First Day!

The first day of the trip was wonderful. The Chinatown Bus ride down was uneventful (except for Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself blasting my ears out. I asked them to turn it down, and(shocking) they cheerfully complied. When we arrived in Chinatown, we ate at not one, but TWO of the myriad of bakeries. We were having a marginal time trying to find Century Cafe from the last trip. The first cafe wouldn't let us use the bathroom (even as paying customers) so we moved on to another, and bought some coffee.

When then caught a train (or two) to the Hall. As soon as we stepped on to the platform to exit at Clark St., a sister said "Y'all going to Bethel?" I guess we looked like Witnesses. She helped us get our luggage up the stairs and told us where we needed to go to get to the Towers. She told us her name...Violet. Turns out I had gone to her Hall on the last trip. She didn't remember me, but was still super friendly. Awww...the brotherhood.

Met with the group, which was a delightful mix of Arabic and English (mostly English) Then we went out with two sisters: Rosalind and Keisha. Had a wonderful morning. Preaching in New York is always a new experience because you have to get the hang of all the intercom etiquette and getting "buzzed up." But I did get to talk with one gentleman and the other sister all got to chat with someone. Rosalind had a wonderful story about how she became a Witness. Wonderful morning.

Then, the elements conspired against us. The day got progressively colder, wetter and darker. We went to go eat at Checker's, then in lieu of continuing service (I know, we're literally fair-weather Christians) we went to...Barnes and Noble! We got preached to about their new bookreader, the Nook, by an enthusiastic guy. And then we laughed till we cried reading the anniversary book of The Onion. Then we made another Starbucks run (the Starbucks in B&N was packed). By this time it was sleeting something fierce.

Soon it was time to meet back at the Towers, and after reading the new Watchtower and Awake magazines that aren't even out yet (yay!) we went with a friend of ours to an Arabic restaurant Zaytoon's. I ordered kibbeh--the best food eva--and the hummus was so fantastic. I'm dreaming about it. We had delightful, funny, spiritual conversation, swapping our foreign-language congregation stories. These girls are in Arabic and Japanese, so there were some great stories.

Then, our friend dropped us off at our "hostel," which turned out to be the most normal Super 8 hotel you've ever seen in your life. Which was fantastic for us.

After a few calls/texts/tweets back home, we collapsed and fell asleep.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I just realized that adding pictures now will be a bit much for me while I'm still on the trip. So I will be adding them after the trip is over.