Park Avenue

          It's happening already.  I told myself I wouldn't be that person who starts up a blog and then slowly neglects it until it no longer has any relevance.  But that is what has happened over the past three weeks.  My excuses are that we had some awesome friends come visit us!  And that school mid terms happened.  It was great to have Russ and Kaitlin here.  Just to have somebody to hang out with was nice.  I'm actually doing work in school besides just reading.  I mean, there is still the same amount of reading, but now I also get to write papers.  Work is also still happening.  As far as jobs go, it's a pretty good one.  And I'm learning stuff, like that all the red wine produced in Beaujolais is always made from Gamay grapes.  But I did have to look up how to spell Beaujolais, so I suppose it's hit and miss.

          I'm trying to think of other things that are new and interesting, so I won't talk about the weather, even though it is getting colder here.  I'm going to see how far into the winter I can go before I have to hang up my bike and buy a subway pass.  One thing I do like about riding my bike is that I get to ride down Park Avenue every day to school.  More millionaires and billionaires live on Park Ave than any other street in the whole country, and it is quite a sight to see.  Doormen wearing hats and white gloves out in the street with their whistles calling cabs for their tenants.  Girls with big sunglasses and little dogs in their purses. Rolls-Royces and Maseratis, the owners of which sit in the back while their driver drives, of course.  Little boys wearing suits that are probably more expensive than all the clothes I own, probably purchased from the Armani for Kids right up the street.  Yes, there is whole Armani store just for kids.  Theres even a J. Crew Baby store over on Madison Ave, which is right next to Park Ave, in case your snot nosed kid needs a $198 cashmere blanket to throw up all over (I just looked them up, $198 dollar cashmere baby blankets actually do exist).  I mean, the amount of wealth is unreal.  I often wonder what these people do.  I suppose most of them probably work in finance, doing whatever it is that people in finance do.  

Anyways, people here are rich.  Its time for me to go to class.

Big and Small

          It's a weird thing when a place feels big and small at the same time.  The city is starting to feel smaller to me.  I have a pretty set routine.  I go the same places, work and school, at the same time every week, just like everybody else.  I ride my bike the same way most days, because I know I'll make it to where I need to go on time.  I do deliveries at work, but a lot of them are in the local neighborhood, and I go to a lot of the same houses and apartment buildings with the same doormen.  I go exploring every once in a while, but I've been to most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan, just not all of the streets.  So my routine sort of confines me to a few places, and in that sense, the city is starting to feel smaller.  I guess it's not surprising, because Manhattan is only a few square miles bigger than the city limits of Lewiston (I looked it up).  The only difference is, there are 8.2 million people here.
          I've been thinking, and since I've moved to the city I cannot remember a single time when I've been somewhere I couldn't see another person (besides our apartment and the bathroom, of course).  Every street, every subway car, every business, every floor of the library, there are people.  Even in our apartment, I can hear people yelling outside, or our neighbors shutting their door, or those idiots who ride their four wheelers up and down the street at 40 miles an hour.  Where did they even get those four wheelers?  It's an odd feeling, never feeling alone.  I think that's why people here do such weird things out in public.  No one is every truly alone, but on the street or in a subway car surrounded by people you will never see again, in a sense you are.
          I think that's the biggest difference for me so far.  Back home, sometimes in just one trip to Wal Mart I would see three or four people I knew well enough to talk to, and another three or four who's names I knew.  Here in the city, I see literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of people every single day that I will never see again in my entire life.  It's something that's difficult to describe, and I don't know if it has any sort of effect on me, but it sure is weird to think about.