I'm finishing this now...New York

12/31/04-a.k.a the day we meet John and New Years Eve

So this is the day we picked to go to the Today Show. The reason was because John Mayer was going to be there, so it seemed like a great idea. We woke up at 3:15 a.m., got dressed warmly, and then called the taxi to be there at 4:15. We were meeting Tiffany, Beth, and Amy at 4:30, but at that time, it wouldn’t take very long to get there. We were a little leery of the taxi when it wasn’t a yellow cab, but we eventually sucked it up and got in, praying all the while that our lives wouldn’t be taken from the strange man. He ended up being very normal and our fears were in vain. We got to Rockefeller Center, saw our friends and looked around. We thought, ‘Hey, we’re the first ones here!’ We saw a stage being set up and were told we needed to clear the area because they were setting up stuff for Carson Daly that evening. We walked over to where the Today Show is filmed and then saw a short line formed. We asked the people what they were doing and they said they were in the line for the Today Show, so we got in line. There were only about 15 people in front of us, so we weren’t worried. We had our signs that we had made the night before, and then made a few more while waiting. Here we are with our signs before the show. Of course mine is the cleverest reading ‘John your body is a wonderland.’ He’s never heard that before, right?



The people in front of us had what we labeled ‘professional signs’ because all their letters had been carefully stenciled nicely. Everyone in their group had a letter that spelled out a message, but I can’t remember what it said. They were from Alabama though and a nice group. While we were waiting in line, we took turns going to the only place open for some breakfast, a bagel shop. They had German candy in there, which made Ine very happy and reminded her of home. While we were getting breakfast we missed out on the orange hats that were given away.



Luckily, I found 2 that people had dropped and later sold them on eBay for a profit of $33. Who knew people would want these silly hats?
The show went great, although since it was cold, John was playing inside…bummer. However, he did come out to meet people, and we were in the PERFECT spot. He came right to the section we were standing and we all began screaming. John autographed our signs and had a little chat with us. He said he needed our energy and thanked us for coming out. When he was signing something for a lady next to us, Lindsey had her video camera out and got me touching John’s jacket. Yes, I was being a total dork, but we had a lot of fun. Here's a picture of John.



Here is the guy that filled in doing the weather, Sean.


Here is Matt Lauer.


Most of the Today Show is spent standing around waiting to be on TV. We actually made it on several times, and luckily my dad recorded it at home so we could watch later. Also, the guy who was doing the weather, since Al was out, came to our section, holds the microphone in front of Lindsey and Tiffany and says, “So, does anyone have a good New Years resolution for us?” Lindsey quickly looks to Tiffany because she doesn’t know what to say and in typical Tiffany fashion, Tiff says, “Umm, well, I guess exercise more.” Yeah, so not too original, but good try Tiffany and you got on TV. Around 9, Tiffany, Amy, and Beth left to go try and get tickets to a Broadway show, but since we had already done the Broadway thing, we stayed until the end of the show. There was a strange lady that came up yelling at one of the camera men saying he was sexy…very funny. After the show, since we had gotten up so early, and knew we’d be up really late, we went back to our place to take a nap. We opened the window because of our room that was always warm, and slept for a good 4 hours. It was very nice. We finally woke up and headed to Times Square, but not before getting some 2005 glasses.



