New York City, Chapter I: Times Square, Dawn and Night

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Note: All the events mentioned in this blog occurred back in March 2011. For more updated trips and entries, please refer back to this blog at a later date. All updated trips and blogs will NOT include a note like this. Thanks and enjoy!





Matt met me in my apartment, located in Dorchester, MA, around 9 PM. After eating a humble dinner of Chinese spinach and I think chicken, we grab our luggage and take the T (the nickname of the subway system in Boston) to South Station around 11 PM. After checking in at the Peter Pan/Greyhound desk in the bus station section of South Station, we are directed to our platform. Our bus is not due to arrive until 12:50 AM, so we just sit, talk and share a snack of chicken mcnuggets from McDonalds. Finally our bus arrives, ten minutes late at 1 AM. After putting some of our luggage in the bus' berth, Matt and I find seats towards the front of the bus, sit down and fall asleep.



I wake up two hours later to find our bus driving down an interstate highway in Southern CT. We pass by some skyscrapers and high-rises. Traffic is rather sparten, which i guess is to be expected at 3:30 AM in the morning. I decide to go back to sleep at 4 AM. I wake up again around 5 AM, to see that our bus is driving through Manhatten. I start to see familiar boulevards and yellow cabs driving in already congested traffic. Some delis and mini marts are open I notice, and I see patrons going in. There are noticably more skyscrapers in New York than there are in Boston, and the setting far more urban, meaning that buildings are closer together than they are once again, in Boston. Finally our bus arrives in Times Square. The bright lights of its signs illuminates our darkerned bus. Everyone wakes up. Matt and I are looking out of our windows bright eyed like children who just saw Santa Claus, because we realize we are genuinely in New York City, this is not a drill.



Our bus finally parks in the New York City Bus Port Authority and it is time for us to get off and get our luggage out from its berth. Matt and I navigate our way through the bus station and head outside to look for a cab. We end up waiting thirty minutes before an available cab comes. Once we get into the cab, I give them Bineta's address (for more information on Bineta, please refer to my blog entry entitled "Spring Break in NYC-Introduction.") Ten minutes later we arrive at her apartment's doorstep and I give her a call on my cell phone. Matt and I wait another ten minutes until Bineta finally comes downstairs. We immediately run up to each other, give each other a hug.



"Oh my God, Danielle it's so good to see you! I've missed you so much!" Exclaims Bineta.

"Oh, same here Bineta I missed you too! Bineta, this is my boyfriend, Matt. Matt, this is Bineta."

Matt extends out his hand to Bineta. "Nice to finally meet you," he says. Bineta shakes his hand vigorously.

"Yeah, nice to meet you too finally! I've heard so much about you! Please, please come in! Danielle, you and I have so much to talk about but I'm sure you are both very tired!"

Bineta waves her hand, motioning for Matt and I to follow her inside. We climb up three flights of stairs until we arrive to the front door of her apartment. After we set down our bags, Bineta encourages us to take a seat on one of the couches. She sits across from us.

"Would you like something to drink?"

As Matt motions to put his arm around me, he and I nodd. "Yes, we would. Thank you," I respond on our behalf. "What do you have?"

"Ginger ale, coke, juice, milk, water...any preference?"

I look at Matt and ask hiim softly his preference. We both agree on ginger ale.

"Ginger ale it is!" Bineta replies melodiously. She jumps up from her seat to go to the kitchen. Soon she comes back with a wooden tray that contains a bottle of Canada Dry gingerale and three glasses filled with ice. After she sets down the tray, she pours gingerale into each glass and she motions for Matt and I to choose one. As we drink our gingerale, she and I begin to talk about what had happened in our lives over the past three years. I tell her about my last two years at Winthrop, my graduation, graduate school and my young relationship with Matt. She then asks Matt some personal questions about himself. The conversation then diverts to Matt's current profession as a software developer and his days as an undergraduate student at MIT. He and I then talk about how we first met. Bineta than realizes that both of us are tired and decides to let us go sleep. She shows us the mattress she procured for our visit, which is located behind the second sofa in front of the back window of the living room. We bid her good night and she herself goes back to her room to go back to sleep.



We wake up again around 2 PM, and are greeted by Jaada, Bineta's 2 year old daughter. Matt and I sit up in the bed to find her staring at us with a wide-eyed, curious gaze and speaking jovially in Wolof. Bineta, concerned that she is disturbing us, immediately comes by to grab her up but I tell her not to worry. Matt and I get up out of bed, take turns in the bathroom to take a shower and get dressed and offer to watch Jaada while Bineta goes to a nearby French bakery to pick up some croissants and pain au chocolats for our breakfast. While she's gone, we turn on the tv to the PBS Kids channel because Jaada requests to watch Barney in broken English. Jaada begins to dance and jump around merrily; Matt cringes at the sight of Barney, describing him as the dinasaur from hell. However, eventually Jaada gets bored and drags Matt and I to look at a little place matt that she has with different shapes, colors and things. She points to each object and asks Matt and I to tell her what it is.

"Butterfly."

"Bufferfwy."

"Triangle."

"Trangul."

"Cat."

"Caht."

Bineta finally comes in to find this scene, and she smiles. "I see that y'all and Jaada are getting along."

