Pacific Distances

One of the strangest parts of being abroad is that I'm not home. This weekend is Labor Day, the ceremonial last weekend of summer before students return to the halls and classrooms. As my friends all return to their respective universities, I'd like to take this time to be nostalgic, miss my friends, and share a bit about my life back in New York.

While I have many amazing friends (many of whom are reading this), I'll share a bit about a time-honored tradition: Anti-Social Lunch. It started on a Tuesday last fall, when my friend Amy (of Baking and Mistaking fame) and I would have a bi-weekly lunch date in the NYU Kosher Cafeteria. Our dear friend Sarah had once expressed her reluctance to eat lunch there, since she was afraid she would not have any friends to sit with. We were fast to invite her, and lunch was a success. And so, a tradition was born.

When Sarah went abroad last spring, we had a small farewell gathering. When Sarah returned I was in Montreal, but she and Amy celebrated on their own. A few short weeks ago, Sarah was leaving for Kazakhstan and I was getting ready to leave for Copenhagen. So the occasion of numerous departures warranted a reunion/good-bye party, which obviously meant a delicious dessert.

It is definitely strange to be in a different city, and to hear many of my friends complaining about the imminent start of classes. But I'm already settled and excited for more adventures in wonderful Copenhagen. Though I might have to wait awhile for my next exciting cake, it will be well worth it.

Good-bye to All That

Today marks my last full day in the United States for the next six months or so.

Tomorrow night, it is off to Denmark, with a stop in Iceland.

It seems like summer has flown by so quickly, like months escaped me (or maybe just washed away with all the rain and humidity). I finished my internship, and have spent the past two weeks shopping, preparing various and sundry papers and arrangements, and getting used to the idea that I'll be on foreign soil for awhile and away from here.

I'll miss New York. I'll miss the sauna of the subway platform, the tiny hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, the way that fountains in parks are lit up at night. I'll miss the way that tourists always look up (and then look upset when a midtown suit rushes past them in a flurry of phone calls, e-mails, and business lunches). I'll miss the noise of Union Square traffic at unholy hours, the way that the Manhattan Bridge looks from Chinatown (and vice versa), and the colorful people that you see everywhere.

These minute details can be overlooked so easily, but it is these very things that make New York, well, New York. But perhaps the thing that I will miss more is my life here. To be dreadfully cliche, a lot of people that I care about will be far away. I'll miss my family, my friends - the world that I have here. But now it is time for a change, to travel, and to fall in love with another city.

Next time, from Copenhagen,

Ariel