neeeeeew yoooooooork: day one

you are supposed to sing that title. i had that song stuck in my head the entiiiire time.

one day new jersey friend christine mentioned her husband was going to be out of town and i should go down for the weekend and check out new york. at first that seemed kind of like a crazy idea UNTIL i remembered i live four hours away! so after checking out a few different ways to get down there and realized i could take a bus for $30 (what?!?) i had my tickets bought and began preparations for my little weekend trip to the big apple. 

 friday morning consisted of waking up way early, my bus app decided to not show the bus i really wanted to get on so to play it safe i got on the one thirty minutes earlier and arrived at south station by 6am. megabus didn't leave till 7am so i bought some gross mcdonalds breakfast and stood behind these goons. everything about them and their conversation drove me crazy so even though i wanted to sit on the double decker part of the bus i couldn't do it since they did. so instead i sat by new friend mike who hates the east coast and kept leaning into me which of course made me feel like my personal space was being violated. he did validate my choice for sitting on the lower level by telling me that a few months ago a bus driver wasn't paying attention and went under an overpass that ripped off the top of the bus which decapitated 17 passengers! thanks mike for giving me a new thing to have nightmares about. 

i was thrilled that mission friend shayla was free on friday so i could see her too. our day started out with listening to this subway drum friend (which i loved) and walking past a lot of street vendors.

we decided to go to soho and what to our wondering eyes should appear? oh just tv celeb jane krakowski who most of you know from jenna on 30 rock but let's be honest. i only knew who she was because i had just seen her in a law and order episode on netflix during my marathon a few weeks prior. if you want to check it out it is season five episode 23 "bound". it was pretty intense. 

once we realized who she was we continued trying to stalk her but it became difficult so we gave up. but three cheers for watching that law and order episode! i knew it would be good for something.

oh hey shayla and great decor at madewell. and our giant east coast coats. 

 next up on the agenda would be CHINATOWN. 

going to chinatown in general is always a treat but going with someone who served in taiwan with me and has the same level of love for it was even better!

 we loved checking out the bread stores and sampling weird asian candy and reminiscing about the good old days

 we also enjoyed watching that lady on the left share a water bottle with her dog, running into the missionaries, and getting little hong kong pancake things that smelled just like something we both loved to eat but sadly wasn't. it was close enough though.

big thanks to my brain for remembering the characters for wintermelon tea so that when a menu said "wax tea" in english we knew that they just translated it wrong. taiwanese people dont really love wintermelon tea but for some reason missionaries LOVE it so finding it was perhaps one of the more exciting moments of both of our post mission lives. i mean look at our faces!

then thanks to yelp we found this dumpling place that was five dumplings for a dollar!!! am i in taiwan again? no. just heaven. 

after leaving chinatown completely and 100% satisfied we headed over to bryant park and did you know they have the third nicest public bathroom in america?! well they do. the fresh bouquets of flowers would have made it nice enough but the magic toilets really just went above and beyond. i took a video of the plastic moving itself because it was one of the cooler things i've ever seen, so if you want to see it just let me know haha

tourists!

 did i mention i've never been to ny before? maybe i should have said that at the beginning. 

(in enters shayla's husband ben. hi ben!)

usually the m&m factory does nothing for me but on this day the blue m&m and all of his worker friends were dancing to the electric slide as we walked up the stairs. perhaps it was just because we were caught off guard or maybe it was really funny but we loved it. when the song ended i thought the fun ended too but then willow smith started singing whip my hair and the blue m&m started crumping and i died. really  i did. can't quite remember the last time i laughed so hard and couldn't stop laughing. i took multiple videos of this event in case you are interested. 

man standing on a ladder pretending to be lady liberty was a JERK. he acted nice until i refused to pay him five dollars so i stood there anyway to take a picture and he TURNED AROUND AND COVERED HIS FACE. seriously man pretending to be lady liberty? rude.

shayla and ben were nice and let me go on the flashy red stairs. i really liked that time square place.

we then walked past radio city music hall (where all i could think of was that snl skit when sally o' mally wanted to be a rockette) and checked out rockefeller center

 then we walked to grand central station because i really wanted to check it out. it was really so great! definitely felt like i was in chronicles of narnia or something which doesn't make a whole lot of sense but just go with it. 

luckily they had heard about the whispering gallery so we found it and tried it out. 

one person stands at one end and someone goes to the other and you talk to each other into the wall and you can hear the person on the other side as if they are right next to you!!

now i just felt like we were on harry potter. definitely check it out next time you are in new york

next up would be papaya king (do you see that? julia child said they have the best hot dog in new york! julia child!) and shake shack. 

then going home was probably one of my more favorite moments when these two guys got everyone on the subway to sing don't stop believing. i'm very sad my phone died before i could record it.

afterwards we went back to their apt and had nice discussions about mormon doctrine (i somehow have this conversation with most people), how much i love her gallery wall that seriously goes from one side of the room to the other, and how perhaps a certain brunette adam and eve are in their ward.

it was a very lovely first (ever) nyc day. thanks guys for being nice friends!