The City So Nice...

Have you ever fallen in love? The very thought of the one you love excites you. Their quirks are adorable (even if they are annoying at times). You find your mind wandering to them, their face, their eyes, their laugh, that thing they said. It's almost inexplicable, but you feel something. You feel something real, and solid. There is a connection that you can't deny.

It's like every chick flick romance ever.

That happened to me. In New York. With New York.

And like with a lot of chick flicks, it didn't start out that way. I can promise you, it was the exact opposite.

The city is smelly. It's dirty. In the winter, it is effing cold. It's loud. It's scary. It's crowded. Have you seen the subway? It's a train that runs underground. Trains belong above ground. It's the city that has insomnia. It never settles down; it's like a first grader on Halloween who forgot to take his ADHD medicine.

But that's what makes it great!

The air is constantly filled with the scent of food. Not just plain food, like McDonald's, but real food. Good food. The food that makes your mouth water when you say the name.

It's filthy. There are millions of people walking, spitting, dropping things, sneezing. Years upon years of that. It's all built up. That dirt represents a lot of people living there. Mind you, it is still nasty, but realizing that the dirt is connected to the people makes it slightly more bearable.

My grandma always tells me about humidity and how cold humidity goes straight to the bone. She wasn't exaggerating. I promise. It does. It is noticeable. Dry cold is practically summer compared to the cold of New York. But that cold is kind of mesmerizing. You can almost carry the air in the winter, it is so solid and cold, but that doesn't stop the city from functioning. No, it carries on.

There are so many sounds. All the people, the cars, the buses, the dogs, the kids, the extremely large pigeons. Everything makes noise. In fact, funny story, I bought some darling boots out there. I wore them a lot. I got home, and wore them to church...they are really loud. They click and clack, but I didn't notice out there. I couldn't hear myself walk when I was there. It was kind of crazy.

Never have I seen so many people at once. I have walked down the halls at UVU between classes. I have got to Orem Summerfest. I have tried to get gas at Costco around dinnertime. Never before have there been so many people just living. I've been to other big cities, but I felt like there were just so many more people in New York. Each person living their own life, creating their own story, discovering what it means to be them! You could feel the life around you.

Trains really should be above ground. I stand by that, but if they were above ground, the bands that played wouldn't have sounded quite as good. The underground has pretty good acoustics. Aside from that, it had neat tile. It literally had subway tile. Duh! It was gross, cracked, and probably older than me, but it was amazing! Outside trains don't really have that kind of thing going for them.

When they say the city never sleeps, they mean it. Any place with enough people will have a 24 hour schedule, but this place wasn't just awake at night. It was living at night. At midnight it wasn't too weird to be awake (also, I was running on Utah time most of the week, so it was only 10 for me). Places stayed open so much later. (They also delivered late!) Life could happen at night. I have trained myself to not be a night owl anymore, but out there, I probably could have gotten away with it.

New York was the scariest thing I have experienced, but I wouldn't change it. At first it was awful, but it romanced me. It charmed me. It won me over. I was only there a week, but I think part of my heart was left there. I do plan on going back (not until it warms up), and I am going to eat a million deli sandwiches, and ride the subway, and stay up living until my eyes can't be open anymore. New York really is the city so nice...

...that they named it twice.