It was already pretty crowded even though it was only 5 p.m. We went to eat at Applebee’s then decided it was time to go ‘camp out’ and wait for the ball to drop. We kept getting sent in circles by the police, but eventually got to the right street to get to into Times Square. Of course, I had to go to the bathroom and so did Lindsey, so we spotted a McDonald’s and went in. They had a rule that you had to buy something to use the bathroom, so we got 2 small drinks and headed up the stairs to the bathroom. We didn’t even want our drinks, so we left them on a table, did what we were there for, and got back on our way. There were only certain cross street that you could get into Times Square from so these few streets were very crowded. There were people pushing up against everyone. We were basically standing without our legs because we were so crammed in there. Once through the security, which consisted of walking past policemen, we headed down the side street to get to 7th Avenue. We passed a man that was passing out tracks telling people as they passed that they needed Jesus. I wanted to give him a little encouragement, so I said to him, “We love Jesus!” He responded saying that “Not all who say to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of Heaven.” I decided that was enough encouragement for the man that said I was going to hell and we kept heading toward our destination. We were at 7th Avenue and 49th street. The ball drops at 42nd street, so we actually had a great view since it’s so high up. We had a lot of waiting to do since it was 5:45 p.m. We weren’t too crowded at this point, so we sat on the street. I was a little hyper out of boredom and driving Lindsey a little crazy, but what’s new. Every hour, starting at 6, they had a countdown. I guess it was for the New Year in other countries, and Ine was glad to do the countdown along with her family in Belgium, even if they weren’t with her. Lindsey and Ine both fell asleep on the street.

Having fun while we waited:

There were some silly games up on a screen that we jokingly played along with during our long wait. Around 11 or so, Tiffany called me and said they were going to try and find us. I told them where we were and surprisingly they found us in the crowd. They also had 3 guys with them from Bulgaria. They were Trent, Angel, and Enrique. Tiffany said they followed them, but I’m not surprised with how wild Amy acted. Here are some of us with Enrique.



Tiffany got mad when Trent tried to kiss her at midnight, but I think she was pretty much asking for it with all the flirting. Of course, she has a boyfriend, so that is why she claimed to be mad. The ball drop was fun though.

14 seconds until midnight:

Happy New Year 2005

This picture was with my phone so the quality isn't as good.


We stood around and talked for a few minutes, then Tiffany, Beth, and Amy disappeared, leaving us with the 3 guys. They talked to us for a while, and then Enrique asked us to say “Happy New Year” in his language so he could send the video back to his family. We laughed and said ok. We started repeating after him, and then Ine said, “No! We aren’t saying that.” Luckily for us, Ine didn’t know their language, but knows enough other languages to know that he was making us say something pretty dirty. He laughed and said, “Man, you aren’t supposed to be so smart!” We managed to get away from the guys and headed towards the subway. Tiffany called and said the plans to go to a club were cancelled because they found out there was a $100 cover charge. We found out that all places had a big cover on New Years, which makes perfect business sense. We were looking for the subway since the ones in Times Square were closed. We asked a cop and he told us to go over by this statue and newsstand, and it would be on the other side of it. He lied, but we eventually found it and hoped on the 1 and 9 to get back to our place. I think we got home somewhere around 2 a.m. and were exhausted, so went straight to bed with confetti in our hair and all. At around 5 a.m. someone was knocking on our door. We just ignored it at first, but it kept on, so we yelled, “What?” A guy was talking on a cell phone out there, and said, “Is anyone in there for Florida?” and we said, “No!” We yelled for him to shut up and he told the person on the phone, “Someone just told me to shut up.” Ine then yelled, “Yeah, so do it.” How exciting, huh? We went back to sleep quickly since we were so tired, but a few hours later there were some really loud girls next door, so we hit the wall a few times and it eventually got better. I guess we seemed like old folks, but we wanted some sleep!

1/1/05
We slept for about 11 hours, and then got up to go see a few sites. We walked to Starbucks on 98th then hopped on the 1 and 9 to ride it until the end. The last stop going downtown is at the Statue of Liberation, which is what I called it the entire trip. We saw Battery Park, looked at the war memorial, and then took some far off pictures of the Statue of Liberty since we didn’t want to wait 2 hours to get up close. We were told it wasn’t worth it anyway. Here is the crowd at the dock.

This is the closest we got to the real statue.


We also saw a guy that was dressed as the statue of liberty. We were able to get much closer to him.



After that, we walked to South St. Seaport to eat at Nathan’s hot dogs, because we were told this was the best place. It was pretty tasty.



We went in a few shops there to get some souvenirs for folks, and then headed to Wall St.



