Hello from New York City!

Hello everyone! How is everyone doing? I miss you all so much! I hope the internships and jobs are going well for all of you.
So this blog took a little longer than I had wished..but here it comes..

I had a great vacation in Taiwan, for six weeks, spending a lot of time with my family and friends. It felt good to be home, eating all the good food and taking a long break from school. But then it was hard to leave and come to New York, a whole new city so different from our lovely little town Bloomington (it was because of you guys, of course). I got in on 2/13, Friday, spent 24 hours to find an apartment (man it was not fun), moved into the place on Sunday and started working on 2/17 Tuesday. All was a bit crazy and like a dream. My place is in Sunnyside, Queens and I share the apartment with a 20-year-old, Japanese-Taiwanese, NYU girl. Too bad she's underage--no going out together--other than that, she's great.

My internship at the New York Public Library, "LIVE from the NYPL," is a series of conversations and debates among authors, artists and many other professionals about books, art and culture. It's great to work in the beautiful Library, though our office is in cubicals built inside of the Library, I feel a little special wearing the Library ID when walking in Astor Hall which is always filled with tourists--I used to be one of them. My supervisor is a great person to work with; she's always so delightful and energetic. My first two weeks of work was accompanied by the intern of last season; he's German, and he indeed is the best German I've ever met (well, not that I know a lot of German..). He helped me and guided me through lots of administrative work and event preparation. Everyone loved him, he's very humble and capable, which puts a little pressure on my part to take his position.. But I think I'm handling it ok :)

This work itself is pretty interesting. Daily admin is daily admin, nothing too exciting (well..I'll write about that later). But the events are fun and I've enjoyed the topics a lot. I've survived the first two events are there are 10 more to go. I'm about to write my first report, I'll definitely write another blog then.

I've met up with Hu and Tracy, haven't got a chance to see Jen, but it does feel good to have friends here. Overall, I'm liking the life here, the apartment, the work and the city (expect that everything's expensive like crazy). Nothing's more rewarding than coming home on the train and look back the lights and skyline of Manhattan--I'm glad I'm here. I miss you all, including Dr. Rushton. Susan and Megan; seriously, I think I now miss Bloomington more than Taiwan. I'm going back to Bloomington on April 3-5 for my visa, hopefully I can meet those of you who are in town and close by! Take care everyone!