What I Like About You

The Chag (holiday) season is over and next it’s back to the regular grind of classes five-days a week. While all this time off has been nice (who doesn’t like free time off), it has not been very helpful to a person (aka me) who has been trying to get back into the whole school and homework thing. Instead, it has just been prolonging her, I-used-to-have-a-full-time-job-and-therefore-never-any-homework-and-can-sit-around-all-day/night-when-I-have-a-day-off/free evening behavior.

I’ve been told it takes about a semester for people coming back to school from the workforce to get the hang of school and I believe that. However, I feel that because of all this time off, it will now take me an extra month and winter break in Israel is not going to help much, even if it is a learning/working trip and not simply touristy.

I wonder how long it will take me to truly love New York City like some of my friends have already managed to figure out. I’m stuck in this weird place where I have this incredible nostalgia for Washington, DC, a nostalgia that makes me miss it (sometimes tremendously) every now and then.

However, I know that if I were to go to DC right now, it really would not be the same as it was when I lived there. Sure, the city more or less looks the same and my friends are all more or less still there. But, I don’t live there anymore. I don’t work there anymore. It is not my city. Someone else is living in my last apartment, parking in my last spot, sitting at my desk at Hillel. I do not belong there.

Right now, I belong here, in NYC; and while it is difficult to simply ignore six wonderful years of your life, and you should not have to. I understand, kind of, that it’s not good to live in the past. What makes it harder are the many things I liked in DC better than I like in NY. Lucky for me though, there are plenty more things I like about NY that DC cannot deliver.

For instance:

• New Yorkers know how to make bagels. They are soft and fluffy instead of tough and chewy like they are in DC, even at the Calvert Woodly Liquor Store that claims to sell H&H bagels.
• The subway is much more expansive, costs a flat $2 per ride, does not require you to swipe out when you leave, provides free transfers to any NYC bus and you are allowed to eat on it.
• Kosher food is much easier to find
• Central Park is awesome

What I liked in DC:

• Free museums
• The metro was clean, had rarely, if any, pan handlers, had arrival times for the next three or so trains on the actual platform and the platforms were air conditioned. There were elevators and escalators and regular riders could use the SmartTrip card. I ride the subway regularly and am subsequently stuck with about 10 metro cards that I don’t know what to do with.
• Reasonable grocery shopping (aka mainstream, chain grocery stores)
• Lower sales tax
• My coffee guy Fabio
• I had my car, not that I need a car in NY, but I do miss driving around
• It felt like home, that I had some ownership of the city
• Most of my friends were concentrated in the upper NW quadrant instead of all over NYC
  

Of course, I’m not going to lie, it was pretty awesome to get off the subway and be standing in front of the Chrysler building. Or walk to Central Park and watch someone get married. Or walk down your own street and see Law and Order being filmed. At the same time it was awesome working in a building that was a 10 minute walk from the white house…

I could go on an on about what I like about NYC versus DC and vice versa but the bottom line is while DC will hold a special place in my heart, I no longer live there. I live in NYC. Of course, no one has told me I have to love it. I’ve been told I should love it, but never that I have to or need to. But we shall see. It is only the first quarter of the first half of the first third of my time at JTS. Who knows what can happen between now at 2011.