Laura's First Visit To The Big Apple

My lovely sister Laura came to visit and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with her. We went to the Harlem Studio Museum which had one exhibit that housed pictures of Laura like this one.

We also found a lady who has free jazz in her parlor every Sunday Evening. We loved listening to some authentic Jazz in Harlem. We will be returning soon and will post pictures and maybe a video. Laura is cool and did a bike tour of New York. She could probably beat you up she is so fit. For dinners we ate at an awesome French Moroccan café, ate vietnamese subs and we did our best to find the best falafel in NYC. We also went to Magnolia Bakery a couple of times because, Wow! We would have taken pictures of all of this but our phones always died by that time. Our new knock-off Apple charger is really bad at charging.

Interesting Things We Came Across

This Creature

A Rasta poser was exposed (another find on our way to church)

Sometimes Andrew Manbooks

Professeur de français à American Heritage School!

This Fall I will be teaching secondary French at pretty much my dream school. It is called American Heritage School and it is right across from the Mount Timpanogos Temple where Andrew and I were married in American Fork, Utah. It is part time and I will be adding it to my very part time job teaching at Walden School of Liberal Arts. This means that I don't have to substitute teach anymore! This also means that I finally get my own classroom! I am so thrilled about this and I have been planning how to decorate it so that my students get the most out of class. I always flutter around every term to whatever room is available at Walden since I only teach two classes and they don't have a lot of room. You don't really feel like a real teacher when you do not get your own classroom.

American Heritage School is a private LDS K-12 school which means that I get to teach French by inviting the Spirit through prayer to teach us every class period. We can sings hymns, give devotionals, study the history of the church in France and study clothing or food regarding modesty or the Word of Wisdom. It is kind of like teaching at the Missionary Training Center but for teenagers. I love working with the youth of the church and now I get to combine that love with my love of the French language as well. It is so exciting to know that I can freely share my testimony in my classroom. This is a very different environment from Walden which has many ex or anti-Mormon people there.

                                                     The school is a beautiful facility 

I also wanted to share this picture of the 3-4 year old classroom that I am working in right now for the French immersion camp. Bouchra turned this pole into a tree with beautiful flowers. 

The other week the theme was "Things That Fly" and I made this airplane with pictures of the kids faces in the windows. Bouchra has such cute ideas.

I cannot express to you how adorable it is to get hugs and kisses from tons of little 3 year olds everyday. That is honestly the cutest age ever.  I want 20 of them. After managing 10 kids at a time, I think I can handle 1 some day. Here are some of the adorable girls I get to play with. I steal them?

We really enjoy leading nursery. Andrew and I get to practice our parenting skills and usually talk about what we learned that day through dealing with a certain individual or situation. One of the kids came with a hilariously stereotypical doll.

                                              Andrew is going to be the best Dad ever!

   

Please watch this video of the freakiest toy ever invented which we found in the nursery toys. It has teeth that bite down pretty hard.

    

NYPD Blues

Our evening started with a lovely night at Central Park where we listened to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Afterwards there were surprise fireworks.

We came home to see things where they hadn't been left and the bedroom had been rifled through. Right away I felt so weird because someone had been in the only place that belonged to us and took our things. We found out that the lady in the apartment below had been robbed as well. We looked around and found all the nice electronics had been taken and then called the police. "Oh great! Welcome to Harlem," was exactly what I was thinking.

Our apartment has 2 locked doors and then the apartment door to get through and we still don't know how they got through the outer doors. I didn't know what these were but we live between 2 Halfway Houses. They are housing for people who need reintegration into society after getting out of prison, or suffering from mental disorders or substance abuse. Not the safest area. There are no security cameras on this street and our door handle was already loose and hadn't gotten fixed. We've got a deadbolt now so we feel safer.

                                              The Police came and took our statement.

  

As you recall we are subletting Jeff and Aurora's apartment so her Macbook Pro and computer charger were stolen as well as Andrew's computer charger and our phone charger. Our Canon Rebel T2i photo and video camera was taken. It was in a leather bag which happen to hold our passports and checkbook. I can't find my drivers license but my credit card was still in my wallet. I had to cancel all the bank stuff and our passports, plus I don't have any ID now. Very inconvenient.

