a week in Manhattan

I’m staying in Washington Heights on 186th, subletting for Geenie– I spent this morning talking to her mother. She would speak to me in Spanish, and I would try to communicate how much of it I understood. She made me an omelet with a side of yucca and boiled plantains. They are, like most of the people in this area, from the Dominican Republic. In one way, it is not so different from being in Berlin; when I go to a store, I understand only a small fraction of what is being said.
The day I arrived I visited Kostya (I had forgotten my cellphone at home and he happened to be going from Boston to New York later that day, my luck) and we had cake. He came uptown later in the week to visit and ate at El Pollo Dorado.

The first five days of lab work has consisted of participating in experiments, reading, and trying to learn matlab. The lab studies adaptation, motor learning, some sister labs look at bpd and other things. I am supposed to be shadowing two grad students: Tim (USA) and Jalmer (Holland). The more I learn the more questions I have – of course, that’s how it always goes.
On Wednesday, some graduating people and Jay (the professor in charge of me) went to a Croatian place in Astoria. The entrance said “Rudar’s United Miners Soccer Club” so we wouldn’t have known it was a restaurant if we hadn’t been told, and I haven’t seen most of those people since.  

Yesterday Hannah came across the bridge from New Jersey. We went to the Strand and walked around Washington Sq Park. There was some sort of festival celebrating India there, but also randomly really impressive male step dancing and a tattooed man played classical piano – not entirely sure how a piano ended up outside. We got Turkish food (7 spices), window shopped and eventually parted ways.

in Washington Square Park

Two dreams: one in which I was escaping from zombies, but sometimes they could pretend to be human if they had only recently gotten bitten. I was also trying not to starve, food was limited. I had to trust someone, because wherever there was food, there were people, and they only shared if you where friendly. But wherever there was food, there were also half-zombies. The second one someone had gotten murdered and I was trying to figure out who did it without getting killed or becoming a suspect.