Yay for NY

We've now been here six weeks and it's been a lot of fun so far. I've been a little lonely during the days and we're very homesick but all in all we're having fun. This city is pretty crazy, there's lots of wierdos and you can see some pretty crazy things. Craziest things I've seen so far are a woman walking topless down the street, an Asian woman playing the Digeridoo on a rock, a man riding a bicycle with a huge wooden basket on the front with a monsterous shaggy dog and an eye patch, Heidi Klum, Hugh Jackman, some seriously crazy clothes and lots more. We've walked through a ton of the city because it's fun just to see the streets. Some things we've done so far are battery park, the 911 memorial, the Roosevelt tram to Roosevelt Island, a boat tour around the harbor, Central park (the carousel, the boat pond, a bridge that is made only of stone ie no mortar, the gardens, the imagine memorial, the writers path) the Highline Park, roller blading through Central Park, Chelsea pier and market, Brooklyn promenade, Walked across the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, Grimaldis and Brooklyn Ice cream, Coney Island, 4th of July Fireworks, FAO Schwarz, Times square, flatiron building, the museum of natural history, The Manhattan temple, a walking tour of Downtown Manhattan and a few of the churches around town. On my own I've done the Bronx zoo (my favorite thing so far), a lower east side food tour, a Harlem walking tour, Hoboken NJ where I saw the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, the site of the first official baseball game, the highest elevation point at Castle Point Lookout, and the site of the Cake Boss show), a self guided walking tour of Little Italy, China town and the Upper East side, The Greenway Cemetery( a huge cool old cemetery with a few famous people buried there it had crazy crypts and huge head stones) Federal hall where Washington gave his inaugural address, Fraunces Tavern where Washington gave his farewell speech, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Connecticut with Michelle and the African American Burial ground.
That was sort of an exhaustive list you probably didn't care about but oh well. Michelle let me borrow a book she bought about NY and I've been loving the self guided walking tours they have in it. We absolutely love our Ward here and will be very sad to leave it. Our favorite things to do here are just walk up and down the streets and see what there is to see. We're looking forward to my mom visiting next week and Mark and Jodi towards the end. We had fun when Michelle visited at the start and were sad to see her go. There's lots of great food here (unfortunately it's usually expensive) but it's hard to find restaurants because there are so many. If you do a search in one small area it returns more restaurants than you could ever search through. Some of the hard things I've noticed about living here are grocery shopping and laundry. There aren't any major grocery stores and I have to walk several blocks with heavy groceries and laundry. Its also very expensive and crowded and dirty. I don't think we'd like to live here after this but it really has been lots of fun. We are excited to come home in about 5 weeks.