"Uh-huh," I reply. Bineta goes into the kitchen to prepare Senegalise style coffee and heat up the croissants in the oven. She comes out with the same wooden tray she used last night, however this time with the croissants, pain au chocolat, coffee pot, four mugs, and a huge container of powdered milk. After breakfast, Bineta gets ready to go to work. Matt, myself, Jaada and Bineta leave the apartment and head towards the subway around 2 PM. We end up making three connections just to make it to her office in for a tax agency in Brooklyn. Unfortunately Matt begins to feel weak, dizzy and nauxious. Bineta and I begin to worry about him because he begins to feel so bad that he has a hard time standing without support. Luckily when we arrive in Brooklyn we find a pharmacy and Matt ends up buyings Peptobismal and some other items, as well as a bottle of water. As soon as we go into Bineta's office, Matt ends up running to the bathroom, where he stays for almost two hours. He finally returns, takes all the medicine he bought at the pharmacy, and then lies down on a makeshift cot he made from two chairs. While Matt is resting, I get into a conversation with her boss, who asks me about my study abroad experience in France. He had heard from Bineta that I was a Francophone, and therefore began to talk to me in French (he also was Senegalise). Impressed with my French, I begin to tell him about my life in France, how Bineta and I met, my life in Boston and how long I will be in NYC. I then begin to talk with some of Bineta's customers and her co-workers. I also begin to read some from the book I was reading at the time for one of my classes called, "The Return of Depression Era Economics and the Crisis of 2008" by Paul Krugman. Around 5 PM, Matt finally felt better and was ready to do some sight seeing. We decide to go and visit Times Square because we realize that nothing else on our itinerary was open, however we figured it would be a good introduction to our visit.



Once Bineta is done with one of her clients we inform her of our plans, and make arrangements to meet her back at her apartment. After we get directions on how to get to her apartment via the subway, Matt and I make our way to the subway stop. Thirty minutes later, we arrive in Times Square. We encounter this very huge, wide station, with multiple exits and connections to other subway lines. There are several busking musicians, including a rock band playing Beatles songs. We finally emerge from underground to the street level, greeted by the bright lights and commercial displays of Times Square. Even though I have been a Boston and an urbanite for a year and a half at this point, I had never seen such bright lights and huge, elaborate corporate displays and advertisements. The surrounding sidewalks were packed with people, primarily travelers and tourists like us. The first thing we do is go get dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant. We split a beef udon dish that is well tolerable but not memorable because the beef had a dry texture and the noodles were lightly seasoned with soy sauce, mirin, beef broth, ginger and scallions. However, for $8, it was a cheap, simple, wholesome meal that fed the both of us and helped to renourish Matt's troubled stomach.



We then spend the rest of the evening shopping. Times Square is pretty much a major shopping district-the headquarters of most major national and international stores are based here, and the store and corporate light displays reflect this commerce. For example, I ended up shopping in a huge, two story Ann Taylor, most likely the flagship store, that had huge window displays with realistic looking women dressed in the store's latest line. There was a huge sale going on, where most of their items were on sale for 40% off. I tried on several items, without any luck. I did find one item I wanted to buy, however Matt suggested that I should look around in some of the other stores before buying something there, because I shop all the time at Ann Taylor back in Massachusetts. As we walked out, we saw a huge mini cooper display, that had a model of a car installed on the side of a building along a snow-covered scene. The next store we went into was the flagship Macys store. Macys I think was first opened in 1840 or sometime in the 1880s in New York City. It's now a major American department store that sells clothes, beauty products, accessories, household items, luggage and offers a hair salon and travel agency. That said, why visit the original Macys in New York City if you're an American and are able to shop at Macys anytime you want? This store pretty much features much of the original architecture, including wooden escalators. It's window displays feature more manicans dressed up with the latest collections, and it's a five-floor store. Yes you read correctly, five floors of merchandise. This store also features two-three restaurants, and special discounts to foreigners who show a valid passport, and incredible sales. For example, they had a 40% sale for all their shoes, and up to 70% off in their sales rack for women's clothing. Matt and I only explored a third of the store, because we started touring the store at 8 PM and it closed at 9 PM. My mom also ended up calling me while we were there in order to make sure we arrived to NYC safely, which took up 20 minutes of our visiting time. Nonetheless, Matt ended up buying a $5 belt (which was originally $25) from this Macys.



After Macys, we end up going to Walgreens to pick up some toiletries and then head back on the subway back to Spanish Harlem. Bineta is still not home and I am unable to reach her via my cell phone. Therefore, we end up camping out in a 24-hour taqeria called El Aguila. While there, we order one taco el pastor, which is pork stewed in a tomato sauce and the second with carnitas, or roasted pork, with a large horchata. Our meal comes to the grand total of $5 for everything. I am familiar with authentic Mexican tacos because I volunteered at my local church when I was still living in Rock Hill, SC as a catechist with the Spanish ministry, and most of my colleagues were from Mexico and cooked their regional specialities for our monthly meetings. The tacos at El Aguila were the most authentic I had had since my catechist days in Rock Hill. The horchata, was also the best Latin American style I had ever had. This was the first time Matt had ever tried horchata, and he fell in love with its silky, cinamon, milky flavor and texture. he loved it so much, that he ended up ordering a second horchata. Bineta finally came home at 1 AM. She explained to us that her phone died on her, therefore she was unable to let us know when she would be coming home. We therefore made arrangements with her in order to better make sure that we communicated better when she would be coming home and how that would correlate to our arrival home. After talking to her, we finally went to sleep at 2 PM.

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