NYC!

Neeeeeeew Yoooooork!!!

That's where I went last week!

I'd never been before. London, Rome, Beijing... yep! I'd seen all those places. But this was my first trip to NYC.

I went with a small group of students as one of their chaperons. We managed to see quite a lot: the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, Chinatown, the Empire State Building and Times Square in particular. Also, I got some really good gelato—not quite as good as Italy's but definitely worth the money.

I had an amazing time on the trip. It was great to see all of these places I'd only heard of before. The Statue of Liberty was beautiful. Times Square was a lot bigger than I realized. I didn't feel queasy at the top of the Empire State Building like I thought I would.

And I appreciated seeing Ground Zero and remembering my experiences of September 11^th. I was just starting my freshman year of college. My world had already undergone a drastic change... little did I know just how much more it could change. Seeing the spot ten years later was sobering.

But we had a lot of laughs on the trip as well. The whole group was great about posing for pictures, and I got a lot of shots that I really loved. And though we didn't go on a spending spree, we made some fun purchases.

So all in all I'm really glad I went. And I'm grateful to all of the people who made it such a great experience!