"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger"

After two days of planning and organizing, we finally set off for New York City this morning. It seemed like quite a stressful morning, but compared to everything that has happened since, it was a piece of cake! Cecilia's mother graciously offered to drive us to Boston, so we left from Waynflete at about 11:30. We were on the turnpike when Sally noticed that there was only enough gas left for five miles of driving, and we were still a couple of miles from the nearest service station. Cecilia started freaking out, but we managed to calm her down and Sally smoothly slid beside a gas tank with only droplets of gas left. The rest of the car ride went well until we drove right by the exit that Mapquest had told us to use. Luckily, Sally ingeniously figured out another route and managed to save $4 in tolls.

We finally arrived at South Station at 1:30. We knew that the buses to New York left every hour, so we were hoping to make the 2:00 bus. Unfortunately, neither of us is a light packer, and we each had a backpack and large duffel, as well as a shopping bag with a 5 pound bag of pasta and two pairs off flip-flops that we passed between us (sorry about that misplaced modifier; it's been a long day--we mean the shopping bag) as we walked about half a mile through the train station to find the buses. We bought our tickets ($15 each) with minutes to spare, and we sat down to wait.

The bus was relatively empty, and we both managed to catch up on some sleep. We decided to check out Century Buffet when the bus stopped, and we each invested in $3.77 of Chinese food and fruit. There were some strange characters on the bus, including one man who managed to shake the bus with one sneeze, another who kept changing his clothes and brushing his teeth, and one man who kept cracking up in the seat in front of us. The time passed quickly, though, and we found ourselves in Chinatown at approximately 7:00, again with all our luggage in hand. We managed to find the orange line, and this is where things started going downhill.

Louisa opened her backpack to find that her Fierce Grape Gatorade (an awful shade of blue) had spilled on her lovely pink wallet. She managed to momentarily ignore the pain in the interest of purchasing a metro card. However, the machine gave her back $6 in coins (5 Sacajaweas and a Susan B. Anthony) and she was forced to put them in her pocket. She then followed Cecilia through the turnstile, only instead of putting her body through the gate, she pushed her luggage through, leaving her stuck on the other side, unable to swipe her card again, with a line swiftly forming behind her. A metro card cannot be used at the same station within 18 minutes, and instead of waiting that long (as was our original plan--we wanted to buy one ticket and stay 18 minutes apart), she managed to jump over the gate.

We got on the B line and got off after one stop to transfer to the 6 train, which we thought had arrived at the platform. Cecilia pushed Louisa into the train as the doors were starting to close, then pulled her back out with only milliseconds to spare when she realized that it was actually an F train headed for Queens. Louisa was very grateful for Cecilia's quick thinking, as she would have been very lost in Queens all by herself. We then noticed signs pointing upstairs to the 6 train and decided to follow them. Upstairs, we found that there was only a platform for the 6 train downtown--and we wanted to go uptown. Luckily, we had bought unlimited use metro cards, so we went out the turnstile (Louisa made it that time) and asked the MTA official at the counter where we should go. He said nothing but pointed at a handwritten sign on which were written directions to the uptown train. Unfortunately, they required going upstairs and outside (and keep in mind we still had all our luggage--and the 5 pound bag of pasta). We walked a couple of blocks, following the directions that Cecilia had written on her hand, and found only a stairway labeled "6 Train Downtown." We were bewildered and considered going to ambush the MTA officers below. Then, however, Louisa turned around and notice another stairway across this street-- this one going to the uptown train. We breathed a sigh of relief when we sat down in the train and waited through many stops until we made it uptown.

We arrived at the apartment that we are staying at and met Rick, the brother-in-law of the owners, family friends of the Nardis. He showed us around and we settled into our rooms. We decided to make Annie's macaroni and cheese (we are on the opposite of the Atkin's diet for the next few weeks) for dinner, and Cecilia found a pot to boil water in. The dishwasher was connected to the faucet, but we saw that the dishes were clean and decided to unconnect it. Cecilia unconnected the tube and water started spraying on her and all over the kitchen. She frantically turned the faucet, but the water refused to turn off. She then tried to reconnect the tube, but that only made the water spray even more viciously. Louisa tried to help by pressing buttons on the dishwasher, but that only made things worse. Finally we called Rick, who came to help us turn the water off. The rest of the dinner went smoothly, except for the floaty things that mysteriously ended up in our pasta.

We then sat down to write our blog. And after much trouble connecting to the internet (which we won't go into), we are here. We hope you keep reading as we continue to explore New York and get in even more trouble. Tomorrow will bring us to our first gelateria!

Cecilia and Louisa