Interestingly enough, I couldn’t find any classes in my department offered on Fridays. Which makes today the end of the first week of school here. Interesting.

Two language classes in the morning left me feeling a little bit overdone in the general area. I try to think of some word in one language, and of course I can only remember it in the other. Weird.

In the afternoon, I tried out an anthropology course. After the usual round of names and academic areas of interest, the professor showed us a one hour clip from Spike Lee’s documentary on Hurricane Katrina, “When the Levees Broke.”

The movie certainly had its heavy moments, and its light ones (when a guy goes up to Dick Cheney and tells him, ‘Go F Yourself’, twice). But it also carried some peculiar themes as well: people asking how such a thing could happen in America, people identifying with refugees in other countries, and people questioning what their citizenship now means.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the last class I was going to try because this one went over a bit. So back to the old apartment for some rice and veggies. Going to have to figure out a way to vary the diet a bit.

Since I don’t have classes tomorrow, I stayed up watching “Inside Man” again. Spike Lee is quite the director.

Day 2 of classes. Busy.

Morning was a little lighter than usual, only tried out one class. Lunch was toast and goat cheese. I’m still a sucker for baguettes, even if they cost more than twice what they did in Europe. I need to start eating more though, or they’ll go stale on me.

My first class in the afternoon dealt is the ‘problems and methods’ seminar. I envisioned it as a ‘literature-of-the-field’ type thing, and that’s roughly what it appears to be. For some reason, I found the professor quite a bit more encouraging today than last night. The reading list however is a lot vaster (in range, not quantity) than I was expecting. I’ve nothing against classical and medieval history, but it certainly isn’t the period that most interests me.

Oddly enough, the second class I went to seemed to have precisely the literature I was expecting (well, a lot of it anyway). The professor was also very lively and amusing, although she also seemed very busy, so I’m not sure if one will be able to see much of her outside of class. The topic of the class actually seemed a little vague (the intersection of culture with politics and history in the Middle East?), but I doubt it will actually be so.

Got back to my apartment rather tired in the evening. Lots of unaccomplished errands remaining, but for now, time to try out some of the rice that is the product of my roommate’s new rice-cooker. The rice was decent, but the vegetables we put into the cooker were definitely overcooked. Also, the cooker isn’t particularly fast.

Theoretically, my father and cousin arrive back home tonight, but given the length of the flight, and time difference, I’ll be in bed before any news gets through.

As usual, I didn’t sleep too well the night before the first day of classes. Not sure why I’m nervous, but apparently I am.

Started off with a French course at 8AM. Yup, that’s early. Seems like it could be good, though the teacher is a grad. student who doesn’t quite seem sure of herself. Maybe just first day jitters for her too.

Arabic seemed good, although finding the room was difficult. Actually, getting into the building wasn’t easy either. Long lines for elevators, backups because of student ID card checks, and finally, the room isn’t listed when you get to the correct floor (it says ‘rooms 801-810’ as if they were the only ones, never mind the fact that you need 814).

Since I hadn’t brought any food along, I popped by the nearby market for bread and cheese. It was just as slow as the night before. Goat cheese is still ridiculously expensive, but I figured starting on a high note was appropriate.

In the afternoon, there was an Ottoman history seminar, which seemed good, save for the fact that our seminar room is actual a lecture hall. Makes a round-table discussion a bit difficult. Amazingly wide level of backgrounds in the class though. A lot of PhD students too.

Next was a seminar on Saudi Arabian history. Not one I planned (or plan) on taking, but I was curious to see what it was like. According to the professor, it’s a new and emerging field. I hope his bullishness is warranted.

When my cousin and father dropped by for dinner, they brought a few things with them, namely 2 Ikea lamps and a large amount of groceries and preserved goods from Trader Joe’s. Looks like I’m well-supplied for at least the next month or so.

It was drizzling a bit, so we decided to eat close-by. By chance, we found a cozy little Italian place, which offered generous portions at unusually low prices. My cousin kept remarking about how the chef and waiters were ‘real Italians.’ True enough, I suppose. It was a nice ambiance to chat in, and say goodbyes.

I’m not a big fan of goodbyes.

The rest of the evening was spent unpacking the remainder of my stuff, and trying to find places for things. Easier said than done. Particularly annoying is that the closets are nowhere near the beds.

So I got up this morning with a rather extensive todo list. I’ve been in New York now almost a week, and tomorrow is the first day of classes. Still plenty to finish:

1) Go to Ikea, pick up all necessary items to furnish apartment (minus bed, table, and kitchen appliances which are provided).

Doing this took a fair bit. First, the nearest Ikea is about 40 minutes away, in Paramus, New Jersey. We left around 9:30AM, but made a detour, and so took almost an hour to arrive.

