Star Wars Yoga

My brother-in-law posted one of the best videos ever:

This was actually in central park! I would have been so excited if I saw this!

Should I try downward facing Wookie in my next yoga class?

I just thought I'd show you the cutest Italian shoes ever!

:)

Score!!

Today was a big day.

I chose the lab I will be working in for the next two years, as well as my thesis advisor/mentor.

This is a big deal because its such a big commitment (and it's really hard to choose a lab/mentor because you want to make sure they're perfect for you.)

I'll be working in an Immunology lab, developing and working on various genetic recombination projects (in general), and will be putting in about 40+ hours a week.

The PI is great; friendly, flexible, and incredibly smart. She is also very hands-on and is willing to develop a great thesis with me. The lab is small (about 6 people) and everyone is very friendly. Plus the lab equipment is top notch (that makes me so giddy! hehe. Anyone from the BYUH science department will understand....)! It scares me to touch most of the equipment because some of them are worth half a mill! Folks, I've finally made it to the big leagues. The only downside is the amount of hours I've got to put in. :(

But I'm kind of excited. The potential of scientific discovery (no matter how small) is intriguing and exciting.

Boring post, I know. I'm just too lazy to upload/post the World Trade Center pics (Visiting that place was amazing). But I'll get around to it eventually, I promise!

Stress reliever anyone?

Life in NYC so far

So far:

-I've eaten myself silly. People keep introducing me to new restaurants/bakeries/food. School stress and good food nearby are not a good combination.

-My feet refuse to wear shoes! I get blisters from walking a block in ANY pair of shoes. I have to wear slippers to church and slip on heels just before I walk in to sacrament meeting.

-The weather here is CRAZY. Hot and humid to cold and windy in one day.

-I've learned to never walk near the street in the rain. A taxi cab zoomed through a puddle of water, causing a small tsunami of sewer water to cover me. This has happened 3 times already.

-Grad school has consumed my life. 1 lecture covers almost an entire semester of material from a bio class at BYUH. The level of difficulty is incredible. I feel like I need to hire my own personal psychologist to keep me mentally sane through this semester.

-I am a little closer to picking my mentor/thesis advisor. I have 6 professors picked out as candidates. More info on that later.

-I would give anything for my own washer/dryer. I hate laundromats.

-Our tiny apt. is almost set up! We still need a kitchen table, but we have a couch!

-Um, did I mention the food is amazing? hehe.

That's all the updates I can think of now. Seth starts school at the end of next week. Tomorrow I randomly don't have class, so we're thinking of heading down to see ground zero and all of the current protesters.

Here are some random pictures from my iphone that I've taken throughout the week:

Times Square. We found the theatre that is showing "Wicked!" My school gives discount tickets, so we're hoping to scrape up some money in the future to go see it. And Seth got in the background of some Food Network show that was filming with the "Mamma Mia!" cast. He just walked in the back making weird faces.

Union Square. Great shopping here. My friend Jessie also recommended the Union Square Carsten Salon for a haircut, and they did a great job! No more Hawaii hair stylists butchering my hair! Thanks Jessie!

And there is a little dog park here. It made me miss Fatty.

And here's the view from my school library. Its a dirty window...not the air outside.

Hopefully I'll have some pics of ground zero tomorrow! :)

Grad School...

...IS SO HARD.

I am so overwhelmed with all of my classes.

I think back to my hardest undergrad semesters, and I probably only had about 2 or 3 core bio/chem classes.

Now I have 7. Seeeevvvvveennn!!!

And they are all twice as hard as my puny undergrad bio classes.

In my biochem/molecular core I have a three hour exam every Monday, and I still have to find a mentor and a research lab.

The only plus is that the other 22 MS students in my program are nice. I definitely need to stick with them if I'm going to make it through all of this.

I had no idea it was possible to drown in schoolwork just as the semester begins!

MS in biomed sciences... what the heck was I thinking?

So......someone remind me... WHY I'm going to school?! I hate school!

Best Ever

Raspberry Cheesecake Chunk Gelato.

This place is literally like 15 steps from our apartment.

My waistline is in big trouble.

Church in Manhattan

We went to church today for the first time in NYC. Our ward attends church in the LDS Manhattan temple. I LOVE the building. Its so beautiful and unique inside! When you go in, the temple is to the left, and the distribution center and chapel are to the right, on different levels. Loved it!

We actually went to the wrong ward...we accidentally slept in a little late and had to go to a later ward. But this ward was nice! The temple is right across from Julliard, so we had all of the musical geniuses to make the congregation sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. My scratchy voice was easily drowned out by the opera lady next to me.

I loved just being able to walk to church too. It's so convenient. We're so lucky to have the temple within walking distance. We had that Laie too, so I guess we've had two great blessings in the row. I can't wait to attend a session there!

JOBLESS!

