Sunday, July 7

Hi! My name is Olivia, and this may come as a shock but I'm an incoming sophomore at the U of A. I'm a double major and a double minor. My majors are Pre-Business and Political Science. My minors are Sports Management and Spanish. I'm from Half Moon Bay, CA, a beach town 20 minutes outside San Francisco. This is my second time visiting New York, but the city still overwhelms me. The East Coast is pretty much the complete opposite of California. California's laid back, New York's busy, California's weather is calm, New York is hot and humid (which my hair is certainly not enjoying), in California everyone waves and smiles, in New York people avoid eye contact! They are really just polar opposites. Today some of the group went shopping in SoHo. I met up with them after for dinner and shopping in China Town.

It was a pretty overwhelming trip for me. Since everyone was already in Lower Manhattan so I traveled alone. First my subway had repeated delays. Things got more complicated when my phone ran out of battery, but even worse when I forgot the restaurant name... and the name of its cross-street. I ended up getting off the subway at the wrong stop. I was somewhere in NoHo, a neighborhood I'd never even heard of. Apparently SoHo is south of Houston street and NoHo is north of Houston street. Something I deduced from all the subway maps I'd been analyzing when my phone ran out of battery. I finally found my way to China Town, where I stood out like a sore thumb! We had a great Thai dinner and ice cream before we went shopping at the stalls on the streets. New York is such a big and diverse city with so much to offer. We are experiencing something different every day!