And I Want to Thank You

My weekend(ish) of fun in NYC continued on Thursday. I talked to my friend Diva, an aspiring opera singer, and we decided to meet up for lunch. I've known Diva even longer than Mara -- since high school! We hadn't seen each other in 7-8 years until last September when we met up when I was in town on business. I took the subway all the way to midtown from deep in the Financial District. I felt like such a local! Since she works near Central Park, we decided to get sandwiches and take them into the park to eat. It was a surprisingly sunny day and as we sat and talked and caught up on life, I realized how truly excited I am to move here (yeah, I know I say that a lot!). The funniest moment was when we were in the deli:

VF: Hey, so you know I'm moving here, right?

D: *gasps* WHAT?!?!?!?! WHEN?!?!?!

VF: In less than 4 months!

D: Oh my God, are you kidding? Why didn't you tell me?!?!

VF: Dude, it was on Facebook!

D: Weird. I live on Facebook. How did I miss this?

OK, so it's not classically funny but it's funny to me because it seems that none of my friends who actually live here know I'm moving, once again disproving my theory that I'm the center of the universe.

When we finished, I hopped on the subway again. Maybe I felt overconfident from my great navigation earlier, but this time I failed and ended up walking 6 extra blocks to my location -- the NYU bookstore. I wanted to buy a present for my recommenders and had intended to buy them coffee mugs until I realized that breakables in my suitcase with carelessly rough baggage handlers was probably not the best plan -- after all, the dolts managed to break the zipper on my suitcase on my flight here.

However, I found a decent alternative

I'll slap some candy or maybe some nice coffee or tea in there, write a thankful card, and call it a day. I am pretty thankful to my recommenders though. I'm sure they all played a big hand in my wonderful application cycle.

Walking to the subway, I had the chance to take pictures of my new law school. Too bad I took them with my camera and can't upload them until I get home. Alas. However, this walking around made me obscenely late in getting back to my hotel to get changed and ready for our gala event that evening. I had to go early because I was one of the people in charge of check in. The gala was a nice time to thank our awesome funders, recognize our Students of the Year, as well as pay tribute to our Teachers of the Year from our program offices across the country, as well as with our international partners. Check out the awesome seat I had based on this pic!

Yeah, I'm kidding. I was definitely in the last row of tables (you can tell how thankful they are for the staff, huh!) and there were more than 900 people at this event.