Note: I've decided it's just easier to do the first few days than chronicle each week as a week.
In theory.
Wednesday, June 25th started like this...
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| Thank you to my amazing family for sending me off! |
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...and ended in Washington Heights, New York.
I hopped on a plane at 1:02 out of GRR and landed at 2:40 something in LGA. The flight was fairly uneventful save for a resentful chair partner and an excited three year old who could not stop shouting "WE'RE FLYINGGGGGGGGGGG," which I honestly found more hilarious than disruptive. Props to the kid for appreciating the miracle of flight! I know I did, but than, I had a window seat while flying in over the city. Kind of hard not to.
After landing, I texted Shannon, who is the brave and the bold new MTW project administrator/director, and in fact, my boss for the summer. As she so succinctly put it earlier this week, "You're my house-elf."
(We've already discussed the need for her to present me with clothing to free me properly come projects end.)
Meeting up with her outside of the airport was painless and oddly comfortable, given that I'd never met her outside of skype. In all seriousness, it felt more like a reunion than an introduction! We loaded up my bags and headed for Uptown and to her apartment, which long term MoM followers will recognize as my lodgings from last year. She dropped me off and headed back to work to take care of a few things, so I took the time to process the fact that yes, I really was indeed "back in the New York Groove."
She got back maybe an hour later, followed shortly thereafter by Marissa and Yanira, two friends from last summer/Exodus employees. We got pizza from an old favorite and visited for hours. It's crazy and comforting how little time can affect relationships sometimes!
Thursday morning I slept in until about 9 or so, when everyone else in the apartment headed into work, before getting ready, resetting the futon, and heading that way myself. It was weird and familiar and oddly both more comfortable and more shocking than I would have thought, the walk to Exodus that Thursday morning, although the same label could be applied to my first few days back as a whole. Silly girl that I am, I thought that having been here before and knowing a decent bit about the area that I would get to avoid culture shock altogether. The walk past 181st St. proved that theory otherwise. And yet, for how hard it was to settle again, it still had this strange sense of home. The very same sense of home that hit me as I walked down to a muggy church basement full of tutors busy planning for Summer Program.
The morning was spent catching up with a few of those same tutors, sitting in on a lecture of child safety from the Exodus parent coordinator, and going over the very handy-dandy handbook that Shannon put together for me, as well as orientation to the Big Book of MTW Teams. Shortly thereafter, we headed to the minimart for lunch, ate, and caught the train uptown to Target to buy air mattresses and other such items for the summer. By the time we were done, we were oddly exhausted and headed back home to unwind.
In the same spirit of the late afternoon, thursday night was pretty low-key; Shannon and I made Mac and Cheese following a lively round of the "What can we make for dinner that we can get from RiteAide?" game, which we subsequently ate on the couch while watching "Harry Potter," during which one of us may have fallen asleep. These things, after all, do happen.
Friday we headed into the office fairly straightaway so we could get to Costco (!) for the inaugural run for the 2014 Mission Group Season. We spent $1058.00 and ended up with all that you see below.
Getting everything back? Now, that's when things really got interesting...
You see, our brilliant plan was to drop off breakfast food and a few assorted items at the Team Apartments, the first of which we had just been texted the code for and therefore been given access to.
"Perfect!" we thought. "We'll get everything in while we have use of the van and we'll save ourselves carting all these groceries from Exodus!"
So, merrily, we double-parked, began unloading groceries, and quite successfully succeeded in entering the apartment building with the code provided.
This, sadly, was not the case for the apartment itself.
Flumoxed, we entered it time after time to no avail. Eventually, we gave up and Shannon texted the landlady; meanwhile, we had meat and dairy products sitting out in the heat in both the hall and the van.
"Betsy, this is going to suck," Shannon informed me, before proceeding to explain that logically, we had unloaded far too many groceries to pack up again, but that there was no way we could let everything else sit around until we got the correct code.
And so Shannon drove off to unpack a massive Costco order back at the Heights, and I, I sat outside the apartment surrounded by cases of yogurt.
There I sat, for the better part of an hour, confusing the neighbors and generally being awkward, when I was approached by a woman who asked me if I worked with BobbiJo. I replied with "Well...," and explained, and she nodded as if this was a reasonable answer and proceeded to unlock the doors. As it turns out she was the cleaning lady, and out of the kindness of her heart, she let me in!
I proceeded to drag in all the trappings I'd been babysitting and put them away as best as I could, and somewhere in the next half an hour or so, Shannon reappeared. We eventually got my suitcase over and had a team huddle regarding the next day's arrivals before breaking for the evening to rest up/do as we pleased.
So what did I do with my first friday night back in New York?
I ate Reese's in my pajamas and watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the empty apartment.
It was glorious.
If slightly underachieving.
This felt very rambley, but I'm afraid that's the mood I'm in. Week One post will begin on that Saturday, or, the day of never ending check-ins!
Dun-dun-dun...
