Wow. What a city.

I spent essentially from after dinner (7:15) to now (about 9, who knows when I'll finish typing this) walking the streets of New York.

Not any kind of complicated route (I'd get lost) but you really can just feel the flavor of the city... I spent some time sketching people who were playing basketball and soccer, and on the ones with a bit more detail to them... well, you just feel the attitude of New York. It's all so diverse. You see people of so many kinds... seniors in wheelchairs, kids playing basketball and baseball and soccer (football, if you're not American) and the people walking dogs, and jogging, and the stores and places... everything thin and tall and cramped and not shiny sparkling clean but just... you know.

Columbia sits in a place called Morningside Heights, which is part of Harlem, and it sits right there on Broadway, and me and five other kids, we just left John Jay (the dorm/dining hall) and went out on the Broadway side and went down to Riverside Park, right by the Hudson, with the buildings of New Jersey in the distance, and we walked so dang far down the park... and down below was where the courts and fields were, and that's when I did my sketches.

It really is a nice place. Grass and trees, along the border of the city that never sleeps.

After... I'd estimate twenty blocks, we turned back onto the street and headed back down... don't ask me which street it was, 92nd? Back down to Broadway, and we just followed Broadway all the way back to the campus. We stopped several times, at a convenience store and a movie rental/store, and we discussed various stuff (like perhaps camping out the 7th Harry Potter book on the 20th) and MAN my ankles are aching but wow.

What a city.