Once there, the place was a zoo. Picked out a small table and chairs for dining purposes. Picked out a smallish bookcase for storage. Then picked out all manner of kitchenware, a trash bin, a lamp, and a lot of other stuff. After some mixup about the chairs, we finally made it to the check-out line. The self-service checkout system was one of the more painful bits of technology I’ve had to deal with in a long-time.

This whole thing took a bit longer than hoped for, so we didn’t arrive back until nearly 2:30PM, a solid hour late for…

2) See a vast array of relatives, friends, and neighbors. Fortunately not everybody came, or the array would have been entirely too vast. Had a pleasant time catching up. People were more or less constantly arriving and departing. It was the usual mixture of eating, chatting, listening, and whatnot.

After the final wave of arrivals (including a relative from New Jersey whom I hadn’t seen in several years), it was time for…

3) Move down to apartment. Getting everything packed and into the car, not to mention saying goodbyes delayed us until nearly 8PM. The drive down was uneventful. In less than an hour we were down unloading. The help of the roommate made things a lot quicker. My father left around 10PM, leaving me the task of unpacking, and getting to bed. Wound up getting most things put away. We don’t have in-room internet, but there are some random wireless networks we can connect on. Finally went to bed around midnight.

First class: 8AM, tomorrow. Yay. Maybe.

In the interest of getting some things done, we got up somewhat earlier than usual. Following breakfast, we drove down to the city. The idea was for me pick up the key to my apartment from the housing office, and to take a look, before heading off to a museum.

The plan was sound, except that getting the key took a bit more doing than I’d expected. First, the office in my complex was closed. So I was redirected to the undergraduate housing office (which is doing double duty this weekend, apparently). They then informed me that they didn’t have my key, because my assignment was so recent. So I was sent back to the place where I started, with a note to the effect that the RA should give me the spare key to the apartment. This too took some time, so I had a chance to get to know one of the doormen.

Finally, with my temporary key, I made a visit to my apartment for the first time.

Impressesions? Well, it’s actually pretty large, but the kitchen and the bathroom are both clearly later additions. It is a shared studio though, so there’s that. My roommate seems like a cool fellow. We have a bit of a view of the courtyard. The furniture provided is minimal: a bed, a chair and a smallish desk with drawers. Definitely going to have to get some stuff…

The museum, to which we next went, is actually a derelict aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Intrepid. Getting to the parking lot took us 3 tries, owing to wrong turns, one-way streets, and so on. By the time we had actually gotten to the character, it was nearly 2PM.

The inside of the carrier has been mostly converted into showrooms for various technologies and historical models. Some areas have been kept in near original condition though, so you can see things like the berths and the kitchens and the control center.

To me the most interesting part was actual the deck, which contained a sizable collection of aircraft from all manner of sources. These included an F14, an SR71 and even a MIG-21! I spent a good while also taking photos of the city, since we had a decent view of midtown from the deck. My cousin was on ther other hand fascinated by the control-room.

Docked nearby were a Concord and a submarine. It was my first (and likely last) walk down the aisle of a Concord. A very peculiar aircraft on the inside. Neat, but one can also see why it wasn’t so practical. The submarine featured a full tour, which showed us the living and working quarters of the vessel. Not a comfortable life-style.

We left the museum after 5PM (closing time) having decided to go to Brooklyn to take photographs of the New York skyline.

On the way back down, we stopped on Broadway around 30th St., where we improbably found a parking spot. Dinner was two slices of pizza (each) at Sbarro’s. We had a view, through a plexiglass wall, of the subway platform, but the meal itself was somewhat disappointing.

Getting to Brooklyn proved a challenge. It was now past 7PM, and the traffic going down was horrendous. Moreover, we were trying to go over the Brooklyn Bridge, the entrance to which is not so easy to find either. It was past 9PM before we made it to Brooklyn, and managed to find another parking place. My cousin had his heart set on taking his photos from the quai near the ice cream place we’d seen earlier, so we had a bit of walk too.

The view of the Manhattan skyline was indeed impressive. There were a lot of other folks admiring it from the same location. We were there for quite a while, taking time exposures and whatnot. By the time we left, I was out of battery, and it was quite late. The drive back had less traffic, and was pretty much straight, but we didn’t make it back to my grandparent’s place until almost midnight. A long day, for our ‘intrepid’ crew.

When it rains, you tend not to hurry too much. We took our time getting up in the morning, and had a very relaxed breakfast. Finally, around 11:30AM, we decided to go down to the city, and look around.

To go down, we choose to go along the Hudson. At the town of Hastings, we saw a sign for a farmer’s market. In spite of the wind and rain, the farmers were there, and we picked up some excellent apple juice (from fuji apples, no less) in the process.

