Christmas in NYC

Yesterday I went into the city to see some of the Christmas sights. I wanted to see the tree at Rockefeller Center and some of the shop displays on 5th ave. There were more and more people the closer I came to Rockefeller Center, and by the time I got there it was almost shoulder to shoulder. It was a pretty impressive tree and it was kind of fun to see people skating in the plaza.

The big store turn their display windows into Christmas dioramas that have little to do with the store itself, but tons of people stop to look at the displays.

Of course Macy's has Christmas lights and window displays outside but they also have the Times Square New Year's ball on display too. They also have a Santa set up that is reminiscent to "The Christmas Story". They make a big deal about Christmas.

Before I went home I stopped in at Bryant park where they have another Christmas tree and skating rink. And for no good reason I took a picture of the Empire state building. Merry Christmas from New York.

Thanksgiving Day Parade

My parents are in town for a couple of days and we decided to go down to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We took the PATH train into the city, and the train was pretty full for a holiday, but it turned out that most of the people on it were heading to the same place we were. There were a lot of people there.By the time we found a good spot to watch from we were there were people 6-8 people deep off the rail, so we were behind a lot of people and the instant the parade started a wall of kids on shoulders and standing on things shot up in front of us. Most of my pictures were taken from between kids heads.You don't really get a sense of how big these things are until they float over you. They say there were 40 balloons.

These things float ominously down the street like Snoopy shaped clouds of chlorine gas over top of the unsuspecting crowds.

I'm not sure if this is Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana, either way all the kids around us were going nuts when she went by. "IT'S MILEY"

This float has the whole sesame street gang, Bob, Maria, Gordan, Big Bird, Oscar, etc. I think they tried to get Mr. Hooper but had to settle for just his store I put these two pictures in especially for Moses Smith because I know he's a big fan of Neil Young. Keep on rocking in the free world Moses

I started to get kind of cold after 2+ hours of standing there, but most of the crowd stayed till the end of the parade. I think the little kids were kept warm with by their anticipation of the arrival of Santa. I was expecting him to throw candy or have his sleigh pulled by a John Deere tractor. I guess Cardston has just set the bar pretty high.

Parade left overs.

After the parade they kept Broadway closed to traffic while they cleaned up. It was pretty cool to walk down the middle of Broadway through Time Square.

Halloween Parade NYC

Did you even know there is a Halloween parade in New York? I didn't until two weeks ago. I had nothing else to do last night so I went to it with a couple of guys from my class and it was crazy. It's like other parades in that there are floats and marching bands and people walking down the street but think of all of that taking place at night with everyone in costumes.

Anyone in costume is allowed to be in the parade so there were 50000 people in it. I stood and watched for over two hours and is was still going when I left. When I left I felt out of place not being in a costume. They said that there was about 2 million people watching.

There was a lot of creative costumes and floats.

The crowning jewel of the parade was the "thriller" dancers. They had Thriller playing and there were 5 Michael Jacksons and 200 zombies behind all dancing in unison. It was pretty impressive. It was a lot of fun.

Weekend Wife

Kate came to visit me this last weekend and good times ensued. At first it was a little strange to have her here and see her in person rather than over a web cam but I got over that pretty quick. This was the first time she'd seen the apartment I live in, and I think she thinks the place is OK. We went into Manhattan on Saturday and went up to the museum of natural history and saw a couple of the stars of "Night at the Museum" movie.

When we got out of the museum it was raining and pretty windy, but for some reason we decided to walk through central park. There's nothing worse than trying to stay dry holding an umbrella in a rain and wind storm. We stumbled onto a pumpkin festival in the middle of central park where there were hundreds of pumpkins lining the paths around the festival that I guess people carved and put there. There is always something going on. Both of were cold and wet as we made our way down to time square and on towards our favorite Korean restaurant. The leaves haven't really changed colours yet around here but some trees are getting close.

Kate did a lot of shopping,but not a lot of buying, on Monday and Tuesday while I was in classes and we met up for lunch both days. She left Tuesday night and it's a little different since she left. I'm looking forward to the next time she comes to visit.

Speading the Good Word

I wore this shirt to school the other day and got some inquires from my classmates about the raft (though I'm not sure why, because my normal introduction of myself to new people is "I'm Jason Steed and I built a raft and sailed it down the North Saskatchewan"). So of course I regaled them with stories from the raft in all it's glory, of which they were very impressed and jealous.

On my walk to the subway that day I didn't have my coat on, on account of abnormally warm weather. Some bohemian looking guy with a trumpet case in hand standing on the sidewalk calls out "Hey, what about the raft?". Though I was a little surprised, I'm always ready to talk about the raft so I shared my story with him and this guy thought it was the greatest thing since dreadlocks. Thanks for the shirt Scott.

