"My name is Shelita. Welcome to New York."

This morning I woke up in my own bed on the second floor of my house, and now I am lying on an extra long twin on the 17th floor of a hotel that was functioning in the 1920's listening to the sporadic honks of passers-by. This morning I checking two suitcases onto a 4 hour flight, and now I just finished unpacking them. This morning I was in Colorado, NOW I am in New York City, and I'm here to stay! (For 6 weeks that is).

What an incredibly unexpected day it has been! Now I understand the TRUE definition of a day that is a roller coaster ride. Up at 5:45AM to double....lets be honest....quadruple check that I have packed everything and add a couple of things I didn't think of the night before around 1AM. Then it's off to the airport, driven there by my wonderful little sister Kelly. I miss her so much! I realized that spending time with her these past couple weeks has been wonderful because I don't get that at Baylor. If you're reading this, I LOVE YOU LIL SIS! Be safe back home! Anyway, I get on the plane and I had a ROW TO MYSELF. So I'm sitting there anxiously waiting as person after person comes close to my row and sits around me, but not in my row. WIN! Then....some of the last people to board the plane are a couple, both with some sort of illness that causes them to cough unexpectedly and uncontrollably in my direction, which as you might have guess was exactly what I wanted sitting next to me. *Pass the hand sanitizer please* I cannot afford to get sick this summer. Not even close. After the 4 hour flight, we are flying over NYC while a HUGE rainstorm was giving the Big Apple some moisturizing appreciation. Clouds and precipitation kept clogging my view of the urban jungle, but it's alright, it was like the Big Man Upstairs wanted to slowly reveal this giant machine of a city bit-by-bit to me, and I was okay with that. More suspense that way. A quick taxi ride (the second in my life) got Cara and I to our living arrangements for the summer! We dropped our things in our rooms and explored a little bit while we realized that the humidity and heat were a combination we weren't exactly used to in Colorado...to put it lightly anyway. Let me just say right now, I HAVE THE MOST STEREOTYPICALLY WONDERFUL VIEW OUT OF ONE OF MY WINDOWS. Pictures to come, but I'm looking a car-filled street lined with lights and huge buildings and small sidewalk cafes and all sorts of amazing things. Cara and I decide that we need to go to Bed, Bath, & Beyond, so we set out on our first Yankee adventure. After 8 and a half wrong turns, asking for directions twice, and a 45 minute walk in the rain...the coolest thing happened. It was like a scene out of a movie. I see BB&B in the distance with it's cool building, the rain stops, and as we cross the next avenue to go into the long-awaited store, I look down the avenue and the sun is setting perfectly on the horizon of the street lined with tons of architecturally beautiful and old buildings. I cannot even begin to describe the piercing colors that filled the sky of that boulevard. I was too busy taking all of that in to take a picture, but i think the memory of that moment will suffice. We got all we needed at BB&B and hoofed it back to our place. Once my bed was made, the feelings of being overwhelmed and nervous melted like butter and all that was left was the relief and excitement that his is my new home for 6 weeks. Here we go. Cara and I are starving by now (around 8:50PM) because the last thing I ate was in a coffee shop Denver International Airport around 8:30 this morning. NOMNOMNOM. We set out, with no direction or preference of food, and explored. We found this awesome, small cafe called Schnippers where I got a mouthwatering tuna melt. And the lemonade was so fresh. We earned that celebratory dinner with this incredible day!

FINALLY, we needed to get some essential items for the night, like toothpaste and such, so we went looking for a grocery/drug store type deal. We found a Walgreens with the most interesting hand-baskets ever. If you can picture the handle on a rolley backpack...this Walgreens had hand baskets with those on them, but on a more epic scale. It was highly entertaining. More distracting than productive, really, because we realized that they had nothing we really needed. So we went out and started asking people where we could go, and the baristas at Starbucks seemed to be them msot helpful and friendly, directing us to a CVS around the corner. Cara and I get everything we need and go to check out. Here, my friends, on this 22nd of June, is where I make my first friend-who-is-a-stranger in New York City. This shorter, sassy woman who seems organized and kind of all business but still friendly begins her duty as a cashier. We all get talking and learn she is not only a CVS worker (I'm sure she was manager), but she is also a cop and a minister. WHAT?! We tell her it's our first day in the city and we just moved here for the summer. She FREAKS out, I'm pretty sure she thought we were married or close to it, and asks us about everything. At the end, we don't have a CVS card, but she says, "You know, I like you guys and I'll do you a favor because it's your first day here." and gave us the discount anyway, which ended up saving me a decent amount of money. PEOPLE HERE ARE AWESOME! The last thing she says to us in the most memorable, cool tone as she hands us our bags was, "My name is Shelita. Welcome to New York." It doesn't sound like much, but it was the coolest thing.

Y'all. I'm here. LET'S DO THIS.