New York pt.1, September 2010

There is nothing like the sight of Manhattan’s skyline greeting you as you approach the city from the top of a double decker bus. It is truly glorious, even if you’re not a big city kind of girl. I exhale and smile, sitting up straighter in my seat, knowing that I am getting close.

Through the tunnel and then the big city is upon me, our huge bus squeezing itself between delivery trucks tucked curbside in alley ways, cars honking, people speedwalking, and cigarette smoke billowing around us.

But the pictures are telling a different story. The story about new city love is the not the story you will be reading about today.

I am one of the youngest in my generation of cousins, and I’m about to meet Yeounkyung near the subway station, who’s in the upper strata of cousins. I don’t know anything about her. She says she remembers meeting me when I was about 10, which I feel like should be old enough for me to remember something. But no, when I see her, I don’t recognize her face. I know nothing.

Unbeknownst to us, we would have lots of time to get to know each other.

Briefly stopping in Queens to drop off my luggage, we boarded a train to Chinatown for street food and produce shopping. It looked a bit overcast but we didn’t really give it much thought. We quickly got into asking questions about family, who’s aunty’s sister or brother’s daughter we were, what we did (me Cook, her Architect), why we were doing it (we like it), what we’re doing here (me=looking, her=came and never left) and then we noticed droplets on the windows and very soon after, a heavy rain. Looking out, angry trees were violently being silhouetted by lightning, thunder was drumming and my fellow passengers were joking about how no one had brought umbrellas.

From the inside of the 7 train, it was quite a little storm show. Our train stopped and we were told to move towards the front to evacuate because of debris on the tracks. A large piece of metal siding had been torn off the roof. All train operations in either direction were halted because of fallen tree branches and other big, blown-away objects.

We decided to walk the rest of the 10 blocks into Flushing and was greeted by traffic, flooding, fallen lightposts and flagstaffs, more large trees cracked broken, and jam-packed buses trying to get orphaned train riders nowhere anytime soon. What a mess. With no public transport options and cabs rendered useless by resigned drivers, we surrendered ourselves to walking home…a far, far walk away. Over a freeway kind of far. Only here would they have a pedestrian walkway by the freeway.

This is my first day in New York City.

see more pictures of the storm damage here

read New York Times article of what happened here