NY NY

I made it to NY! Ok, it was almost two weeks ago... I've just been too exhausted and busy to write. 

Anyways, the flight over was a red eye, I had plenty of leg room and slept most of the way. The flight is too short to get good sleep though. Got into La Guardia around 9 in the morning. Ramzi had been so sweet and made sure I had cash for the busses and trains I would have to take, so I just walked outside and there was M60, the bus I needed to take. I managed to lift my extremely heavy suitcase up on the bus, and handed over my dollar bills to the driver, he gave me an annoyed look and said: "no dollar bills... coins!" and then he looked away. Great! Alright, I took myself and my heavy bag off the bus and back into the terminal to get some coins and try again. I got the next opportunity 20 minutes later.

I got to the metro station after about 30 minutes on the bus. The train to White plains NY was to leave in a couple of minutes so I hurried to get my ticket from the machine and rushed toward the train. Great again! No elevator and the tracks were two flights of stairs above me. I started dragging my bag up the stairs. It was so hard, it wanted to stop halfway up each step and fall backwards, and when I looked back towards it I could see that there a line of angry New Yorkans had formed behind my bag. They looked like they were gonna run me over and have a stampede. Then on my left a guy shows up and asked if I needed help! First I felt worried, this is NYC, he would probably try something, but then I realized that this would be my only chance of getting up the stairs and on to the train, so I said yes please. He carried it all the way up and saved me from the lynch mob. He couldn't have been from NY...

Then a 45 min train ride later I got to White plains. I grabbed a taxi to go to my hotel, the taxi driver grabbed two other passengers and then took off. Odd, but ok car pooling is better... He dropped them off first and then he started driving out of White plains. I was getting a little worried again, thinking this guy is taking me for a ride... (ha ha literally). So, I used the maps on my iPhone and saw that indeed he just missed the exit for the hotel and is driving outside the town! Yikes! I told him that I can see on the map that he missed the exit, that my hotel is called Extended Stay and is located in White plains and he just missed it. But he explained to me that no, my hotel is in Elmsford. I didn't believe him, but what could I do... He takes me to Extended Stay in Elmsford, which turned out to be the right place. For some reason the state of NY has a problem naming roads and likes to reuse the same names over and over again. So apparently there is a 118 Tarrytown rd in White plains and another 118 Tarrytown rd in Elmsford. Furthermore, Google claims that both these addresses host Extended Stay hotels... Today I had another experience with two different 9A roads, but more about that some other time.

So the room above will be my home for the next 10 weeks while I intern at IBM research!