New York City (uh huh!), Center of the Universe

My Floyd girls Lara and Jackie will recognize that title from their first winter guard show with me, and as well as any hardcore fans of RENT from the song "Santa Fe". Girls, thought of you on my flight here, miss you crazy!

After last night's late night, Rebekah and I didn't make it out of the apartment until 1:30 in the afternoon. We had wanted to take a tour of the UN headquarters, but once we got there, we found out that all the tours for the day were already sold out. Moral of the story for anyone trying to take a tour of the UN: get there early, like before 9am, so you know you get tickets!

Consolation prize: the bookstore and coffee shop were open!! So of course, being the nerds about international stuff that we are, R and I got stuck in the bookstore for like an hour, looking at all the stuff about poverty, sustainable development, the Millenium Development Goals, the environment, economic policy, etc etc. I ended up getting three books that I couldn't live without, and she got four. 

Anyway, we explored what we could, saw a video on the history of UN Peacekeeping missions around the world. There was an exhibit of children's art from around the world, and I found the Azerbaijan artwork and took an appropriate picture. (Having a slight crisis of the future over the whole peace corps thing) On our way across town (on foot!), we saw the Build-A-Bear store, and stopped to check out all the extremely cute stuff. Bought Aussie t-shirts for me and KK's bears. :)

After that, being quite thirsty, we hoofed it up to Fifth Avenue and stopped in for happy hour at TGIFridays then proceeded to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), because on Friday nights its free and we wanted to check out the Dali exhibit. (Regularly, tickets are $16 for students, that's like 2.5 beers! Crazy!) Dali was, in my mind, brilliant and definitely on acid or some other equally hallucinogenic.  Saw the photography floor on the way out, basically a quick run through because there was about 10 minutes to go through it before the thing closed, but saw enough to be satisfied with my free museum trip.

Photo: Rebekah and R2 waiting out the rain outside of TGIFridays.

Now, just to make sure that NYC is one of the most ecletic cities in the world, they install art pieces like the one on the left. I mean, who wouldn't call a white plaster fountain of a crying Hello Kitty art? It's not random at all! It really does scream "capitalism capital of the world", though.