girl on a bus from Toronto to New York

I could make this post all about how I got my butt on a bus to New York for Christmas and New Years Eve, and gush about how much in love I am with NYC, but I won't. I pity you, so I won't. It's pretty safe to say, though, that my lifelong prediction about NYC being the city of my dreams is true. And I know I'm definitely not the only one to think that, because this is the city where people come to pursue their dreams. I see no old people or little kids on the streets of Manhattan. Only young, dynamic, busy people. The fact that I am this one tiny person in a huge crowd, full of people rushing to work, to subways, to meet with other people in restaurants, cafes....It gives me this amazing sense of freedom. I can sometimes get the same feeling on a night in the streets of downtown Toronto, or Istanbul...but the feeling is constant in New York.

I could easily get addicted to this feeling.

But anyway, I decided NOT to make a gushing-about-NYC post, as all I've been doing is sight-seeing and frequenting the nearest Starbucks with my laptop or book anyway. By the way, did you know that New Yorkers HATE Times Square? Once you get past all the lights and displays, I guess it kind of starts getting old (and filled with loud tourists) for a local. I could never imagine it getting old, though. I keep wishing I had a better camera to capture all the beauty here.

My New Years resolution is to work as hard as Lindsay Lohan's lawyers. And find a way not to spend so much money....this will prove to be challenging.

I'm getting a lot of reading done over the break, which is nice. The man who also frequents my nearest Starbucks here has struck up a conversation with me after I loudly shrieked while reading a particularly intense chapter of Hunger Games (the first book of the fantastic trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which I was embarrassed to find in the 'Young Adults' section..I guess I'll never stop being or reading chick lit?). I have since moved on to and finished the second book of the trilogy, Catching Fire, which was good too. But anyway, the man at Starbucks was asking me if I was a student here and when informed that I'm a girl from Istanbul studying journalism in Toronto and on a break in New York, he claimed I was 'exotic'! Having been born and lived all his life in Queens, I guess it doesn't take much to deem another to be exotic, but I had to snort at that. I don't consider my foreign-ness as exotic at all, merely something that's always at the back of my head and making me feel not at home. It's not necessarily a bad feeling, not feeling at home. It can sometimes be nice and liberating.

I like being away from home. And by home, I mean Istanbul. I'm going back in May...It's a scary thought. Imagine having to dodge 4234234,4532 questions about your weight having gone up.

That's what the experience of being back home is. Every time.