NYU and other adventures.

Well, for those of you who don't know, I'm moving to Manhattan in 64 days, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that time flies and I'm going to be living in a little teeny dorm on the lower east side of Manhattan in what will feel like, oh, five minutes.

Anyway. With some prodding from @laurenvalmai and @justplainhanna, I've decided to blog it. The adventures. The move. The prep, even, maybe. I guess if you people will read it, I'll write it.

I'm going to NYU, class of 2017, off to study French, journalism, art history, creative writing, and dramatic literature. My first road block has been that my academic advisor won't let me take 20 credits my first semester, so... Anyway. I'm thrilled.

I spent the last two and a half weeks running around the world, hitting Paris, Venice, Telfs (in Austria), Munich, coming home for thirtysomeodd hours, and then jetting off to New York. I'm really lucky. In the last 365 days, I have seen six countries. I've ridden so many planes I can't even remember all of them. I've journaled and read and waited and slept, climbed 670 steps and taken two elevators at the Eiffel Tower, ridden in a water taxi in Venice, eaten authentic Japanese ramen, had authentic German weinerschnitzel in a brewery outside of Munich, been to a public bathhouse in Japan, done a handstand in the middle of fifth avenue, seen 8 Broadway plays, put my hands in Gene Kelly's handprints at the Chinese Theater, gone on morning runs through Palm Springs, morning runs through Central Park, watched fireworks on the river in Portland, OR, thrown up four times on the flight from Paris to Venice, spoken French to some strangers at Shake Shack -- and I couldn't be more grateful. The world is full of so many things and I've spent a year seeing a few of them.

When I was in Austria, my dad found this incredible article on ESPN (read it here -- definitely worth your time) that made me think, well, about a lot of things, but one part in particular made me think about the importance of travel. The reporter asks an Italian player about the root of racism in Italian soccer, and he replies with, "Italians don't travel."

Travel does a thousand things for the traveler. It has made me more grateful, patient, curious, appreciative, understanding. The world is truly so enormous. There are so many languages to speak, foods to eat, people to meet, sights to see, experiences to have; it's simultaneously overwhelming and comforting. The lists of the world travels are sort of like books-to-read lists, for me. There's a sense of despair that I'll never get to read every single book out there, but also a sense of comfort in the idea that I'll never run out of books to read. Glass half empty, glass half full. I guess you decide which you like to see. (I am, however cliche it may be, a glass-half-full type of girl.)

Travel has made me more grateful for the small things which I take for granted at home. Like clean laundry every day. And conditioner. And hairbrushes and ice in water and the ability to make phone calls at will. Travel made me also grateful for my own good fortune, things like sight and working legs, or cars large enough to fit my entire family or a roof over my head at night.

Travel made me more patient -- a virtue of which I still have very little, but I'm getting better. I waited in airports. I waited in lines. I waited for trains and meals and planes and people, and I found small moments in those lines and wait rooms to write in journals, to people watch, to sketch, or photograph, or organize.

Travel had made me more comfortable with my body, thanks to the Japanese onsen and the Austrian sauna village. Travel has made me better at early mornings, bumpy rides, taking pills, carefully planning sleep time, and at being okay to go without.

Travel made me appreciate the little things, like hot showers or fresh strawberries or whip cream. Travel has made me understanding (maybe these people had to wake up at 4 am to get here, too). It has, ironically enough, made me less materialistic, and maybe even less technologically dependent, more appreciative of "here and now" moments, better at seeing what's right in front of me.

On a wider scale, and sort of the all-encompassing reason for the importance of world travel, in our efforts to explore and adventure and sightsee and eat, we become world citizens. Travel makes us appreciate and understand the world as a greater whole rather than in pieces. When we step outside ourselves (or make fools of ourselves as tourists), we become more fully members of the human race. We try new foods, speak new languages, and see new things, and then we fall in love. We become less convinced of our own absolute perfection, more appreciative of things different than ourselves, and, in such, we grow into better people.

