So about a month ago, I got to spend a week in New York City, and let me tell you, it was amazing. Definitely the highlight of my year. We saw 7 shows in 6 days. Those shows were: Matilda, Waitress, Les Miserables, Fun Home, Wicked, Aladdin, and...Hamilton. Yes, I had tickets for several months in advance, and yes, I am a spoiled child. (And yes, it was AMAZING and totally deserved 11 Tony Awards.) Anyway, besides seeing shows, we did a lot of other stuff. We walked the Brooklyn Bridge, went to the 9/11 memorial, and visited a bunch of other amazing places. But besides shows and sightseeing, we also had many...um...interesting situations, such as:

The Subway - So if you want to go almost anywhere in New York and you don't have a car, you take the subway, which is this underground train service. It is kind of the opposite of pleasant. The actual train you ride on is air conditioned, but the underground station is not. So you just stand in a hot, sweaty, disgusting rectangle for several minutes until the train pulls up. Like i said earlier, the train is air conditioned, but its almost always a packed sardine can full of (sometimes rude) New Yorkers. Also, there are panhandlers who just come around and pester you for money, and rude old men who deliberately come up to you and tell you to move. Not kidding, it happened to my mom on our first day. And then once you get off of the subway, you just stand in the sweaty rectangle again. So about halfway into our trip we were riding the subway to get into Time Square, and there's this guy on the subway who is (loudly, might I add) singing "Where The Hood At" for everyone on the crowded subway to hear. Then he goes, "C'mon! Backup!" And everyone on the subway simultaneously looks away from him. And i'm just thinking "Dude! We are on a crowded subway filled with New Yorkers. NO ONE IS GOING TO SING BACKUP FOR YOU."

Donald Trump - One day, my mom and I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, which is really cool and gives you a great view of the city. Anyway, it was SUPER EFFING HOT that day so everyone on the bridge was selling popsicles and fruit and cold stuff like that so people wouldn't pass out on the bridge. Anyway we were almost across the bridge, and we saw this guy selling water for a dollar. Seemed pretty normal. Then I saw he had a punching bag with a picture of Donald Trump's face taped to it. So of course we had to buy a water and punch the bag. I mean, how many other people can say they got to punch Donald Trump in the face?

CDs - My mom and I were walking back to the subway after buying our Les Miserables tickets, and we were stopped on the street by two guys selling CD's. However, their business idea was to give people a "free" CD and then ask for a donation. Yeah, I see right through that, CD man. So they kind of just forced CDs into our hands and then I gave them 5 dollars just to make them go away. The entire time they were all like "oh no we don't do drugs or anything like that we're good people." I kid you not. Every. Single. Song. Was about weed. How did we discover this? Well my elderly grandfather played them in our apartment one day thinking they weren't what they were.

Overall, New York was amazing, and I'm super grateful I got to go. But i have those certain memories that I will definitely never forget. Also, I don't know if we still have those CDs. If we do, I'm probably going to end up playing them on a special radio called the incinerator.

-Sophie