Today, I went looking for a job because I now have a hefty NYU tuition to pay off on my own.

And once again, my bachelor's degree is rendering me useless (thanks a lot recession!).

I'll let you know if I find one.

Any suggestions of a place to look? Anthropologie is out of the question because my paychecks would just be recycled back into their products!

Oh and I saw my first NYC rat today on the subway and a mouse in front of my apartment. [shudder].

Schools, 30 Rock, and Lincoln Center

I finally went up to visit the Mt. Sinai campus of NYU. This is where I'll be going to classes. The School of Medicine is right next to the Mt. Sinai hospital, which is huuuuuuuge.

This is the research building, where I will be spending a lot of time:

Annenberg building:

I couldn't really get into the main campus area because you need a school of medicine badge to get in (I should be getting mine on Wednesday).

We also made a stop at Columbia, which seriously has one of the most gorgeous campuses ever.

And of course we had to stop at the Rockefeller center! ...Especially the GE building at 30 Rock (BEST. SHOW. EVER.)!

**Ack! My hair is so gross and long! Someone pleeeeeassseeee help me find somewhere to get it cut!**

In the winter the concourse area becomes a skating rink!

The 30 Rock studio tours for the day were booked, so we're going back on Monday for a tour. The best part was going into the NBC store, which had all sorts of memorabilia from other shows! My favorite section was of course the Seinfeld stuff. The restaurant Mendy's was even right around the corner!

There were a lot of neat restaurants and shops around the center (as there seems to be everywhere in NYC!), but my favorite was the mondo version of this store:

SO BIG and awesome!

And last but not least, we walked down to Lincoln Center (right by the temple) and came across Julliard.

I really hope to see some performances/plays here! I bet they're some of the best in the world.

And of course Seth was excited to see this:

This actually isn't The Cube (that's on 5th avenue). We still haven't made our way to see that yet. But the architecture of this building was amazing. You can kind of see it in the photo, but there is a spiral staircase in the corner that leads you to other levels underground. I'm sure Seth will be spending quite a bit of time over here!!

Oi! I'm so tired today! We've packed in quite a bit of things! Today I also had to walk a million and a half blocks to get to a UPS store to pick up some things that I had shipped earlier. My back is sore from lugging that stuff home! I probably should have taken a taxi. Our couch finally came so we have something to sit on now! Our apartment still isn't finished yet, but when it is I will post a picture.

Oh an I got my class schedule today. Well, most of it. They sent me my core class schedule. I start Biostatistics, Research, and Core I (whatever that is!). I get to fill in the rest of my classes next week. Uggghhhhh, someone remind me why I'm in school again? I'm beginning to have flashbacks of all of the pain and agony that my pre-med undergrad put me through.

Tomorrow Seth is going paint-balling and I'm going to Virayoga to try out a yoga class. I hear that place is good. It's all the way down in SoHo, but I figure its worth a trial run until/if I find something better.

G'night!

LDS Manhattan Temple

The LDS temple is just a few blocks from our apartment! Isn't it crazy that it's just in the middle of the busy city?

We actually go to church on the first floor!

Can't wait to explore our new ward on Sunday!

SoHo and NYU

Today was a day of wandering for me.

I got up early before Seth woke up and wandered around Manhattan via the subways. I figure the best way to get to know the subway system is to just wander around until I get familiar with it. I have to say, my subway iphone app has saved my life. I have the map with me wherever I go!

I started out by heading to Times Square to check out the nearby shops. I'm so amazed at the size of the stores here! I found the best H&M and Zara stores (both 3 stories!) off of fifth avenue. I seriously could wear everything in those stores. I also stumbled upon the New York public library! It was pretty amazing, but most of it was covered in scaffolding so I didn't bother taking a picture.

Then I headed down to SoHo, which is like the mothership of all shopping. I think every store I could think of is in that area. A lot of the nicer stores are over there, like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc. I also found the ashtanga yoga studio that my hawaii instructor told me to find. Loved that place! There were a lot of cute cafes over there as well!

There was a pretty sweet Apple store there:

I don't know why all of those people were sitting outside. I thought they were in line or something, but they weren't. Go figure.

There was a theatre in there where they answered questions and did demonstrations. I felt kind of lame taking a picture during one of them.

"The Cube" Apple store is on Fifth Avenue, and we're going to go see that tomorrow... maybe? It's supposed to be the coolest Apple store.

I also stopped off on 8th street to go to the NYU main campus. I love it! It's not really even a campus! It just a bunch of spread out buildings throughout the city. The town is fantastic. It has a ton of cute shops and restaurants to eat. In front of my school, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, is Washington Square Park. I can't wait to just lounge out here!

Apparently you can swim in this fountain. Strange, but there were quite a few people running around in there. Gross. I'm spoiled from the crystal clear Hawai'i water. You won't be seeing me in that fountain.

