I dig ye olde NYC

Well, it’s been a wee while since I’ve been blogging—mainly for lack of time and reliable internet access. Since Thursday I’ve been in NYC, and I’ve been loving life—spending days in Central Park (they have adult kickball leagues with tournament games! How awesome is that???), spending time at the Met, wandering around the other parks and the cool central Public Library, going out to fun little corner diners all over town, alternating between friends’ homes to squat in for a night or two. I ran into a random Brazilian with a Boi Bumbá t-shirt on the subway late at night the other day, and got talking to him. From São Paulo, now lives in Rio, and is in town visiting for a few days while in the States. Really nice guy—I love Brazilians, and I love the friendly feeling you get talking to a Brazilian, no matter where you are or how you met them.

Most of all, I’ve been enjoying the company I’ve been keeping—I’ve started dating an amazing girl named Kristy Money, and most of the aforementioned awesomeness has been with her. If you want details, call me or somethin’, ‘cause I’m not to the blogging point o’ exhibitionism to post that kind o’ delightful mushy stuff quite yet.

Today’s been an interesting day—Eric and I went to the Inwood singles ward for sacrament meeting before heading home and getting everything ready for our Teach For America induction in Queens, at St. John’s University, where I’m living now and will be living until the first bit of August. Ever since we arrived here at St. John’s, it’s been kinda surreal—I totally feel like a freshman in college again, arriving at orientation week. We got assigned roommates, suitemates, meal plans, ID cards, and all the rest—and they had a big welcoming barbeque for us outside our dorm. All the conversations tended to focus around “So where are you from? Where’d you go to school? Who are your roommates?”—it felt like I had somehow been transported back six years, which was both kinda exciting (‘cause hey, the beginning of college was kinda exciting) and really surreal. There’s also a bit of an age gap, ‘cause pretty much everyone here just graduated from college, and between the two years I was on my mission and the year I deferred after graduation, I’m about three years older than most folks, but such is life. It’s like being around a whole bunch of Chris’s, minus the zaniness.

It is a bit of a culture shock being surrounded by folks who aren’t Mormon and are active college-age drinkers and partiers again—this crowd tends to be a bit more discrete than the average college-age crowd, but there was still a false alarm fire alarm earlier tonight, and a bunch of folks went out to the bar. So college is still a little in the air.

I’m way pumped for all the activities this week, though, getting us more familiar with Teach For America, with the sites where we’ll be teaching, with alumni and other folks who can give us a better idea of what people have done after their TFA experience. On another level, to be honest I’m really excited to be back on a somewhat-isolated college campus—I have many treasured memories from both Rice and BYU (though Rice a bit more prominently, as it was a bit more isolated and quiet) of walking around campus late at night, finding one or two favorite spots where I can sit and think and read scriptures and sing hymns and talk with my Father. I did a bit of that tonight, and I loved it—I can already picture many treasured evenings like that to come. I tend to like most places, but I think I’m gonna like it here.