New York...after 3 days...

I'm on a roll today, so I figured I would just keep right on rolling and start a blog about some of my experiences here in the Big Apple. First of all, I think they call it that because there are a lot of apple farms in upstate New York, and I imagine they ship them out of the city, or distribute them here within. Thus a presence of a lot of apples, and hence the name. On another note, I find it incredible, as with this first example, that everything I have ever heard about in the news or through "popular" culture now has a very tangible manifestation! For example, Broadway Ave, Park Place, the Empire State Building (for which the line this morning was over an hour wait), Times Square, Wall Street, Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, Spanish Harlem, the Statue of Liberty and the WTC memorial, both of which I plan to see before school starts next Wednesday!!! It is incredible how obsessed our culture is with New York and all that it is. We see it everywhere, on shirts, in the news, people throw around terms like Broadway in conversations never having seen the street or experienced a play there!!! Believe you me, I have not internalized everything and am now trying to talk down on people who have done that, I have done it myself, thus even further reiterating the point that in many ways our culture idolizes this place.

Why? Well my hypothesis is that it is one of the largest, and at the same time most efficient cities in the world. Everyone has a job here, and all the people together make it work. In some ways it is a beautiful thing, yet in others it is difficult to look at a lot of the billboards and advertisements that promote low moral values, and give insight into the drive that makes many people here run around like they do. Money. That seems to be the answer to everything to many here. I spoke with a man yesterday, originally from the Bronx, but having family in Puerto Rico. Many times his family has invited him to come back down and see them, but his answer has been, I can't, I have bills to pay, I can't take off work for that long and make the expense to come down. Interesting I daresay, that now life is no longer about seeing the family and spending time with them, but instead about paying the bills to be able to stay in a place where the bills are never-ending and far from cheap. To give you an idea, although tuition here is cheaper than at Iowa State, my rent will be $650/month, and I am still almost 45 minutes away from the center of the city!!! No wonder people have to work so much to stay here, but why do they stay here? The convenience, the diversity, the ability to buy anything from anywhere in the world? But what are any of these worth in the end?

Don't get me wrong, I love it here and for all of those reasons too. But at the end of the day, I will walk away, having had the experience, enjoyed it, but knowing that true happiness lies outside the rat race. Because as a wise man once said, "Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat..."

Tim