minutes later. Travis can't be on a moving conveyance for any length of time without falling asleep.
Bad news: We had a complicated time finding the karaoke bar.
Good news: I got to see Meredith for the first time in two years, and there was some crazy girl who was bankrupting herself with many, many karaoke songs. She was sort of impressive, though, since she wasn't content with just singing the words and would vocalize the intro and synth parts as well. I bet she was a professional.
Bad news: We left the bar.
Good news: We went to an automat! Because I am sheltered and know nothing of the world, I was like 'is this going to be some sort of laundry facility that has vending machines? Ew." Bamn! I was so wrong!
It was this neon pink room with no door that you could just walk into, not talk to anyone, and pick your food out of little glass windows. It was called Bamn!
So many options, so many fried foods.
I ordered a swirl cone in vanilla and green tea. Tasty, tasty.
Unfortunately for us, the fried macaroni and cheese was all sold out. It had to have been a popular choice.
Now, we're just relaxing in the Google lounge absorbing the free internet. I figure we'll go somewhere for breakfast-lunch and browse through the Fodor's guidebook that I had the good sense to bring along for what we're going to do this afternoon. I'm thinking the Forbes museum, since it has the original Monopoly set and a collection of over 10,000 toy soldiers or something. Oh, how exciting.
I'm sure everyone is glad to hear that we arrived virtually unscathed. Travis got kind of tired after an hour so I got the privilege of driving a few hours on the highway and all through New York City. The traffic got pretty heinous around the George Washington Bridge, and I actually got beeped at going through the toll booth since I paid with five bucks instead of using quarters.
The hostel is so much better (so far) than the reviews have stated. Instead of the rudest front desk in New York, we have some Russian-sounding lady who upgraded our room for free from a 6-bed to a 4-bed, and the other two people haven't even gotten there yet so maybe we'll luck out and no one will show up.
Tonight I think we're going to go to the MOMA since it's free night. I'm pretty proud of myself for a: navigating through all the car traffic, b: getting on the subway (the right one) and c: having the intrepid spirit to risk a bus that actually took us right where we needed to go.
We're sitting in the Google Lounge in the basement of the hostel and someone in front of us is watching Oprah about this woman who was a pack rat and had like ten thousand purses and pairs of shoes in her house and food from 1994 and they cleared it all out and it filled two warehouses. This woman can't stop crying.
Travis's Travel from last week that made everybody cry was printed in its entirety in today's Daily Collegian. Read it and fight back those tears. I dare you.
This entire week I said to myself, 'you should really get a head start on that presentation for La Regle du Jeu. You know it's going to take forever and you'll feel really good about yourself if you get it done early'. Fie on that. I waited until 8:00 last night before I even started to read my secondary sources. Before that, I made myself an omelette and toast, did my laundry, cleaned up the bathroom a little bit, took a shower, and watched Scrubs with Ariel until I couldn't think of another think to do in order to delay having to work. I almost found myself in a pickle when I stopped by the video rental place and the "Rules of the Game" that they had was the crappy 1975 version rather than the Renoir 1939 that I needed. I managed from sheer luck to find a VHS copy that was not on reserve at the library and travelled to campus and back in search of it.
To make many hours of frustrating study short, I was able to drink boatloads of tea and stay up until 4:00 in the morning and then get a few sweet, sweet hours of sleep until I woke up at 7:00 and caught the 7:42 onto campus to pour another few hours into this presentation that ended up being like, six pages single spaced. Way long. Almost embarrassingly overprepared long.
But anyway, I am jumping for joy in my mind right now because my professor loved it (which was surprising, because his intro to my speech pretty much directly contradicted much of what I had to say) and he kept mentioning to me after that I should rewrite it as a film criticism and try to get it published. Aw, that's nice.
I was planning on just going home and collapsing but all of the tea that I drank last night is still flying around in a caffeinated frenzy so I think I'm going to get a bit more work done and then go home and do the sleep thing.
Tonight is a double awesome combo of Superbad and Bingo at the HUB, so I'll be all up in that and maybe - just maybe - win some cool DVD prizes. Maybe Erin's luck from last time rubbed off on me.
What else? Travis and I found a hostel for around $22 a night on 96th street, wherever, somewhere near the park. I know that I'm going to have this great itinerary all planned out but then we're just going to end up eating pizza somewhere for three hours and saying 'you know, let's just people-watch'.
I'm getting pretty exciting about Thanksgiving, since I haven't been home for it since 2004 and mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey and good corn (not the frozen corn) and the pumpkin pie and everything is just the most fantastically scrumptious dinner ever created.
