"Living In The Ghetto, Black Is Everywhere You Go"

Hope you enjoy the "Hairspray" lyric title. I felt this title was appropriate since we are now living in Harlem in the city where musical theater is king. Plus Aurora played Penny last year and we are living with her now. If you got all of this before my explanation then you get a gold star.

We arrived in New York last Saturday and spent the day relaxing with Jeff and Aurora.  We are so happy to be sharing the apartment of this beautiful woman

          

               and this handsome man. That is the door to the apt.

          

They are so easy to get along with and we love spending time with them.

Sadly we were not able to bring along our beloved child Meredith.

          
                           Miss her sooooooo much!

We attended church in the Harlem Ward here. Andrew and I were talking today about how we have really gotten so much more out of our church meetings here. We just love how alive the people and our gospel discussions are. Utah Mormonism is just such a different culture and I miss being out here in the thick of it. One comment I enjoyed today was about how the whole world is telling us that anything you do is good and acceptable, except your beliefs and your God. I find that very interesting that the prophecy that good will be called evil and evil will be called good is truly being seen in America.

As we exit the peaceful church building, there is so much hustle and bustle from people selling things and talking, to sermons being projected onto the streets from speakers, to people meeting up and getting lunch at some of the celebrated soul food restaurants on the famous and busy Malcolm X Boulevard. It is such a stark contrast and a good reminder that there is so much missionary work to be done. Our walk home consisted of some beautiful sites including the Apollo Theater where tons of African-American giants of musician have performed. There is so much history and African-American culture in our neighborhood, obviously, and I LOVE IT.

                

Andrew started his internship at Wonder. Here is the exterior.

           

                               Here is the interior.

           

He is happy to be working closely with the Creative Director and really using his skills as a Graphic Designer instead of fetching coffee, as some internships can be.

This week my feelings about the dreads came to a head. I just haven't felt comfortable about how I look since they are never fully how I wish they looked. I am not patient enough to feel uncomfortable about it for another possibly 8 months. I wanted to feel more feminine with my natural hair and I honestly missed my silky, curly hair. It was a fun 2 1/2 months with my baby dreads and I decided to take them out.

The process took 9 hours of combing each one out and I almost went crazy. Kinda painful too. I ended up with my beautiful (slightly damaged) hair back. I got a trim and felt all new. Yay! Andrew can't stop kissing me and telling me how beautiful I am so I think I made the right decision.

Here is a before and after photo as well as the wad of knotted hair that I ended up with. It was about the size of a Rabbit. Gross! Okay but actually kind of really cool.

          

          I kept one dread to see what would happen so don't cry.

          

I was sick with the cold this week so I couldn't go out as much as I wanted. Sad I know, but i have 3 months here so no worries. Andrew is sick now :(

The sites of Harlem are fantastic! We visited Astor Row which is a section of the city with southern style home with porches and yards as opposed to the usual Brownstone apartments. Many of the African Americans who came here during the Harlem Renaissance and so forth have come from the South so this is understandably a result of missing home.

               

We live right around Sugar Hill, just South of the apartment complex that all the great black leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, NAACP, etc have lodged. We love that we live near a park but unfortunately not one of the grassy ones. I am obsessed with parks. It was my all time favorite part of Paris and will probably be my favorite part of New York too. I just love the mix of nature within the busy city and the time to relax and people watch while sitting on the grass or a bench. Here is Andrew by some graffiti and me on a bench by the kids playing basketball.

          

          

               Our walk during the night took us to the YMCA

         

Right now the AC doesn't work so we constantly have the windows open. The sounds we hear are sirens every 15 minutes, people yelling (or as Andrew tells me, that's just their talking voice), and strangely the ice cream man/ drug dealer comes around at all hours of the day and night (like after children's' bed times).

We found the Royal Tenenbaum house just 2 blocks over and visited it wishing we could be a Tenenbaum. You can see tiny Andrew at the bottom of the photo.

         

     Here is our first purchase on the Harlem streets. These sexy glasses.

             

                       We visited Grand Central Station  

  

         

       And the Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields, Central Park.

             

I love this new free, public attraction in New York called the High Line. The old, above ground train used to run along the Hudson for 20 blocks or so but became useless with the introduction of new technologies in the 60's. The city turned it into a beautiful walkway with flowers and awesome industrial design. It runs right through all the buildings about 25 feet off the ground. Just beautiful. The walkway is on the left of this photo.

          

Lastly, we met up with my friend Rachel who I went to school with from 6-12th grade. We had dinner with her and her husband Travis. Fun to catch up with her and talk about living in the city.

I haven't felt scared or intimidated by the big, busy city. I've got a hold of the subway system and am excited to discover. When will we ever get a chance like this again? I think it would be hard for some who like to have their space and be alone, but we have found that we love the interaction with different people and the people watching that we can do. We love humans and learning new things so it fits us well. The shopping doesn't hurt either. We are doing the scouting part of our Summer shopping. We are looking around a lot so that we know exactly what we want in a couple months when we really buy clothes and whatever pleases us. Usually one doesn't get that option because you may not be in the city but for a weekend and have to buy things on the spot. If we had that mind set then we would go broke. We went into Zara the other day and I almost bought everything plus the mannequins.