We went into Trinity Church which was on the movie National Treasure. We looked all over but never found the treasure, but they had one section closed off, so I’m convinced that’s where to find it. I signed the guestbook and wrote in the comments ‘where is the treasure?’ which I’m sure they got a lot of after that movie.


We hadn’t discussed with Tiffany, Beth, and Amy what our plans were for the day so you can imagine our surprise when we ran into them after we left Trinity Church. We talked to them for a little while then walked on down Wall St. We went to Starbucks for some refreshments, then headed to the 4/5 subway to go to Grand Central Station.

We went to the UN building, but it was closed so Ine took a picture.



We then headed to the Empire State building, but the line was around the block so we decided to try and come back in the morning before we left town. We were supposed to meet Tiff and her gang for dinner so we started heading that way. We were about 20 blocks away, but we figured we may as well walk since we had the time, and it’d be nice to see the city. We stopped at Macy’s to use the bathroom and touch up our makeup using the samples at the make-up counter.

We finally made it to the restaurant which was this cute little Italian place. Some friends of Tiffany’s had recommended it. They told us that every 10 minutes or so they would turn the music up loud and everyone danced around.


We had a blast. There was an old guy with his family there that came and danced with us. We stood in our chairs and danced, then started a conga line, but when the old man stood on the table, the wait staff had to put an end to it. A group of high school kids were sitting at the table next to us and passed a note that said something about Amy. It referred to her as ‘pink shirt’. When we looked over there, a guy pointed to a girl saying she wrote it. Amy wrote a note that said, “Call me” and put the rejection number on there. (310-495-5412…call this, it’s funny) After we finished eating, we all split up because it was late and we were all leaving the next day. When we got back to our place I tried to print our boarding passes, but the computer messed up so we would just have to wait on them.

1/2/05-Our last day in NY

We had wanted to go to Brooklyn Tabernacle for church, but we didn’t really have time to get to Brooklyn since we had to be ready to go to the airport at 2:00. We put our luggage in the storage lockers in the basement, got breakfast at Starbucks, and then headed on our way. That morning we decided we’d go check out the Empire State Building, but the line was still pretty long. We took a picture and went on our way.


We headed to Central Park zoo. We got to watch the sea lions during feeding time and they did all kinds of tricks. I also got to see penguins up close and that was fun since we don’t have them at the zoo here. I took tons of pictures at the zoo, so I hope you don't get too overwhelmed with them here. Feel free to leave comments telling me I put up too many zoo pictures.




This picture (below) is of a really old sea lion. They usually only live to be 20 years old and they have 2 here that are believed to be over 30 years old.





While we had fun there, the most fun was in the children’s part of the zoo.





We decided that for our last thing in New York we would get hot dogs in Central Park.


This picture added just for fun:


We also stopped and got some roasted peanuts that were dang good. We got on the subway for our last time and headed to the place we had taken up as ‘home’ for our time in New York. We got our luggage and got in the Super Shuttle van to go to the airport. We had to wait a little while for another lady, but it didn’t matter because we were still going to get the airport in plenty of time. We grabbed a bistro bag as we got on the flight which had a really good turkey sandwich along with a triple chocolate brownie. We slept on and off on the flight, but we also took pictures when it was dark, disturbing people with the flash. When we landed there was bad weather so we had to wait awhile before pulling up to the gate, but we could use our phones so we managed to let the family know we were going to be off the plane soon. In the meantime, we wasted time putting on our 2005 glasses and acting goofy. One guy said we were the funniest girls on the plane and then told us he worked for the airlines, but didn’t want to tell too many people. He just wanted to be a normal passenger for that flight. The guy sitting in front of us was a basketball announcer for Manhattan College and offered us tickets to their game in Wichita, but I declined since I didn’t really want to make that drive the next day. We were greeted at baggage claim by Dad, Mom, and Kevin. Lindsey left with Kevin to spend some time with Jenni for her birthday, and the rest of us headed home. So these are more details than any of you care to know, but I had fun recalling the details. If you read all this, I’m very impressed. Please leave comments if you did…or even if you didn’t.