Good Morning America
Day 13 | EF New York
Today started only 2.5 hours after yesterday ended. You may ask why? Good question! So Rocio said to me that there’s going to be a concert for Good Morning America in Central Park that day. And I’m of course always open for concerts. But it’s going to be at 7am — 9am in the morning, because of this tv show. And because I know that every decision after 2am isn’t that good, we decided somewhen before 2am to go to this concert, later this day.
That meant, standing up at 4:45am. A moment of silence for my mom, she will probably go crazy when I‘ll tell her this. Haha. Yay. Furthermore, that meant that I could sleep about 2 and a half hours. So I did.
4.45am —My alarm rang, I got up and felt for about 3–4 minutes really really flashed, so I waited in my bed until that strange moment was over. Taking a shower and just sitting on my bed doing nothing (No complaining! No reason for that) to fill those 45 minutes I had until our meeting at 5.20am.
Over quite quickly, I waited at 5.20 by the stairs, our usual meeting point. And she was a few minutes late, but with those circumstances, there’s nothing to complain about. Really nothing. So together and all set up we made our way once again to the train station. It was pretty silent on our way down, I’m not against that. It reminds me at home, where most of the time, it’s silent.
So after long 40 minutes of suffering from trying to sleep, we got to New York City where we took the Subway to get to the entrance of Central Park. On the way to Central Park, we walked by this beautiful tiny coffee shop where we stopped for some take-away breakfast. A caramel latte and a delicious looking blueberry muffin was my choice. So we took those delicious items with us on the way to Central Park.
While walking inside, a part of me was already thinking about this suspicious silence there was and concerts are in general really loud. But we kept walking until we stood on the area where a stage was but no people. As we later found out, the concert was cancelled. Well that was not the plan. Beeing angry or mad about it? No way. It’s the way the life works, sometimes there are good reasons about how the situation now is.
So rather that beeing mad, we placed ourselfs onto a beautiful spot with the sunrise in the back and ate our really delicious breakfast. The tiredness was for the moment almost gone and we were enjoying all those beautiful things in the park.
Right next to us, there was a man, painting. The painting he did was looking pretty decent, he was drawing the statue in the middle of the park and with all the shadows he made it look really great. And next to this man, there was an older woman who was playing harp. It sounded really beautiful, and all this at about 7.30am in the morning while eating breakfast. That has been the most eventful and coolest start in the day so far here in New York!
Later on, we decided to walk around the Central Park. On our way, we walked over the famous Bow Bridge. Besides that, through a lot of tiny little ways down to the Alice in Wonderland memorial. It was cool to look at, but we actually made our way really quickly further to the John Lennon Memorial Strawberry Fields.
The memorial was way more crowded than it was the last time, when we went there. But still a beautiful, inspirational and deep-thinking place. There was an older man with a guitar, who was playing some songs of The Beatles. We eventually got to him and talked a bit. He told us that 50 years ago when he was 10 years old, he went to a Beatles concert right in the Central Park, and he is still proud of it.
Later on, as a lot of people in New York asking where we come from, he did the same. Rocio said Chile and I said Switzerland. They usually give this strange facial expression when they hear this. But he didn’t, he really enjoyed the fact that we hang out here but are from places that are far away from each other. As a lot of people think, every time a boy hangs around with a girl they always ask
Ohh, aaah, Are you guys together?
But no. And when we told him that, I got maybe the first ever good answer for this conversation. He said, that he by himself understand this completely, he got a lot of female friends, too — that are friends. Then he told us that we should keep that up, because
Friendships are important. Don’t be a couch potato in the future, the life is going fast, so enjoy every moment — with your friends!
Some may think this person is weird, but for us he was really inspiring and I think there is some kind of change going on in my life about not only this very moment, but because of all the people met over the last 2 weeks and also because of the experience here. I may save in the future way more money to go and visit them in their countries, catch up with them and enjoy the life.
After this lesson, he played for us the song Imagine — The Beatles really inspiring and I really enjoyed every moment there. But as it is, we always go on in our lives, so we left the place and took the way for our next experience.
Next to the place we were before was the American Museum of Natural History. It was just about to open its gates at 10am for the waiting people outside. On the way there, I was lucky and found 6 dollars on the street. Meaning? I don’t know. But when we got inside and wanted to buy our ticket the salesman told us that the suggested price is 17USD, but you can pay whatever you want. We were like — what? Really? So I decided to pay 5$ for the entrance.
While walking through the Museum we saw a lot of african art and things they used to survive. Then we headed straight to the 4th floor, were we met the one you may know out of Night at the Museum. Mr. T-Rex!
After the dinosaurs, we made our way out of the museum to meet a friend of Rocio. But sadly, because of subway problems we weren’t able to meet her. Maybe on another day. Yay. Because of the fact, that it was already lunch time, we looked out for a restaurant or take-away. On the way there, we saw this cool book/gift store called Papersource. We were able to find some cool things in this store and eventually bought some of them. We then decided to go to a sandwich company where we ate delicious and really huge wraps.
Satisfied and happy about our choice for today’s day, we made our way back to the museum. We spent there another 2 hours, looking at really cool things. But then suddenly, the tiredness started to come along. Because we already had seen a lot of things in the museum, we decided to go outside where we made our way with the subway onto Chinatown.
Arrived in Chinatown, we made our way to the nearest Starbucks to get some caffein to survive the rest of the day. Later on, we went through all the souvenir shops around the area, trying to find something useful.
On our way through all the shops we made it to SoHo, to the same street where I’ve been shopping before. This time, we tried on some shoes, but weren’t able to find a good pair.
When it was like 8pm, we decided to head back to the campus. On the way there, we stopped in Grand Central Terminal for some Fries and were at the campus at about 10pm. Exhausted? Well, a bit. Could be worse.
So at the campus, I headed directly to Rita Hall, were I met Domenique and Helen. Both of them are leaving tomorrow, therefore, I had to see them and talk to them again. Yay. So we talked and took some pictures. We talked about that we won’t say goodbye to each other, better saying See you later. Then maybe, sometimes I’ll go to Ecuador or Japan.
I really enjoyed this — for now — last moments with Domenique and Helen. They are both really cool and I’d love to see them again.
At about 2am (I don’t know how I was able to do that) I went to bed. So that has been one of the best days so far! I really enjoyed every moment!
See you tomorrow!
XO Yannick
