here is hazel

On our third morning in New York, my roomate and I went down to have a quick breakfast—consisting of nutella, cup noodles, & fruit loops cereal—at our other friends’ room. After that, it was off to Queens!

There, we stopped by the Museum of Moving Image. It was still under renovation, so we didn’t see much, but the things we did see were way cool: props, sets, merchandise, wigs, costumes and scripts from old movies and TV shows, ancient video game machines like Pacman and King Kong, old cameras and sound boxes, stuff like that. Only complaint was that it was mostly dark inside and they didn’t allow flash photography, so I didn’t really bother taking shots of everything.

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I went to get my first disposable camera developed this weekend and, bar a couple of too-close shots of food, the rest came out way better than I expected they would.

Between my sister and I, there is a total of 5 disposable cameras that still need to be finished and developed, so we decided that we’d paste all of our prints on the door of our room. It’ll be exciting to see how cool our door looks when it’s all covered. :)

The first five shots are from New York and the rest are from over the summer break.

I find that the building looks a little warped on the photo. How strange…


Oh hi, that’s my finger. Simultaneously holding my umbrella while taking a shot was tough!





I miss summer…

Though the Tour Director gave us some money for breakfast, we decided to save it and eat in that morning. I packed so much food for the trip that doing so was quite unnecessary. Tuna and crackers for breakfast, yay!

Our first destination of the day was…

St. John’s Cathedral! This was an art trip, so we should’ve expected it, but little did we know that inside the cathedral, we’d see work by none other than Keith Haring:

As we journeyed to Central Park, we saw The Dakota where I felt an overwhelming sense of awe at the fact that little ole me was standing on the streets that John Lennon stood upon; that I was right in front of his home where he lived and that I was facing the entrance where he was shot. Part of me wished that at that moment, Yoko would peek out of her window on the top floor and look down at us. But that was just wishful thinking on my part.

From there we entered Central Park through Strawberry Fields memorial and with our teacher, sang “Strawberry Field’s Forever” as we walked.

We crossed Central Park to go to The Met which was so amazing and so big that we all sort of died when we were told that we had to leave so soon. The Met’s front steps are where the cast of Gossip Girl usually sits, but we couldn’t take a picture because it was so crowded!

I’ve been really interested in Greek mythology lately, so I looked real smart identifying the sculptures of Greek Gods that we saw not only at The Met, but all over New York City (e.g. Prometheus in front of The Rockefeller Center). Theseus over here is famous for defeating a minotaur but he also slayed this poor centaur named Bianor.

One of the highlights at our visit to The Met was seeing Miss Pandora and The Cherry Blossom Girl! I took some stalker pics because I was too scared to approach them and my French is abysmal. But it was hard to concentrate on the art after I saw them…

Next we went to the Guggenheim and then Harlem, 5th Avenue and then Time’s Square again! We went inside Sephora and guess who we bumped into again…

Yeah, I’m not creepy at all.

We had dinner at this place called Schnipper’s which to me had the best veggie burger and best name ever. Also, the manager and the restaurant itself was very nice. A++ to them!

When we got back to our hotel, they let us go to Time’s Square again again again but my feet were killing me so I opted out. I visited my friend’s room when they got back and ate some of their noodles, their cheesecake, jumped on their bed, gossiped, and took silly photos with them. 

To end the day, we climbed to the top of the Rock(efeller) and we screamed, “I LOVE NEW YORK CITYYYYY” to the top of our lungs.

Overall a very fun night :)

It’s impossible to sum up my whole trip in one word, but let’s just say that there were lots of moments where I fantasized about our bus breaking down… I knew I would enjoy my stay but I had no idea I would feel this miserable about leaving.

Suddenly, Toronto isn’t good enough anymore; it’s too cold, too boring, and it isn’t New York City.

The Empire State Building from our hotel room window.

We stayed at the Doubletree Chelsea hotel where we were given warm chocolate chip cookies upon our arrival. And that’s when I knew this place would be awesome! NOTE: Warm cookies are the key to my heart.

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