We also made a brief stop in Yonkers to look around. The rainswept Hudson was an interesting sight.

Crossing over to Manhattan, we stopped not far from General Grant’s tomb. Our original plan, to go inside the nearby church, was thwarted by an in-progress wedding. Instead, we made our way past Union Theological Seminary, Barnard College, and onto Columbia. I found Columbia’s campus rather appealing. It was distinguished, and not all that small, and yet compact and lacking in all the sprawl so characteristic of Stanford. Doubtless I would have found it small if I’d spent longer on it.

As the rain had died down, we could take some pictures, and visit the bookstore. From there, we returned to the car, pausing to read a bit about the history of U.S. Grant on the way.

Driving down further, we miraculously found a parking spot on 5th Ave, near 75th St. This was right by Central Park, which would have been great, had it not been for the once-again substantial rain. With umbrellas and coats, we made our way along. The park was nearly empty, and so in search of lunch, we left it after about an hour, grabbing sandwiches at a nearby deli that was also purportedly a bakery (although it had almost no bread).

On the way back to the car we passed the Guggenheim and the Met. The rain was so heavy, that we paused under an overhang by the Met to eat our sandwiches and wait for the storm to pass. Not that it did really, of course.

The drive back was spent anticipating getting dry once we stopped. The rest of the evening at the house was pretty quiet. At least one member of our party is now convinced that in New York, it rains much of the time.

Having gone down to New York two days in a row, I wasn’t really to keen to go down again. Since there wasn’t really anything I needed to there today anyways, I just stayed in the house, trying to finish odds and ends. This meant sending e-mails, backing up files, figuring out class possibilities, and even organizing some of my newer photos.

Meanwhile my father and cousing explored the big Apple and the photographer’s paradise known as B&H. My grandmother appears to have bought most of a small room worth of food in anticipation of Monday’s get-together, and I’m just hoping I’m not personally obligated to finish most of it.

The most important news of the day was in fact a short e-mail that got to me just past noon. I have on-campus housing! Hallelujah! Well, more importantly, I have on-campus housing 2 blocks from the library. So that has all worked out. No more apartment searching. Excellent.

Since I had a 10AM meeting with a professor this morning, we had to leave pretty early to get downtown on time. This was with the director of our center as opposed to the director of our program, which is apparently a major distinction. In fact the first chunk of our conversation had him explaining his role. Then I was asked a bit about my plans, background, and ideas. A pleasant discussion, augmented by the fact that the professor’s office has a good view of the nearby park. So there are perks to being in the administration. As it happens, he too is an anthropologiest, just like the program director whom I met with yesterday.

After the meeting, I went to do some odds and ends at the library. And, what do you know, I received an e-mail from housing: “You’ve been accepted off the waitlist, though we don’t know where exactly yet, and you need to fill out this paperwork and make a $1000 deposit.” So after a bit of thought, I did precisely that. True I don’t know exactly where I’ll end up, but after yesterday’s conversation, both with the housing office and the broker, it looks a sight better than any alternatives.

I popped by the bookstore next, to see if I could find my texts. Very crowded (think same size as the Stanford bookstore, but with twice as many books and students). A metaphor for the whole New York experience I suppose.

My father and cousin were off taking pictures down by the civic center, so I walked down to join them. A brisk 20+ block stretch of Broadway later, we met in a little park, near the heavily secured civic center. Inviting sort of area.

From there, we walked over the Brooklyn bridge on a nice elevated foot/bike-path. It appeared to be a popular place both for tourists, joggers and genuine commuters. We had some nice views as well, but nothing sufficiently unobstructed of Manhattan to satisfy my cousin. Once we had reached Brooklyn, around 4PM, we had a hard time getting back to the waterfront, as the path we took didn’t have many exits. We saw a fair bit of Brooklyn in the process, before reaching a nice promenade sitting just above the expressway. There, we had clear views of Manhattan, and the nearer unused shipyards. However we discovered a little park right next to the bridge, with a great and unobstructed view of the downtown skyline. It was, coincidentally, right next to the “Brooklyn Ice-Cream Factory” (?) and the site of “Bargemusic” where I’d heard classical chamber music played on a boat, some 9 or 10 years earlier.

Going back to our parked car required a goodly walk, including navigating Broadway in the midst of rush-hour foot-traffic. Quite a sight to behold. The drive back to Westchester was impossibly slow. When we finally made it to Manhattan, we tried taking city streets instead of the parkway, heading up the “Grand Concourse.” The result was a long slow ride through a number of partly depressed neighborhoods.

We finally reached the house around 8PM. Long day, but at least the future has more than a great big question mark. Still don’t know what my other cousin, who will be attending the same school, is doing for housing though.

