Well, happy anniversary to me! It was eleven years ago today that I moved to New York City. I can barely even comprehend that. The things that have happened to me, the places I've been, the ways I've changed...I am a profoundly different person at 30 than I was at 19. I guess that's normal.
I remember that first night; a snowstorm closed LaGuardia and stranded me in Cincinnati for several hours. When I finally arrived in the wee hours of the morning, the cab drove me to my dormitory down a dark, deserted and very ominous-looking 125th Street (Giuliani had not yet been sworn in for his first term). Once inside International House, I got lost and couldn't find my room. When I finally did locate it, I actually gasped because the room was so tiny. (The chair could not be fully pulled away from the desk because the bed was in the way.)
The radiator warming up made a frightening hissing and loud clanking noise, and if that wasn't bad enough, the person on the other side of the very thin wall seemed to be howling at the moon. (As it turned out, it was a Russian plasmaphysics major who liked to sing along with his walkman. He didn't really speak English, didn't understand the words he was hearing/singing, and couldn't carry a tune. Trust me, on the other side of the wall, it sounded very strange indeed.) I got very little sleep that night.
As much as I complain about life in Manhattan, and as much as I long for an opportunity to go back west, I do love this city, and I always will. I may have gone through adolescence in Beaverton, Oregon, but I grew up in New York.
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