[New York City, NY]

I had flown in and out of New York plenty of times on my many treks between the East Coast and Bulgaria. I’d gotten as far as spending the night at La Guardia one time during a streak of bad winter weather that had me arriving in Virginia, where I lived at the time, three days later than anticipated. However, I’d never made it into the city in the 13 years I’ve lived in the US, and so a visit to the Big Apple was more than overdue. When my former boss at LMU, Martha, moved back to NYC last fall, I knew it would be only a matter of time until I came to visit, and the fact that she also offered a day trip to Flushing for the US Open tennis championship made her offer irresistible.

It wasn’t until the first sights of the city last night on the way from JFK to Brooklyn that it finally hit me – I am in frickin’ New York Citeeeeyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!! We could see the Freedom Tower – part of the rebuilding of the new World Trade Center that is still under construction – and the Empire State building as we were making our way down to Brooklyn, and I couldn’t believe I’d be seeing all the famous landmarks this city is famous for in just a matter of days.