Next the forensics guys came and dusted for prints. They also took our finger prints for comparison. A lot of the things that the robber might have touched were not good surfaces for lifting prints. This is the part where my love of crime scene investigation shows comes in. I grew up watching Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock with my Mama so you could say I kind of wanted to be a detective growing up. Within the past year I gave up a lot of the big recent crime shows because of violence and dark themes.

                                                                Getting finger printed

Andrew got the Muppet Show on DVD for his birthday and I noticed it was on the floor when we got home. I told the police that info and they focused a lot on trying to get prints off of that surface. This is Kermit after being violated. Never knew that this dust was so hard to get off.

That night I was really scared that maybe they would come back because it is hard to not make a crime personal. I woke up the next morning to lots of messages telling me my Facebook got hacked. I left it logged in to Aurora's computer and knowing it wasn't me I was interested to see what the robber decided to write. After reading the very inappropriate status update I had supposedly written I became so angry I was shaking. I don't remember the last time I felt this angry. The fact that he broke into our private space and stole from us and then tried to add insult to injury, just enraged me. Some people have such evil intentions and live their lives in such darkness. I took some time to calm down and forgive this person. I then realized I could hide the status instead of delete it so that the detectives could maybe find an IP address from the geotagged update.

After contacting the Dickamores and delivering the sad news about their computer, they realized the robber tried to buy about $5,000 worth of stuff on an online account. I understand buying an iPad but the funny thing is that they tried to buy some tiaras (random) and then didn't change the shipping address. Yeah, we are working with some respectable professionals. The purchases were stopped and the detectives may also be able to figure out where those purchases were made from.

The tough NYPD detectives came by wearing matching lavender dress shirts and sporting their thick New York accents. We had a fun time joking around with the lead detective and giving him all the helpful information we had.

Interestingly enough Andrew had his debit card stolen a month ago and then put back in his bag at work. We know this because a purchase was made 20 minutes before Andrew tried to buy something during work. The bank took care of everything but we don't like not being able to give people the benefit of the doubt and not being able to trust people. New York has a ton of weirdos.

Crazy story, right? I wish it hadn't happened but we are glad that we were not home when they came. The things we lost are replaceable and we are so glad that we still have each other.

Finding Peace In A Concrete Jungle

Recently Andrew and I visited the Little Red Lighthouse which is the only lighthouse on Manhattan. We were able to sit on the rocks right on the river and right under the George Washington Bridge. It was at sunset and we got a beautiful view looking downtown. It was so peaceful and is now our new favorite place.

We watched the 4th of July fireworks from the Brooklyn Bridge. If you wanted to get anywhere close to the show then you had to either work in a building on the Hudson or pay 100$ a person at restaurants and venues with good views. Below, in the picture on the left, you see Freedom tower which will be done being built in 2013. It stands on the site of the former World Trade Center and will be 1,776 feet tall. It lights up red, white, and blue every night. 

 

 This guy Andrew is pretty obsessed with me and he takes lots of pictures of me.

 

This is me as well. 

I am waiting for the Wicked lottery. We won the lottery to see this incredible Broadway play called "Peter and the Starcatcher," a prequel to Peter Pan. See it if you get the chance. Seriously! The picture below is a forbidden shot of the inside of the theater. It is so beautifully ornate!

Sometimes you find the remnants of a car fire on your walk to church

Graffiti shot of the week found on the bathroom wall of a lounge restaurant (by the way we watched Exit Through The Gift Shop and it is a great documentary about street art)

Do What You Love And You'll Never Work A Day In Your Life

This post is about how we do what we love and get payed for it. I just started the French immersion summer camp in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. It is such a lovely area and there are lots of Europeans. I am working with the 3-4 year olds. Usually if a child asks me to wipe their bum I am kind of reluctant but when these kids ask me to do it in French I decidedly would do anything for them. I am a sucker for little French kids. I love playing with them, singing and reading stories and discovering with them.

