Recently I was given the opportunity to go to New York City with my grade twelve class. It was quite the experience! I found New York City to be exactly the same as it is portrayed in the movies…BUSY! There are a ton of people in New York and when you’re a tourist taking your time walking down the sidewalks in awe of the huge buildings that surround you the people of New York can get quite pushy.
The first thing I learned while visiting “the big apple” was not to dawdle. People will push you and get quite upset if you are in their way when they have to be somewhere. There was this one incident when it was raining and we were standing under this little shelter on the sidewalk, a New Yorker was having troubling getting through and when he made his way to us he deliberately shook his very wet umbrella on top of us. I guess you could say we learned our lesson.
Another thing about New York is that it is loud! I could never drive in that city, people never hesitate to honk or yell.
An interesting thing that caught my attention about an hour of being in the city was that there are police everywhere. Our tour guide told us that there are about 30 000 cops in New York City, that amazes me but I can believe. They are at basically every intersection directing traffic, and just walking along the street, I felt pretty safe in NYC knowing there were so many of New York’s “finest” around.
One of my favourite things was experiencing China town. People all along the street try to talk to you and in a very shady way try to sell “Tiffany’s”, “Chanel”, or “Gucci” to you. Of course all the things they are selling are fake but since it is illegal to do what they are doing the whole process is very secretive and once they see a cop they are out of there very fast.
While in the big city I really began to appreciate where I live. It’s not crowded, it’s quiet and there aren’t lights everywhere! All though NYC was a very interesting place to go and visit I could never see myself living anywhere like that. It was cool to see everything that you see in the movies and hear about but NYC just wasn’t for me. I love the small country town I live in and wouldn’t change it!
