Where is Nathan??

I have been in New York for 46.5 hours. I’m still suffering from a pretty serious cocktail of jet lag and culture shock. But we’ve been walking around today to take care of some mundane errands like changing the last of my Chinese cash and get a SIM card for my phone. But today I couldn’t help but smile to myself and say, “I’m going to love this” at seeing some interesting things I’ve never seen anywhere else. Let me give you a highlights reel in short broken phrases.

Mariachi band playing music on the subway. Old lady shopping in the grocery store with a live parrot on her shoulder. Breakfast = Falafel; Lunch = Corned beef sandwich on rye. A 6 year old with red forked liberty spiked mohawk. In the last 3 hours, I’ve seen 3 street performers playing cellos. Just today, I’ve walked past at least 100 types of cheese. 3 days ago, I lived in a city where it was only possible to buy less than 20 types of cheese. I’ve heard 6 different languages spoken today. I drank a bottle of organic rhubarb and apple juice at a farmer’s market.  Elizabeth found a bar where I can not only watch St. Kilda vs Geelong on Sunday (Australian Rules Football),  but the first test of the Ashes next week (Cricket).

Jet lag is getting to me. I’m going to take a nap.

Ok, we made it. I’m going to drop just a brief update.

The trip was disturbingly smooth. We made it to the airport with plenty of time. We didn’t have any issue with baggage weight. The Hong Kong airport was pretty sweet. And Cathay Pacific is the best airline in the world!

That’s possibly not true, but the flight from Hong Kong to New York was the most luxurious flight I’ve ever taken. When people told me there was a screen in the back of the seat behind me, I supposed it would just be a better shot of the animated flight map thing. But it was like a personal entertainment console. 800 CDs to listen to. Like 100 movies to watch. TV shows, video games, I think I could have made a phone call. It was awesome.

Does the awesomeness stop there? Not even. (Tony and Craig, listen closely) Free drinks. I assumed we’d get coffee, cola and water. But I drank two glasses of wine and a Campari and never got charged for it. That means according to the menu, they were serving 12 year Scotch, coniac, rum, and who knows what else for free….For Free. My two meals were Penne and a meat pie. I could go on. Let’s leave it at, the flight was AWESOME.

I suppose the only down side is that I wasn’t able to get much sleep on the plane. I couldn’t decide when to try and sleep. When I got on the plane it was 5am in New York. I don’t know, I slept a few hours. We got in about 9pm New York time, and I went to sleep last night about 2am.

Well, it’s 9am and I’ve been awake for 2 and a half hours. So…I’m kind of out of it. But I’m not sleepy. At this point I don’t remember what I’ve written in this post, so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.

I’m in America!