finally there is time to come and tell you kids about new york. this is comprehensive, i warn you..i want to divulge the whole experience, it was quite an eventful weekend in my life, i was a part of this huge, good cause, i met these amazing people, i saw this incredible city. this was one of the big memories of my life.

this is what new york is like: (looks straight up for a long time) - in a very good way.

it's not very much like i'd expected it to be, it's somehow smaller, less severe than i was anticipating, but that's ok. time square is narrower than it looks on new years eve. your first impression of new york is that they really want you to buy something - it's one big advertisement, especially time square, ads as big as buildings, ads that move, that invade your personal space, like on minority report. new york is very capitalist. i guess that was to be expected. of course that's only one side..

we didn't see much, but what i did see i liked, it feels still like a kind of dream..like on the ride up there i was woken up suddenly at 3 am and told to look out the window at D.C..we saw the top of capitol hill amidst this early morning fog and i was drowsy but still immediately excited, that felt completely like it wasn't real. like, so this is what i've been seeing in pictures and on movies for years. this is our nation's capital. wow.

it was 22 hours up there, which was a while only because we were so wanting to BE THERE in this city of our dreams, the final hour from jersey was the longest, i just wanted to fucking see it out the window but it doesn't show up til the very last minute. i did manage to sleep, and we did play on the bus (some more than others, ie pot brownies and bottles of whiskey, wtf). i brought this bin of food so i wouldn't buy any on the trip and so did everyone else yet they still got burger king when we stopped there..i brought in my vienna sausage and mini baguette and felt very unsatisfied by not gulping down a burger - the whole trip did crazy things to my eating habits, i usually don't eat as much in public as i do at home, and this was that way to the extreme, i was never hungry, i snacked a little every now and then but didn't have any complete meals really..didn't even finish the gargantuan slice of famous ray's pizza we got for lunch in greenwich village (which is adorable by the way - we took pictures in christopher park where those gay and lesbian statues are to represent the gay liberation movement that started there with stonewall, it's where that new Truth commercial w/ the homeless guy is shot, right in front of it, you see the statues in the background, i love that)

so we drove hours and hours and didn't really hit actual cold weather until like virginia, which is so fucking far away, we were so wanting to wear our warm coats and have them be a relief to us..there was a bathroom on the bus which you were supposed to not go number 2 in because it wasn't going to be dumped til we got back and you'd have to ride with the smell the whole way, but of course some inevitably had to break the rule and the poor folks in the back with us were very unhappy with that..i fortunately and unfortunately had the unique experience of being terribly sick with a cold still and was stuffed up enough that i never smelled a thing, though illness eventually added to the general miserableness of later events, and of course my nose became raw and just blah blah, i hate being sick, bad place for it, still though, no poo smell.. also, i'm happy to say, because i'm not a person who has to pee every 3 minutes, i never once stepped foot in that bathroom, and though i'm still very curious about what it's like in there, i'm sure it's better this way. bodily functions are such a hindrance sometimes.

in D.C we stopped at a rest stop and had a snowball fight at like 3 am, very fun, fast forward 8 hours and we're finally through the jersey tunnel and onto the at first dirty ragged streets of new york..there is amazing poverty so close to amazing wealth there, it's unreal.. oh, fun aside, the heater on the bus went out in the night because we'd been so hot and so cold so often during the day so we were nice and freezing, ice covering the inside of our windows, to get out into the 10 degree morning at grand central station...that's some cold right there. in oklahoma i experienced some 30 degree cold, which was very cold at the time, but new york taught me a lesson. it's all about wind. and the very tall buildings surprisingly don't block much of it.. jordan thinks they tunnel it, which may be true.

so we followed each other awkwardly for a few blocks until finally groups were formed and most of us went to ground zero first thing, as i'd planned. it was nice how i became a sort of quasi leader and everyone went along with whatever i wanted to do, since they didn't have a handy dandy new york city for dummies book like me and researched what to do and where to go best and how..i'm such a dork but it pays off. so ground zero was strangely unaffecting, we were at ground level with it so we couldn't see how vast the hole really was, we were kept behind this fence that stretched all the way around it and it kept us kind of far back..we could just stand on our tip toes and peek in at the men still working with cranes and drills at whatever they're doing down there. you can't see how far it goes down. 8 stories, right? i don't know..it was kind of quiet there, there were a lot of tourists, something about it felt forced, so we left.

