Jacki's little updates

Welcome to NYC

So... I've been in New York for a week now. As you know I'm here to do an internship with a church here. The church is Morning Star New York and it's closely related to my church in London, Every Nation London. I'm working with and learning from the pastors here, especially Pastor Kevin Singleton who heads up the worship (music) in the church. I'm also going to be having weekly meetings with Pastor Bruce. The internship is starting at the moment, so I've had the last week pretty much at my leisure. The internship will entail getting involved in church life, as well as learning as much as I can by my own observation and by their input. I'll know better over the next week or two what I'm going to be doing, but 'joining the gym is mandatory' was an early conversation Kevin had with me and I'll be going to the gym 4-6 times a week while I'm here!

During my first week in New York I stayed at Lindsey's place in the Upper West Side. It's a 4th floor walk-up so I've been getting a bit of extra exercise running up and down those stairs. On Thursday we had to move out of Lindsey's place for a week so Layne (see picture above) and I are staying in someone else's flat in Harlem. It's certainly a different environment to the Upper West Side. The demographic is largely black and they have a big street culture. I walked through Harlem for about 20 minutes yesterday and probably saw about 300 people just sitting on the 'sidewalk' that I walked on, i.e. I'm only talking about ONE side of the road! some of them are just sitting on their own, or they're in groups, or they're playing chess or cards. (pictured)

The weather is quite sticky, reminds me of being in Manila tho' I'm sure it's not as bad as that! Thank God for air conditioning, especially on the subways. The temperature in the subway stations themselves is worse than the tube but the trains are very refreshing. The subway map isn't as obvious as the tube map but I'm used to it now and the big plus of the subway system is that they have express and local trains, so it doesn't take long to travel around Manhattan. I went to meet Kevin last week and was half an hour early because I was timing the journey by London standards! I still haven't got used to not needing my ticket to leave the subway system. Getting orientated when I come out of a station is still a little challenge, but I've only gone the wrong direction for a significant amount of time once so far.

I'm slowly seeing more and more of New York. To be honest I'm not a very good tourist, I'd much rather chill out with people than take myself off to see the sights and sounds but in this respect Kevin is a good personal reminder! On Monday I went with Kevin, Robby (pictured) and Sina to the Pink Teacup, which is a good place to eat 'soul food'. After that we went to Magnolia's which is famous for it's cup cakes. On Tuesday I went to Ground Zero, with Robby. Not much to see to be honest, except for a great big gaping hole!

Yesterday I went to the Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is the largest gothic cathedral in the world. It wasn't my favourite cathedral in the world, have seen others with much more beauty and attention to detail. However, there were these things in the floor that related to christianity, US and UK. There was one for York, which of course I had to photograph (pictured). Today I wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island but you have to be more organised than I was and book tickets in advance. So I'll try to go on Monday. Instead I went to the National Museum of the American Indian, which is in Custom's House at the bottom of Manhattan. After that I went to/saw Wall St, Ground Zero (again but only briefly), the Supreme Court, Chinatown, Little Italy and Washington Square. There was an italian festival on in Little Italy with italian food for sale on the stalls, but it had far too much american influence for my liking!

I've been surprised at how different the americans use of English is. I've been to the US before but I guess I've noticed it more this time. And I get frustrated when shop assistants or taxi drivers don't understand me!

posted by Jacki @ 5:54 pm