Surprising Things so Far...

 Picture from our walk today

Hey Everyone! Happy Sunday! Hope you all are having a lovely relaxing Sunday. Today has been another lazy day for Megan and I. We woke up this morning determined to work on our TPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) and lesson planning for this week. So after our delicious breakfast of various yummy items, we got to work. We took one break to take a little walk around Staten Island and found some good food places that aren't too far away. We'll be keeping this for future reference.
After our walk we went back to working on our stuff, and I decided to take a break and do a quick blog post.
Today since we haven't really been doing much sight seeing, I decided to share with you 3 things that I have found surprising about our time here in New York so far.


The first thing is the Commute!
I never expected the commute to take as long as it has been. Yesterday as Megan said, we went to the Mid Manhattan Library. Our commute there probably took about 2-2.5 hours. This is because we took the bus to get to the ferry, then from the ferry we got on the subway and had to switch subways a few times and then finally we had to walk to the library. It was a very long process, and we both commented on how tiring it was. Our ride home was even longer because of the bus and having to walk a bit to our hotel from the bus stop.
Now our ride to school isn't normally this long. It's normally about 1.5-2 hours (because we for sure get a ride in the shuttle in the morning). But in the evenings or on the weekends when the shuttle is busier, and more difficult to get a ride from, our commute turns out being alot longer than any of us expected.
It makes me wonder if  I could ever actually do this everyday. I am not so sure I would like it. Us Minnesota girls are so used to being able to hop into our cars and go where we need to do instantenously. The commute is something that we are going to have to continue getting used to. I'm sure by the time we leave we will be, and then we will go home and it will be weird to jump into our cars and go somewhere again.


The second thing that surprised me was how expensive food items are. I wasn't expecting it to be so much, maybe 1-2 dollars more but not as much as it has been. It's hard when you are on a budget to find good, quality food options that dont break the bank. We are doing the best we can with this, and taking any free food that we can get (ie breakfast cereals, and muffins in the morning haha)


The third and final thing that surprised me is how much we see the same people on the ferry in the morning. You would think that you wouldn't since its such a big city but we have seen alot of the same people everyday. It has made for some fun and interesting people watching!


Overall, we are enjoying our time in New York, and getting used to some of the differences that New York as opposed to Minnesota.


Tomorrow Heidi will be blogging about going to the 9/11 memorial with her family, so make sure to check back for that!


Thats all for now!


-Sarah