Life's pretty sweet

So here's a brief summary of the past 2 weeks:

I'm now in the 3rd week of the GO GREEN camp. The kids are adorable, and I love hanging out with them all day. I teach science-y stuff in the morning, play games, and draw, along with other various camp activities.. we also get to go on field trips to Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, the Seaport ...and today we built solar-powered cars at Solar One on the East River. It's a pretty awesome day job.

What else... I also am writing a lot of music reviews for my internship, and went to a concert last Friday to take pics & write a story... little by little I will become a music journalist! :)

I've been insanely busy - but good busy - so I'm trying to remember what I've actually been doing ... A LOT of concerts, a lot of walking all over the place, hanging out with friends, dancing in random bars in Williamsburg & downtown... catching random street performers, eating awesome food, happy hours.... the good life :)

but yeah onto serious business: I found an apt. with friends of friends-- 4 NYU girls, cramming 5 of us into a 2-bedroom place in Stuy Town (5 blocks east of where I am now, on 14th & Avenue C. It's a huge community, lots of trees, lots of families and young people -- almost like outside of NY, in its own bubble. And we have a view of WATER - the east river. :)

And I decided to sign up for the Peace Corps, to start a year from now. My lease goes for a year, so I'll be nannying all school year, hopefully getting paid by MusicDish, or I'll find another freelance journalism job, and I will be WRITING and enjoying NYC all year. But I really need to get out of the country and actually do something that will matter to people other than myself. I'm so excited to get out of my comfort zone, be in a completely foreign culture, and make a difference. And Peace Corps is an amazing opportunity. The app. process takes a year... so not too many details now.

I also randomly volunteered at a nursing home playing roulette with seniors the other day, and met 2 awesome ladies from England & Barbados.

Did I mention I love NY?

{And now I have way too many pictures, to the point that my computer is literally at max capacity. And I also have too little patience to wait 9 hours to upload them, so just take my word for it that everything here is absolutely gorgeous!)

Summer is glorious

* happy hour - summer nights - Central Park - Madison Square Park - concerts - Williamsburg - P.S. 1 Museum in Queens - Morgan Library Museum - outside dining - (apartment) shopping - old friends - new friends - fireworks!

Life is good. :)

Empire State Bldg., pre-fourth-of-July lights, on the 4th:

P.S. 1 Museum in Long Island City, Queens (what used to be an old schoolhouse, and is now a sweet modern art museum).
Awesome architecture:


Some sugary patriotism:

The Empire State Building puts on his red, white, & blue:

Sitting on a towel, on the sidewalk, under a tree, in front of a park, in the rain, waiting for the fireworks, only to learn that we could not see anything from where we were, and then had to battle millions of people to walk 10 blocks south to catch a view of 1/5 of the sky for the finale, while being pushed by sweaty, cranky, loud people and even crankier, louder cops, herding people out of the streets as taxis strove to hit us all. Only in NY.