New York City: Day Two

This day started off a whole lot better than the day before, namely without any bus accidents!

Zephyr -Statue of Liberty

We went to see the Statue of Liberty in the early morning. Mister Tour Guide was just as enthusiastic as he was the day before and when we were lining up for the boat he started yelling to everyone that we should try to sit at the top deck right side (nice move, so secretive). So when we were allowed to board the boat, everyone went to the seats we were told to go to. The German group was right behind us and considering they were with fifty students and we were already there with a group of twenty, the entire top deck was pretty much filled up.

‘The Three Guys’: Men, Toby, Marc

Apparently a group of Asian people didn't think so.. It was like an invasion of at least sixty people and they decided to just stand in everybody's sight. So frustrating. We were not able to see anything so we were just standing there in front of our seats and I was having fun talking to ‘The Three Guys’ Marc, Tobias and Menno.

In the row in front of Jorien and I were Louise and Romy sitting on the back of their seats. When they stood up to go take a picture on the other side of the boat, a man with a huge camera lens thought that it would be a good idea to do the same thing as the two girls did and he went to sit at the back of their seats. I was standing trying to take pictures and wasn’t paying attention until something made me fall. That butt of the Asian man had pushed me back into my seat! I stood up and politely asked him to go take his pictures some place else. Next thing I know he moves to stand beside me and starts to take pictures of himself with me next to him.

Isn’t he pretty?

At this point I didn’t know what to think. I mean, yes he did what I asked and went to take his pictures somewhere else but this was not exactly what I had in mind... Luckily, Menno was standing behind me and he just shielded my face with his hand while we kept talking so that I would not be in the picture. After a while, he had a brilliant solution: making weird faces. Menno is pro with this so he just started making weird faces to try to get them to move to some other place because there would be some weird guy in all of their pictures! That seemed to help a bit!

So ‘seeing’ Alice Island and The Statue of Liberty was a bit disappointing because we didn’t really get to see what we came for but it was fun knowing Menno had my back! Or should I say face???

We got back on the bus and drove to a local Deli to have lunch. It was a very small but busy place (maybe because there were twenty exchange students there but who knows?). The staff was a bit impatient and kept asking what we wanted to order. Excuse us, we need time to decide! When we finally knew we ordered and we had our lunch within three minutes. I have been to the USA quite a couple of times before and I am still not used to the portions they give you. Whatever you order a small of is still just as big as a large is back home...

The banner Oklahoma sent to NYC

Next up was the St. Paul Chapel. This church is located opposite of the place where once the World Trade Center site was. A popular place to visit as it keeps memorial banners, a firefighter suit with the dust still on it, police patches from all over the world and much more. The chapel survived the attacks without any damage. Not even a window was broken while other, better instructed, buildings came crashing down when they were not hit with the airplanes. Definitely something to think about. How can such an old church survive the terrorist attacks of 9/11? Was this a miracle or was this God?

Ingeborg A. D. Lariby, the only
Dutch victim 

After a ten minute drive we arrived at the 9/11 Memorial. I have always been fascinated by what happened and I think it is important to acknowledge what did. Where the Twin Towers used to be are now two huge, beautiful fountains. The names of everyone who was killed on both attacks on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 are inscribed on the bronze parapets surrounding the two memorial pools. It is extremely impressive and the people have done such a good job building it all!

Subway to Coney Island

We went to Coney Island using the subway. Laura and Yentel were kind enough to sing us all some of my favorite songs by One Direction. I am sure everyone else was also very happy to hear their voices, the guys even gave them some pennies, although it was more like throwing the pennies at the girls in order to shut them up but oh well..

Built on June 26, 1927

Coney Island was very entertaining. A couple of us went into the roller coaster, the oldest in the whole of the US. I went in it just to be able to say I went because it did not look comfortable! It was all wooden made and it looked unstable. I got pretty shaken up but all together the ride was quite alright. 

With Jorrie at the beach-each

Jorien, Yentel, Laura and I went to the beach (each let’s go get away) to take some photo’s but I was held up by a life guard asking me what my badge was for. So, of course, I explained the whole orientation in New York for our High School Year once more. The rest of the girls proceeded taking photo’s but then he started asking me a whole lot more question that were a bit out of order some times. Actually I thought he was drunk so I was happy when Laura came up to me and saved me by saying: ‘Girllllll we gotta go!’

The grown up of the group

To the pizza place we went. The place was some what dirty but it hell, it’s New York nothing is actually clean here. So me being me took out a napkin and some anti-bacterial and cleaned the our table a bit. At least now we could sit without getting nasty sticky stuff on us. While we ate our pizza, the tour guide of the German group came up with a very interesting pick up-line that he used on Mister Tour Guide: ‘Hey do you know Macklemore?’ Menno and I were very entertained by this and kept repeating the sentence all throughout the evening. I guess it is not so funny reading this now but it was at the time. Towards the end of the dinner everyone was a bit bored and Menno, being the grown man that he is, decided that it would be fun to make one big pile of food out of our leftovers (does that sentence sound familiar to anyone?).

Top of the Rock: super pretty!

It was time to go and see the last thing on our to do-list: Top of the Rock! Jorien was scared to death having to go up that high and kept holding my hand the entire time we were there. I love her, haha.

The view was amazing and definitely a good ending of the orientation.

I am so sad that our time is over but so excited for the rest of the year!

Thank you to all the amazing friends that I have made over the past few days. I have had so much fun with all of you and I am sure we will be friends for the rest of our lives!

Much love,

Naomi