Today we also got a ZipCar to get some things from Costco/Target that are too big to carry all the way home (which is pretty much everything). You rent these cars by the hour, so it was really cheap. Driving in NYC is horrible. I'm so glad we don't have a car. People darting out in the streets, traffic, crazy taxi drivers, honking...you name it! I probably had 8,423,211 heart attacks on the way there. Thanks, but I'll be taking the subway. The car was extremely useful in getting all of our stuff back to our apartment though. I'm still glad it was just a one time thing.

Tomorrow I'm heading up to the medical school I'm attending. I won't be going to the main campus for classes, so I better find this school! It's somewhere in the upper east side, so I have to take an uptown subway and a crosstown bus. I'm geting better at navigating, so we'll see how it goes!

What's up NEW YORK!!

We're here in the fabulous NYC!

We arrived yesterday morning after taking a horrible red eye flight in. Our apartment is completely unfurnished, so we have spent the last two days on little/no sleep getting the essentials for our new apartment.

I just love it here. We are in a good area, and everything is just around the corner! And if its not around the corner, its just a subway stop or two away.

Here are some things that I've learned in the last two days:

-My haole feet are not prepared for the immense amount of walking that I need to do daily.

-There ARE cockroaches in NYC (I will never escape them)!

-Green "subway" signs don't lead you to a sandwich shop.

-Everyone here has an iphone 4! Everyone!!! It's essential to my navigation. I have a subway app that I wouldn't survive without.

-New Yorkers are VERY friendly (despite what others from the West Coast may have told me).

-The heat is nothing. I just feel like I'm in Hawaii.

-The subway isn't scary. In fact, its quite fantastic.

-The food is AMAZING. ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I will be fat when I leave here. Guaranteed.

-Everything here is bigger and better than everywhere else.

-There are so many different kinds of people here. I've had a billion cultural experiences in just one day.

-The shopping is to die for. I've never been happier. All my favorite stores are nearby and are like 2-4 stories tall, covered in flashing lights, and are open until 2am.

-Don't go into East Harlem alone.

-It smells bad here. I'm not used to the city smell.

I love getting up in the morning and walking over to a little cafe for breakfast. The transit to my school is no big deal, and my favorites stores are so close---if only I had $$ to do some serious shopping damage!!

Pictures to come....we're so busy here! I forgot how much work it is to furnish an apartment from scratch. I was nervous to move here, but I am actually surprised by how much I love it. When Seth was tired, he went home today and I just spent an extra 4 hours riding the subway and exploring downtown by myself. Maybe I'm just somewhat of a closet city girl.

Love it here.

I hate moving.

Arrggghhhh will it ever end?

We are in transit right now, currently in California visiting family.

We made it out of HI with our tons of baggage and giant mailing boxes. My advice to everyone is to never ship anything remotely valuable via USPS. I shipped my nice dishes that we got as a wedding present and I opened the delivered smashed box to find a good third of our dishes broken. Great. I had smothered them in bubble wrap and cloth and packed them so well! All of our other boxes were broken/smashed/ripped/beaten. No more USPS for me.

Our apartment became "officially" ours a few days ago, so now we get to ship all of our stuff again, but now to NYC. My arms are so sore from packing, repacking, carrying, loading, and mailing all of these boxes! Whats funny is that we really don't have that much stuff. My sister is moving into her apartment in Fullerton and she has twice as much stuff as us. Moving across the continent is just horrible. Now I just can't wait to get settled in our new place! I mailed a lot of boxes today, and I think we just have two more big ones that are in La Jolla.

We have been so busy the last few days that it really hasn't hit me that I'm not going back to HI! I think it will really hit as soon as I start school next Friday, or sometime around then. I already miss the beach and my friends that I left behind, but I'm excited to see whats over in NYC. Mostly the food. :) Things are so different here on the mainland! I already miss the laid back feeling of HI. I have to say though, the one thing that drives me crazy is the drivers here in California. I forgot how crazy people get over here: cutting me off, driving REALLY fast, not using blinkers when cutting me off in my lane, the aggressiveness of everyone, etc. I feel like an old grandma driver, afraid to go too fast. Good thing that I don't have to drive over in NYC because the drivers over there would eat me alive!

Sadly, I haven't taken any pictures of anything that I've done. That's mainly because I seriously can't find ANYTHING. I've packed/repacked everything so many times that I don't remember where anything is, and that includes my camera. So far we've been to a Padres game, Wild Rivers Water Park, tons of delicious restaurants, and hung out with family and friends. I'll find my camera when I get to NYC. Hopefully. I keep having these freaky thoughts that I've forgotten things in HI (wouldn't that be the worst?).

The official move is Sunday night. We'll get to NYC Monday morning. Then it all starts! I start school next Friday and Seth starts the first week in September.