let me tell you about these wonderful kids that were in our back-of-the-bus group. there was Kio, short for Kiovanni, one of the coolest names ever, she's the one black person on the bus, who we later found out models part-time, and you can tell, she's so fucking gorgeous we were all disgusted with ourselves, she came with her white boy-rapper friend Mike, the three of us sat on the very back three person seat coming up so i got to know how she's in the NOW group on campus and she wants to be a lawyer and she writes and reads poetry by these awesome black women who talk about all the struggles women go through...it's hard not to be a feminist after you read her favorite poem. Richard, someone told me in orlando waiting to get onto the bus, is this "really awesome guy", but he ended up being the drag of the group, he was always complaining about something or hurrying us along to get to the protest when we wanted to enjoy new york a little more, making us feel guilty, "that IS the reason we all came here.." etc. he kept getting lost too, so he held us up a bit, though in the end i felt like a mother to him, assuring him everything was going to be fine and we weren't going to lose him. he felt like the runt of the litter. alexia is this bold red haired girl who at first seemed obnoxious and then was just really cool and straightforward..she was the one who made the pot brownies, along with other non-special goodies for everyone..she would prove to be the other quasi leader and we'd figure out the subway systems together..she gave this homeless guy on the subway some of her bread, he was huddled under a blanket and where the rest of us averted our eyes and tried to ignore him, she started up a conversation, very cool. she was also not too timid to ask strangers for directions, fortunately for us. lindsay is another red head, very smart, shares my lust for george clooney and that boy from y tu mama tambien, she is very much like me and we had a lovely time together. shannon is this tiny little munchkin of a lesbian..4"10 or so, bushy brown hair, rainbow ski vest, big toothy grin. she's hilarious and confident and so so much later i found out she's only a freshman and actually younger than me !! i always thought she was a senior. everyone on the bus kind of felt older than me. she's a film pending major and was making a movie about the trip, along with a few others on the bus. her and jessica really bonded and finally she came around to me and we talked enthusiastically over country time meals about nuclear winter..this sci fi writer she's obsessed with, man's colonizing space and dr. strangelove..what good times. her partner in crime is Joe, a 6'1 flaming homosexual who shares a rank in the glbsu (?correct order of letters??) on campus that they're always shouting about in incredibly fast run-together unison "senior vice president of the gay, lesbian, bisexual....organization of the university of central florida, orlando, florida, united states of america!!" it's hilarious. nothing joe says is serious, i love that. he and shannon sang show tunes the entire bus ride...there's apparently a tune to match every comment..lol. and of course barbra impressions. they're so theatrical, it was better than tv. joe's goal for the trip was to see time square where he could drool over broadway marquees and collect brochere's..he screamed "THIS IS MY MECCA!!!" when we go there, it was so great. but you know how flamers get really annoying in like 5 minutes? well he never did.. he was just the right amount of flame.. you would've loved him, axel. and of course there's me and jessica...we never even sat together on the bus, we had our own things going on, i was worried we'd be too dependent on each other, but it was really just a perfect balance. she gave me this enormous scare the morning we were supposed to leave..she was having car problems the night before and she started taking that as a sign that it wasn't meant to be and that morning at like 6:45 she called and said she wasn't going. she has these emotional problems were she tries to keep joy out of her life, it's very complicated, but i was so tired and at that point my dad was freaking about terrorist attacks and i gave up and called the organizer and said we both weren't going. so there i was at 7 that morning crying in bed that all this time and energy had been wasted, when suddenly she calls an hour later and says she's on her way, she changed her mind all of a sudden for the 30th time that week, and we were going.. it unfortunately drained the trip of its initial excitement, i did actually expect something to go wrong, but i made it, and that's that. this is one of those things that people say "when you fight too hard for something you know it's not supposed to be", but this is just the opposite..i fought damn hard, everything that could've went wrong went wrong, i Made this trip happen, and it happened, and nothing catastrophic happened, and it goes down in history as one of the best times of my life. so that just goes to show, sometimes you have to force things.