I am an assistant teacher to a beautiful Moroccan woman named Bouchra. She is one of those people that is so happy and has so much life. She loves you right when she meets you and she really listens and cares about you. She speaks French, Spanish, English, Arabic, Italian, and Haitian Creole, so you could say she is crazy-in-love with languages. She has already taught me so much about parenting (the French way) and helping little children acquire language through immersion.

I made the decision a couple of months ago to speak French to all of my children. I am going to do certain activities that are always in French like FHE, singing songs and reading books before bed, and other consistent activities. I have learned that you have to be disciplined and I am so excited! These kids are amazing. We are already seeing that kids who come in with no French are understanding through action, context, repetition, and songs. It is such a great opportunity for me to prepare to teach my own children. It may be hard but my children will thank me later.

Bouchra is a Christian and she loves talking about her love of God. We have had wonderful talks about our beliefs and she has asked me many questions about my faith. I hope to continue to share with her and learn from her as we are able to uplift each other and connect about how hard it is to be a good Christian in this world. Here is a picture of me and her.

This past month Andrew launched a design company with his friends from high school, Rob and Sean. It is called Tinyhouse Design Co. and he has been really busy with that on top of his internship. Check out their website at www.tinyhou.se. Sean has been out in NYC as well and they have had many nights of geeking out together. They are so talented and do great work since, well let's just say, they are young geniuses.

Sean in the traditional hat of his people

I Love Being a Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

I had the awesome opportunity to be a leader for the Manhattan stake youth conference. For 3 days I got to spend time with 60 youth, which sounds so small for a conference but NYC doesn't have a bunch of LDS youth. We had tons of fun doing geneology, temple work, bowling and games as well as visiting lighthouses (the theme was "Arise and Shine Forth").

                                                  This is the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse

We also went on an awesome boat cruise with dinner and dancing. We stopped right next to Liberty Island because the Statue of Liberty is a beacon of light.

One of my favorite parts was a service adventure where we walked to different places in the city like Times Square, Grand Central Station, the bull in the financial center, etc. and we had the challenge to do certain service activities. I loved that the kids got to put charity and love into action through getting out there and serving the people in their community.

 We started off by cheering runners on in Central Park by holding up signs of encouragement and handing them water. Everyone loved it and the spirit of service was strong. We handed out balloons to people on the High Line, wrote uplifting messages on paper and handed them to random people, complimented and held doors or just looked for people who needed some love. I realized that many people here automatically assumed that if you were approaching them then you were selling something. One lady expected to pay money when one kid asked her if she wanted a balloon. It seems people are not really used to people going out of their way to be kind like this. It was wonderful to see the delight on the faces of the people receiving these smalls acts of kindness and I plan to do this again.

                       The last night we camped in Inwood Park and shared our testimonies.

 I loved hearing these kids talk about how being the only Mormon in their school is hard but through the conference they found more friends in the same position who cannot wait to let their light shine in such a dynamic city. That is what it is all about is building their love of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have I mentioned how much I love the ward? I love how real the people are and that investigators and new members come every week. Most of all, I love that it feels like a family. Everyone really relies on each other for support and all the members are so loving and welcoming. It was like that growing up in Florida but I am not a youth anymore so I have a different perspective on my role as a ward member.

Andrew and I got a couple of callings in the good old Harlem ward. I was told by a friend that since we are interns staying for only 3 1/2 months then they wouldn't really pay attention to us. We aren't really cool with that so we talked to the Bishop and Relief Society President and made sure they knew that we wanted to get involved. It worked! We got to give talks a couple of weeks ago and are going to be Nursery leaders until we leave. We also served as choir members and got another calling that is unique to the ward. They are trying to put together a youth mentor program and need us to research resources for the mentors to have. They want to be able to help them attain life goals like college, scholarships, camps, career paths, etc. so that they can be successful. I think it is a great idea and it should be implemented on a church-wide basis. Some of the youth do not get this info at home or at school in the inner city so this is a great way to give them individual attention and help them understand the opportunities in their community. I have already found great resources and am so excited to see how the program turns out. I am actually surprised that this hasn't happened before.