As usual, the first day after a trip doesn’t start very early. I was actually up at a normal hour, and spent the time productively employed in unpacking the more immediately useful stuff.

We resolved to go downtown so that I could figure out my housing situation, and they could see a bit of New York. Fair enough. The drive down was, amazingly, traffic free. Parked at the usual lot on Broadway (it has a discount for students and staff affiliated with the university).

Our first stop was the on-campus housing office. Apparently my grandmother has become well-known down there, having visited several times to try and get information for me. I was assured by a friendly staff that my chances were pretty good for getting into housing off the waitlist.

At the off-campus housing office, the main information obtain was that housing in Manhattan is tight, and my only real chance would be through a broker. Fair enough.

We picked up lunch near campus, but I was more than a little disappointed with my panini. Definitely not up to Parisian standards (well, the lunches I remember having there anyway). Next it was off to the ID card office. A long slow line almost had me missing my next appointment, but the guy in front was quite entertaining (all the tips he offered to another guy in line had film school sounding like quite a racket – all kinds of ways to make money on the side). For the ID cards, they were using my old camera for the photos. Interesting.

My next appointment, with the director of our MA program, went well, even though rushed back 8 blocks in a big hurry. Turns out they were running a bit late too, so I needn’t have worried. We had a pleasant discussion, and I received a couple of useful tips.

Afterwards, I tried out my new ID card in the library, picked up a needed book, and purchased a book locker there for the year. Hopefully it’ll see a lot of use! I met my grandmother in front of the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the park, and we waited for the other 2 members of party while watching pigeons and strollers make their way past.

Driving back was a breeze, and despite a stop at the grocery store where an attempt was made to buy everything in sight, we were back home around 7PM. After dinner, we each went off to our various pursuits: mine was trying to figure out what useful information I still needed to get from the broker.

So I moved across country today. Well, sort of. At least for the next 2 years.

Got up around 6:30AM, and put the last touches on my packing. We wound up leaving the house around a quarter past 7. Weather was nice, but a few high clouds overhead. Traffic going to Cupertino was surprisingly decent for rush hour.

We arrived at the parking by my dad’s office just about the time that taxi cab did, although he was in slightly bad humor, as the buildings had apparently been renumbered. Whatever. Aside from a near wrong turn, we made it to the airport in San Jose in good order. Taking all 7 of our packages out took a bit of time, but we were right near curbside check-in.

The problem with curbside check-in was that it was pretty popular. It took a good while to make it through the line. When we did, we discovered one of my bags was overweight. So we had to make some emergency rearrangements, plus sign a waiver disclaiming damages if the printer (one of the pieces of baggage) were to come out the worse for the wear. Fine.

The security line was easy enough, but it was still a pain having to de-metallize, and take out the laptop. The plane began boarding around half an hour later.

As always with Southwest, there were no assigned seats. We wound up with an entire row (the plane was a 737, so this meant 3 seats) to ourselves. We were right behind the wing, and the windows was amazingly clear, so throughout the flight, I was taking through-the-window photos.

The balance of the flight was actually spent on two things: admiring the scenery (when it was visible) and trying to complete a game of Sudoku. I’d never played before, so the game, which came on the box with our ‘snack’ in it, took quite a while, between the two of us. The worst part is where you make a mistake, and have to go back to square-one to start again. As for the scenery, we definitely had some memorable scenes, including bits of the San Francisco bay, Sacramento River Delta, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Great Basin, Rocky Mountains and what I presume was Kansas. Quite a bit of variety.

It took about four hours to arrive at Chicago-Midway, the local and regional airport (as opposed to O’Hare) with a distinctly suburban feel. We had an unexciting 2 hour wait, during which our connecting flight was alternately delayed, and moved back onto schedule.

Our next plane was an ATA 737 (first time flying with them), and we had seats right in front of the jet. The window wasn’t quite so clean, but I managed a few more pictures. The flight was only about 2 hours to New York, and because of heavy clouds and the sunset, we saw very little until we were basically on the runway.

My grandparents were as usual waiting when we arrived. However, my cousin had arrived at a different terminal. So we determined to go and pick him up while my dad waited for the baggage. Clever idea, but hard in practice. LaGuardia had miserable traffic, coupled with poorly-marked directions to the other terminal, and it took a good hour to get to the other terminal. Still, we did find my cousin (we were trying to locate each other via cell-phone when a helpful person heard us both at the same time, no more than 20 feet away, and pointed this out. Then getting back to the other terminal took a bit of time. The final complication was that there was noticably more baggage than trunk-space, and so accomodations had to be made. The drive back took only about an hour, so we finally arrived at my grandparent’s place in Westchester somewhere in the vicinity of 11PM. This meant that when dinner and other things were all said and done, it was past 1AM, or 10PM PST. No troubles with jet lag in this case…