overwhelmed

Three and a half days in New York, and so far, the word that best describes it all is overwhelming.

These first days have been weird. I have never flew this far before and I had no idea what jetlag would be like. It has given me headache everyday and several times a day I just turn incredibly tired, so tired that I feel that I need to sleep RIGHT NOW or else! And then after a while it passes ... until it comes back.

That, in combination with the craziness that is New York, has made life a little difficult around here. I feel like such a middle class ordinary small town girl from a small insignificant country when I say this, but I've spent a lot of time wondering how on earth someone would ever want to live here. How do they stand the stench, to begin with? The whole city is stinking of garbage and traffic and urine and bad greasy Chinese food. Yesterday we figured out that if you're born here, or in some other big city, you wouldn't know what real air smells like, and then you can't miss it. But still ...

That isn't the worst, though. No, it's the stress that's getting to me. I'm a calm, slow kind of girl, and I can't handle this mess. I guess if you are the "fast lane" kind of person this is all lovely, but I'm lost. People are running, screaming, honking, yelling, stressing. Two days ago we were crossing the street when we were clearly allowed to (the sign was on the white walking person, not on the big red hand), and suddenly a police started yelling at us for walking to slowly. I'm not used to that kind of treatment! I'm not used to bus drivers screaming at me either, or that people who work in stores don't even look up when I buy something (that goes, I've noticed, for food stores, clothing stores and paper stores alike). Everything in this city is about money. EVERYTHING. It scares me.

Anyways ... the jetlag thing is getting better, and slowly I'm getting used to the tempo around here. Not that I'm adjusting to it, more like I'm able to say to myself "these people are stressed out, but you don't have to be. You can be calm." and it's beginning to work. Yay! So I'm thinking that when I write next, I'll be a lot more cheerful and can see all the good sides of New York, too.

Good things discovered so far: Juice bars, Paper Presentation (I died a little in there ... or maybe it was my wallet), the Phantom of the Opera, the Metopolitan Museum of Art, Central Park. The Met was fantastic. As soon as I got in there, I felt safe, almost at home, even though I'd never been there, Art museums do that to me. Today I'm hoping to get some more of it as we're heading for the MoMA. Oooh, modern art!