Zen and the Art of Waiting at the Airport

We're here, we're finally here! In New York City!!! This is exciting because although NYC is only about an hour-long flight from Toronto, and thus relatively accessible, it took Tracey and I about 8-9 hours to journey here yesterday. Unfortunately, most of these hours were spent at the Toronto airport - first in a 2 hour long lineup where we discovered that we had been bumped from our 9am flight to a 7pm flight, which we thankfully got re-booked yet again to a 1pm flight. Then we had to schlepp (yes, I've been spending A LOT of time with Jewish people lately!) ourselves and our rather massive luggage from the chaotic Terminal 1 to the more familiar Terminal 3, since not only had our flight times changed about 5 times, so had our airline. We smoothly checked in for our new 1pm American Airlines flight, only to end up spending another few hours in the wierd limbo, timeless, place-less sort of space that is the departures waiting area. Of course, our flight was about an hour late to depart.

Finally we boarded the plane. Oh yes, the plane. A cozy little 50 person vessel... oh my! I'm pretty sure it was the smallest plane I've ever been on, and thus, also probably the bumpiest ride... But we made it, finally. After waking at about 5am in the morning, arriving at the Toronto airport around 7am, I finally stepped off the plane (I got to use STAIRS that take you right down on to the tarmac, like you sometimes see in movies!!) in New York City around 4pm. By 6pm-ish I was sitting on the floor outside of the room at the Upper West Side YMCA that Tracey and I had rented for just our first night, because Tracey had to run back downstairs because our keys weren't working yet! Oh my.

Well, I have never, ever said that I'm not a fan of adventure. And adventure it certainly was. Although, it was kind of more an adventure in finding humour, hope and calm in the face of confusion, frustration and exhaustion, but hey, everything in life is a lesson, right?

So we finally arrived in our tiny little room at the YMCA (today we will move to the apartment in the lower east side that we are sub-letting for the rest of our time here) only to have to quickly dash back out again. As I am yet again travelling with the lovely (and Jewish) T.E.S., we had tickets to some event geared towards "young, hip jews in their 20's and 30's" that celebrated "Purim" - which everyone just keeps explaining to me as "the jewish halloween".

Now, I realise that I was crazy exhausted, and as a result of our ridiculously long travel day felt more like we had made a journey to Tokyo as opposed to just across the border to NYC, but I did find the Purim event a little bizarre. Now, I will be the first to admit that when you don't know anything about something, it is a lot easier to judge it. So I won't do that. I will just say that we were tired, and it started with a reading in hebrew that I didn't understand (though that did include some fun boo-ing and noise makers every time they said the name of the bad guy in the story!), followed by a somewhat entertaining "theatrical" presentation that used both video and live performance, and Stepen Colbert(!), and spoofs of popular TV shows like American Idol and Project Runway to tell a comedic version of the Jewish story of Purim. It wasn't terrible at all, but we were tired, so instead of partying it up with all the other wild young jews, we schlepped ourselves down the street a few blocks to our home at the Y for the night.

This morning, TES and I woke up to a bright, sunny, New York day on the upper west side, took a little walk past Central Park to a diner recommended by the helpful woman at the YMCA security desk - "it's good" she said, "you can eat decent food and sit by the window and watch the traffic go by". Which we did. Blissfully. And now it's time to close up those massive suitcases one more time before we plant ourselves semi-permanently in our east village apartment for the next two weeks. We are going to stop in at the theatre this afternoon for a 4 hour rehearsal, then head over to our new, NYC home for the next two weeks!

I'm lovin' it.