a day at the museum.

i've officially fallen in love with the upper west side.  whenever i went to new york when i was younger, we either stayed in queens with my grandparents, brooklyn with my sister, or midtown with the rest of the camera-slinging, empire-state-building-gawking, tourist universe.  we would venture to chinatown to sample dim sum, demolish a sandwich at carnegie deli, or peruse the shop windows during christmas time near central park.  but now that we live up in the 100's, i've come to appreciate the comparative calm that is always present.  i'll forever remember this borough as the first place where i was on my own and as the first place it was physically impossible to finish all of my readings before class. welcome to grad school, they said.

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a few sundays ago with J at the american museum of natural history - on the upper west side!  a sunday well spent indeed.

"do the best you can until you know better. then when you know better, do better."

- maya angelou 

photoville.

dragging myself to brooklyn while nursing a cold was more than worth it.  enter photoville: a pop-up photo exhibition in shipping containers (brooklynites looooveee their shipping containers) that featured galleries on war and peace, a shipping container turned into a "camera obscura," which allowed the manhattan skyline behind us to be projected on the wall in the dark, and a "depository of unwanted photographs," where one questioned the subjective nature of what constitutes art.  deep stuff for a lazy saturday.

"it is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. the important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. the true things are too big or too small, or in any case, always the wrong size to fit the template called language." 

- jeanette winterson

feast of san gennaro.

i'm a bit confused why the onset of cooler weather surprises us every year.  the temperature read 68 degrees on saturday, and as we buzzed the door open to our apartment building and stepped outside, we were met with a crisp breeze that didn't mesh well with our summer shorts and sweaters.  WHAT IS THIS we exclaimed, knowing full well that september means the beginning of fall.

despite the change in weather (and my lactose intolerance), we trekked down to little italy to the feast of san gennaro.  and because of our recent "upper west side theory" that everything is close once you make it past central park, we paid chelsea market a little visit too.

"once you have lived in new york and made it your home, no place else is good enough." 

- john steinbeck

a book reading.

last week my roommate and i went to see junot diaz do a reading in union square because the brief and wondrous life of oscar wao is actually the best book ever.  before we arrived, i wondered if his personality would match the tempo of his literary style - witty and brash and wildly inappropriate.  if you've ever read one of his books, you know what i mean.

but what we heard (after paying for a copy of his book, even though i already had one - NOTE: NOTHING IN NEW YORK CITY IS FREE) exceeded my expectations.  he spoke with great enthusiasm about immigrant families and class struggles and tough topics that i'm not even sure i agree with, but it was so inspiring to see how passionate he was about connecting with others through his work.  it's the little inches of our lives, he said, where we find our freedom.

"you see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden.  in my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway." 

- junot diaz  

scenes from the weekend.

{smorgasburg with FPOP}

{warming the house}

this weekend was filled with so much good food and so many good people.  to smorgasburg in williamsburg: thank you for the best (and only) mango lassi push-up pop i've ever had (next on my list: the ramen burger.)  and to all the people who made our housewarming party the best one: thank you for all showing up at the same time at 10:30 pm, quelling our fears that we had actually made no friends in the city, and filling our chalkboard wall with christmas trees and puppy dogs. 

" live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual. "

- ernest hemingway

orienting.

orientation week was a long one.  fire-safety-talks and how-to-use-the-library-talks and how-to-not-get-hit-by-the-subway-talks were bookended by inspiring "TED talk-esque" public health leaders rallying us to help cure AIDS and put an end to the obesity epidemic.  whatever inspiration we derived from this week, one thing was for sure: it was the first time in a while that most of us were thrown headfirst into an uncomfortable new setting.  why do we still feel antsy? we asked ourselves.  we're blessed with the security of our beloved apartments and our impending master's degrees! we said. but we're diving headfirst into the unknown, into a complex, albeit well-loved field that makes no promises for us 2 years down the road.  it makes sense that we're still uncomfortable.

so instead of attending a talk on how to use the library (again), we trekked south to hester street fair's hester nights in chelsea.  and instead of staying for the michael jackson video montage inside the lobby of the eventi hotel, we walked the high line and soaked in this night that made us so grateful to call ourselves new yorkers.

inspiration from the john mayer concert on wednesday night (!!):

"make sure you celebrate yourself.  there are a lot of shitty moments in life, so when life is good, celebrate it."

- john mayer