So. There were a thousand reasons behind my decision to go to NYU, but this is one of the forefront reasons for the choice: A global city, global adventures, and and the opportunity to become more fully a world citizen.

I'm excited and scared and nervous and overjoyed and and and and... And I think, if you guys want, and let me know if you do, I'll write about it all here. From dorms to semesters abroad (fingers crossed!) to the best food in the city.

Here's to the Japan and here's to CA and OR and France and Austria and Italy and Germany, and here's to NYC. Here's to NYU.

"Travel brings power and love back into your life." -Rumi
-Addy Sue

Her name was New York and she had a screwy subway system, among other perfect things about New York City.

It's hard for me to explain to you the way I fell in love with New York City, because to be honest, I don't have much experience with this whole "falling in love" ordeal. I thought maybe I'd fall in love with it the way I fall in love with good shoes or the way I fell in love with Beyonce's "Love on Top" the first time I heard it: fast and hard and easy and undying, though my actual love life hasn't always been just that.

There is a piece of me that was in love with that city long before I ever set foot within a hundred mile radius of it, but that was me loving the idea of it, I guess. So I fell in love with the city in a way that's difficult for me to put into words, because coming out of JFK? It wasn't what I expected. And I was sleep-deprived and jet-lagged and Queens just isn't really all that beautiful, to be honest.

But there was a moment when we came around a corner and the skyline stretched up and up and up and begged for me to reach for it, and I loved it. I loved the way that city can build tunnels underneath rivers and then scrape the clouds on the other end, but I guess the real thing that sold me was the subways. I know that sounds odd, but it just did it for me. That was the moment I knew I loved New York City more than I ever even imagined I would. There was something about the way there is this whole system of dirty, gritty, musky trains tearing through the catacombs of the most glamorous city in the world. What I realized was that home isn't ever going to be perfect. It's not going to always be clean and gleaming and studded with diamonds. Home is where people laugh at your jokes and hold your hand even if it's a little germy.

Maybe what it really is about the subway is this whole poetry in motion thing they've got going on right now. Like, does that scream my name or does that scream my name? My entire life is poetry in motion.

So the subways sold me, weirdly, and after that it was a straight shot to heaven. I welled up in Times Square at night. I spun, arms open, laughing on Fifth Avenue. I stared at a Matisse in the Met and had to do deep breathing. I ate some of the best food I've ever had in my entire life in this bizarre Vietnamese place somewhere in SoHo that I'm sure I'll never be able to find again and that's a travesty. I crushed on every boy on the underground. I wanted to hug the bull on Wall Street and kiss every NYU flag and spend eternity with the weird gorgonzola/pear/honey/greens/balsamic salad my mom found somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. I loved my tour guide and Max Brenner's weird chocolate shop that felt like a nightclub and I don't even like dark chocolate, but there was this gelato place that made this dark chocolate hot chocolate and I think that might be the presence of heaven on earth in food form. I stood and stared at a name in the 9/11 memorial for a solid five minutes and wondered who they were and praised that city for emblazoning that name in bronze because I don't think they should ever be forgotten.

I was proud of myself when I started to figure out that the World Trade Center was to the south and the Empire State Building was north, and I envied every person with their thick city accent who "Yeah, I know the subway routes, why? Where you goin'?" because how the heck do you figure that thing out?!

But I just sort of walked away feeling different. A rite of passage. First bra, first kiss, first trip to New York. Toughens you up a little. Puts a little swagger in your step (or something).

There's a part of me that could go on forever about this. Don't get me started, because I will, but I should stop now, before I get ahead of myself. These last two weeks have been lessons in falling in love. For real this time. And it's never what you expect, except that it feels like coming home.

"If you want to become a real New Yorker, there's only one rule: You have to believe that New York is, has been, and always will be the greatest city on earth. The center of the universe." -Ellen R. Shapiro
-me.