New York

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Hello world. What can I say? It has been an action packed set of days including driving; my car going up in smoke (RIP Paolo); hens and looking for pliers at Wacahoota, while coolant makes a lake under my car; packing; praying; stuffing duffle bags until they were about to explode; thinking about NYC;

not sleeping; buying school supplies for my awesome brothers with my mum; saying good bye to my choti kutta (aka: dog)…I cried, I admit it; driving to the airport; restuffing bags so they wouldn’t be overweight (huge blessing he was– my little boarding ticketing man who cut us some slack); dealing with bitter TSA officers who hate their jobs; boarding a plane that was cold; meeting a nice flight attendant named Thuy;

arriving to NYC; nice oriental man leads us to the SuperShuttle (which I highly recommend!) for us to be dropped off at my dorm’s doorstep; we ride SuperShuttle with the kind non-hispanic, but hispanic, bald man and go through the excitement of the Queens tunnel; arrive; nice hispanic guys take my luggage up to my room; I discover I have no bed–actually, my mother discovered I had no bed; I get a bed; we explore and buy groceries in the rain; we rest; the sun comes out; we go exploring again and eat– today was filled with so many kind people and big and little miracles along the way. This is a thank you to God. He answers our prayers and has plans for us that we can’t even imagine. Right now I am trying to figure out His plan and path for me. It looks exciting… I will tell you that.

New York isn’t as scary as I imagined… it is like any other metropolitan area on the planet, go figure; except it is filled with a more ecclectic bunch. Anyway, it has been great. I have enjoyed every second of it.

Today, while trying to figure out what direction to walk in, my mother and I ran into a fine, elegant woman who offered us her help. She chatted with us excitedly and smiled through her red lipstick. When I told her I was an incoming law student, she grinned and exclaimed, “That is wonderful! It really is!”