Halloween!

October 31st. Happy Halloween. Let's celebrate. Let's put some costumes on!! Everyone at the dorms got dressed up:

Mary (lady of the night), Jorge (strange cat), Tyler (Waldo, from Where is Waldo?), Heather (fairy) and the other girl whose name I don't know (wearing undies), haha!

Top row: Me (mouse), Camille (rock-star), Amira (mouse), René (entertainer), Kate (devil), Anissa (pumpkin), Carole (cowgirl), Yulia (sailor).

Second row: Jen (Albert Einstein), Tuesday (singer Sierra).

Alison, Me, and Amira as the Three Blind Mice.

It was fun how everybody in the streets recognized our characters and yelled out "Hey, three blind mice!" or "Can you see where you're going?" Some people even sang for us the rhyme:

Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, see how they run, They all ran after the farmer's wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your life, As three blind mice?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Fall Frenzzy

Today there was a Fall Frenzzy (a fun gathering celebrating the fall season) at the dorms. Since Halloween is tomorrow, we also made it a costume party, with music, snacks and pumpkins!!

Carving pumpkins.

Stefanie, our own Little Red Riding Hood.

David and I. He, an over-sized hairy baby. Me, a lame but happy cowgirl.

Super- Sperm, showing off at the costume competition.

Uhh... well one of these is the right one!!!

The Crown of the Chrysler

Chrysler Building

He stands up to the Emperor of the state. He lights his crown and lights the sky. In this town, he is King.

The Brooklyn Bridge

The first settlement in Brooklyn was in 1636 by Dutch Farmers. On January 2nd, 1870 began the construction of the bridge by John Augustus Roebling. The oppening ceremomy was not until May 24th 1883. Now, Brooklyn is just another neighborhood of New York City. Before, it was a whole other town. And its bridge is one of the wonders of the Big Apple.

Plane crash

Images from plane crash on 72nd street and York Avenue, in the Upper East Side.



Getting to the crash scene, you can see smoke coming out of the building.

Helicopters, ambulances, news teams gathering.

The crowd looks up.

Jazz and Barbecue

Tuesday night. Midtown Manhattan. Memphis Baby Ribs with a side order of french fries. Live Jazz. Excellent.

Church on Sunday

A stage. Red curtains. A band playing pop-rock; drums, guitar, base, piano, a lead singer. The audience dancing along.



Will you believe this was church?

Very blue

Tonight, we went to Astor Palace Theatre to see a show called Blue Man Group. The performance consists of unconventional forms of percusion, creating the sounds of a drum with hard plastic pipelines. The three stars of the show were dressed in black and wore a blue paint face mask. The ceilings of the theatre were covered with colored pipes and the stage was decorated with black lights and glow-in-the-dark paint.

Fantastic music and amazing lighting effects combined with sarcastic humor; The blue men were mutants that observed humans and pointed out the ironies of our kind, like the fact that we go to a ciber coffee shop and ignore those around us while we concentrate our eyes on a screen to talk to people who aren't even there.

The sounds of bang, bum, drum drum drum bang bum boom babapa boom surrounded us. My mouth fell open and stayed that way for most of the show. The blue men poured red and yellow paint on their drums, so when they played them, the paint splashed and made a colored spectacle on stage!

At one point, the three men came off stage and started to walk among the audience. They came towards us. And from the ceiling they pulled on tens of toilet paper rolls that covered us, and the rolls would never end, and paper continued to roll down on us, and then we got up and started pulling toilet paper ourselves and covering each other with it while lights flicked on and off and the black lights made us all glow in the dark to the sounds of percusion.

Here's the proof. Toilet paper covered me up to my nose. When the show ended and I tried to get up, I was tied down by meters and meters of toilet paper around my arms and my neck. A blue Saturday night can't get any better!

Coffe, Shopping and Dinner

Ok, so shopping is not my thing. But after an afternoon of talking, slowly sipping my delicious frupuccino while I sat with a friend by the window of a coffee shop on 5th Avenue... In fact, I hadn't gone shopping in New York yet (except for grocery), so time had come. Shopping here is really like shopping anywhere else. Once you enter a store, you abandon the city. There are jeans, shirts, sweaters on one side; on the other side is a loooong line for the fitting room and an even longer line at the cashier. However, it was fun. I went with my friend Camille, who claims to have a sixth sense to find the cute clothes!

Now I can say I've gone shopping in New York, and it's true. I bought myself a scarf! It's starting to get cold.

5th Avenue, just under the Empire State Building.

Full moon in Manhattan.

And because the magic of living in The City is never making plans in advance (because they simply come up as you go), Camille and I got back to the dorms but went right back out again! We joined another group of friends who were going to have dinner. What type of food? I don't know. What kind of place are we going to? I don't know. Where is this place? I don't know. But I'm going!!

We ended up in Corner Cafe Shop, a little restaurant in the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street. I promise you something: if you come, I'll take you there.

Sunday

What is Sunday without Sunday brunch? The meal between breakfast and lunch, has now become our little tradition at the dorms. We meet up on the tenth floor, where we make peanut butter and jelly sandwitches, jellow, brownies, bagels, coffe, orange juice and all the other good stuff!

Mary, Amira, Camille, Alison, and I:

Imagine. This is a tribute to John Lennon in Strawberry Fields, Central Park.

It is right across the Dakota building in the Upper West Side, where Lennon was shot; and where Yoko Ono still lives. It is perfect to take a walk up there on a Sunday afternoon, and let your mind loose, let your mind imagine.

Roof tops

In between classes, it is refreshing to go up to the Hunter College roof top and have some fresh air. Magnificent view, the perfect spot, a great book. Anywhere you look, you'll see windows and chimneys. You have climbed yourself to the top of a skyscraper, and Manhattan is at your feet.