Just when you think I couldn't talk about the raft anymore I gave a talk with it as one of the key stories about following the counsel given at general conference. Now the Elders Quorum here wants to build a raft.

Just doing my best to spread the good word.

Booze Cruise

So part of orientation this week, my class went on a boat cruise on the East and Hudson rivers. The boat took off from 23rd street, right across the street from my school, and went down the East river under the Brooklyn bridge, and a couple of other bridges, out to the Statue of Liberty, then up the Hudson river to the Holland tunnel where we turned around and went back to where we started.It was actually really interesting to see some of this stuff from a boat but I don't think too many other people cared about sight-seeing because this was a BOOZE CRUISE. It was a cash bar but that didn't stop many of my classmates from getting tanked, most were already a drink in hand before we left the dock (I had to explain to a guy from Utah what pre-drinking was). The rocking boat and slightly intoxicated people with drinks in their hands is never a good combination. Overall it was a pretty good time, though it was no raft trip.

My Walk to school

I've said before that it takes me about 45 min. to commute to school. I walk to the PATH train staition, the subway from Jersey to Manhattan. The train ride it's self is pretty short (about 20min.) but the staition in Manhattan is only five blocks away from the school. That might not sound like a lot but the blocks on the island are longer east-west than they are north-south (you'll see when you come out here) and I walk east to my school which takes me about 15min. The nice thing is that I walk by some pretty interesting thing everyday. I see the famous flatiron building, the Empire state building, and I walk though Madison Park (just a nice park in middle of the city) everyday, twice a day.

Here in Jersey

Well I'm here! I've been here for about a week now. I found an apartment in downtown Jersey City and it's a one bedroom walk up on the second floor. It's a good size for one or two people but with my parents and Melissa camped on the floor of the bedroom for the first few days made it seem a little small.
The first week here was full of trips to Target and Ikea but we did manage to go into the city a couple of times so my parents and Melissa could do some sight seeing. Now that I have all this Ikea furniture I'm trying to air out my apartment to get rid of the smell of the particle board and the foam in my mattress. School doesn't start till next Monday so I've spend some time wondering around the neighbourhood to see what shops are around and areas where I shouldn't spend too much time. The street I'm on is a pretty nice street with all the building build around 1900 +/- 20 years. The street is tree lined and I have an Ivy plant that has climbed the back of the building and the fire escape out my back windows.
I don't have a car here, and probably won't for a couple of years, so I get around everywhere on foot or on the subway. The total time it'll take me to get to school will be 35-45 minutes. The church is only one stop away but walking to it only takes 12 minutes.

Across the river

Living across the Hudson river gives great views of the lower half of Manhattan. These are pretty much our only exciting pictures we have taken lately; the rest are all of houses that we are looking at. The first one here is right from the waterfront looking over the piles of an old pier.


The other pictures here are taken out of the window of one of the condos we looked at. If you look closely in the top one you can see the back side of the Statue of Liberty.

Oh Captain! My Captain!

We had tickets to the matinée of the musical Wicked, so we spent another day in the city. We had great seats in the seventh row. It was a good show with good music and lots of things happening on stage; I was entertained. While we were walking around we saw that Patrick Stewart was in Macbeth. We ended up going to it 'cause we figured that this was a great chance to see Captain Picard in a Shakespearean play. We stuck around after the show to see if we could see 'the Captain' up close. Sure enough after a couple of minutes he came out and he siged our playbill. He's short. It was a dream come true for Kate.

Start spreading the news

We're in New York again! This may not seem like such a big deal in a year but it's still pretty novel for the time being. We're actually renting an apartment across the river in Jersey city for the two weeks that we are here and it's a really nice place. (I'm pretty sure that the tub needs wheels.) It's kind of cool to see the city from across the river. It only takes about 15 min to get from the apartment to 33rd street (mid-town Manhattan, right at the base of the Empire State Building). Kate's excited about the tickets we have to the musical Wicked that we picked up on our trip into the city yesterday. We walked around CentralPpark where we ate lunch and watched a softball game being played by adults on a Monday afternoon in the middle of the park. We also went down through Times Square then through the theater and garment districts on our way to Korea town where we had dinner at our favorite Korean restaurant (favorite because we've been there once before).


But our trip hasn't been all inner city pressure and amphitheater tours, we've spent most of our time here scouting out neighborhoods in Jersey City for a place to live next year and we have liked a lot of what we've seen. The pace is slower in Jersey and it's nice to be able to relax.