so that was our group of nine, we lost kio and mike along the way before the protest and we became a much tighter group of seven. we got to the protest about an hour and a half late, tons of people with signs were everywhere, walking in the opposite direction of 1st avenue and 49th street, where the rally was supposed to be..they said the police were blocking off all connecting streets down there, we were at lexington and 54th at that point, lexington is 3 blocks west of 1st, so we were several blocks away and then having to walk in the opposite direction where we were told police were letting people through up by 58th..so everyone started that way. at 58th there was another blockade, so we kept going, street after street was blocked, at this point the crowd had amassed so much that we spilled out into the street down lexington. we hadn't been awarded a permit to march, but that's just what we did. cars were trailing behind us honking but there were so many of us they nor the police could do anything - i was so excited, i can't explain this rush, we had taken over, i had by that point been on my feet all day and was just complaining about the cold when the sun came out and we were walking and chanting and holding up peace signs and suddenly the cold was completely bearable and my feet were new again..it was adrenaline. we walked on, gathering more and more people, every time we'd hit a cross street we'd see hundreds more pouring in from our left, it was unreal. the police were off on the side in little groups of three or four just looking at each other wondering what to do. finally at 69th we crossed over and slowly slowly made it to 1st avenue, a huge feat. we were overjoyed, and could now see the sheer number of people ahead of us in this thing..the final group covered every inch of street on 1st avenue from 49th at the really site, all the way back to 72nd, and of course there were always thousands more on the side streets and blocks over trying to reach us..the papers say up to 500,000 showed, but organizers are estimating more like a million. it was fantastic. the most popular chant was "who's streets? our streets!" which we would put into conversation for the rest of the trip...on the bus "who's bus? our bus!", fighting over food "who's food? our food!', lol..we marched for about 3 hours then the mass got so congested we weren't really moving forward anymore and we ducked into a side grocery store for warmth and a bathroom, which is always in the basement down creepy stairs where you feel like people are waiting to hold you hostage and torture you, but they're always warm and welcoming instead. 99% of the new yorkers we talked to were completely kind and awesome, we found some great accents. the whole area we stayed in for the protest didn't see any action, no cops beating people up or arresting people, but we heard later that the very front at 49th was completely different, hundreds arrested, a kid on the bus getting hit in the ribs with a night stick, horses rearing cops off, trampling people..i'm ok with the crowd i was in though, they were all peaceful, all great. and it was so not just a teenage/20something crowd..i saw so many elderly people and middle aged parents with their kids, it was so great. and to see the papers the next day with pictures of the millions all over the world, literally every continent, even antarctica, protesting this fucking war.. wow, what a rush, i was a part of this huge thing, i can't believe it still. my first protest was maybe the biggest one in history so far, and they're not stopping. i hope to go to a D.C one maybe in a couple months when it gets warmer.

the cold really was a fucking bitch.. like you wouldn't believe. it felt nice during the protest in the heat of the day with the sun, which we found out later was only 24 degrees, but when the sun went down it got in the single digits and the wind was up and that was blinding, biting cold. we saw central park for a few minutes covered in snow, so beautiful, we walked quickly to time square to get joe his brochere's, stopping shortly in carnegie hall to warm up along the way. we got dinner at carnegie deli, which i can't believe we got into, the seven of us, on a saturday night, it's world-renowned. sure enough it was packed, there's a horrible lack of personal space in new york and this place embodied it, they crammed as many tables and chairs into the space as they could, 8x11 pictures of celebrities who's been there were everywhere on the wall, covering the whole place, i was so happy to have gotten in. little did i know. first we had no idea what we wanted, the food was crazy heavy stuff like corned beef and pastrami, and most were $20 entrees that we didn't want, this of course is mad cheap for new york, but still, we're a bunch of poor vegetarian hippies so it was hard.. the first waiter tried to take us through the menu to hurry us along, finally our main waiter came and rolled his eyes and sighed loudly as some of us changed our orders, it was hilarious, he hated us so much. then he comes back and says he's "sorry" but the manager told him we all had to order at least $12.50 worth of food or we couldn't stay.. !!!!!! right then we should've left, two of us did cuz they didn't have the money, but the rest of us were cornered and just decided to go with it, so we got excess sides that we didn't eat, it was ridiculous, and the final bill for the five of us, which included the 15% tip, so we wouldn't stiff him, which we really should've, and i don't do that, the final bill was 89 fucking dollars.. how insane is that? so kids, don't go to carnegie deli, just don't. lesson well learned. that waiter was the only new york stereotype we ran into. then it was back to grand central to meet the bus, which wasn't there. we waited for over an hour for it in this subway terminal, having a good time with these three drunk homeless guys, then one started preaching and one stupid kid in our group started calling christianity bullshit and the man freaked out and the police kicked all of us out onto the street right outside in the freezing cold.. well that wasn't acceptable. the cops eventually left and we filed back in, and thank god because we would've been standing out there for another half an hour for that damn bus. the homeless guys were eventually escorted away by a new police duo that came around and we were all pissed at the asshole in our group who yelled at them.

so we got back on the bus and the heating had not been fixed, as we could tell by the ice still coating the windows, and we were already freezing, so that was a long and extremely hard night. i didn't bring a blanket so i was fucked there, i put on every piece of clothing i brought and still was quite miserable, realistically fearing pnemonia on top of my cold, i couldn't feel my feet at all for hours, it was bizarre..we hit that snow storm coming through D.C. which made us go 20mph for about 3 hours, so that was a serious delay, all we wanted was to get down to warmer weather which, unlike the ride up, only happened once we got to georgia when suddenly temperatures skyrocketed and we were all incredibly hot. we went from numb feet to sweating feet, we pealed off every article of clothing we could and sweated our way back to orlando, getting in at 12:30 sunday night, about 4 hours later than expected. what a trip. so see there was some serious hell experienced there, and to have come out of it still so overjoyed to have gone, that must've been an incredible experience. jessica couldn't stop thanking me for making her go. we made some good friends, she got into the cause, we got to experience new york together. even without a hot dog from a street cart.