weekend...

this saturday we had an after-christmas-party. we cooked a big delicious dinner and went to a club afterwards...

on sunday we went to the brooklyn tabernacle to see a gospel chorus :) it was really great, even if i don't agree with their point of view. but their voices were amazing...

kerstin's last weekend

on saturday we had 21 degrees celsius! unbelieveable... i got a postcard from my parents that the snow is alredy melting in the erzgebirge. the told me spring is coming in germany. and we didn't get winter yet...

for this morning we had planned our shopping tour in manhattan mall. later on we went to the brooklyn museum for the free first saturday party
in january. we were to sloppy to see too much of the exhibition but we had the chance to watch the movie "moulin rouge". how can parents bring their children to that movie? even if the movie isn't one of the worst - it's still nothing for 4 year olds... it's so common to bring children to grown up movies in ny. they don't care about the time, violence or things children don't have to know about.. every time i went to the movies after 10, 11, 12 pm i still saw very young children. also for infants and toddlers it must be very frightening to be in a dark room with those strange pictures and sounds, even if the don't understand. imagine that they brought many children to "blood diamond".

on sunday david and ilene took us to the big apple circus. gosh it was so amazing! i wasn't bored for any second. i always thought "that must be their final act and somebody else will enter the stage instead". but they always stayed and and did something greater. funny and amazing tricks for the children and some really good jokes for the grown-ups. one guy, pretending to be french, went on an 20 cm bike through fire. the japanese stunt men really reminded me of the jackie chan movies. it was just too good :)

in the evening kerstin took the train to the airport and went back to germany :(

friday 1-5-07, the un

a model of the four buildings

security council chamber

trusteeship council chamber

"the golden rule"

general assembly hall

on friday morning we took a tour at the united nations headquarters. it was so interesting! the un area doesnt't belong to any specific country whether the united states. and i didn't know that the un is responsible for the rule of having traffic lights in every country and expiration dates on groceries... it was pretty interesting because there you could learn what really comes out of this organization. in german school i only had to learn about history and who is in it.

on the way we found a piece of the berlin wall...

i the evening we visited the museum of modern art. it was target free friday night :)

at night we went to a times square cinema to watch "freedom writers". it's a really good movie about a teacher motivating a class which was more into street fighting than into learning. we really enjoyed it :)

crazy weather...

ohne worte...

on thursday we went to the BEACH (!!!) on coney island! we sat down on the sand and collected some huge shells. can you believe it? in january?!? on saturday we had 21 degrees celsius! but today (01-10) it was freezing and we finally got the first snow. but if you follow the weather forecast: it will be warm again the weekend... where is the winter?

natuerlich mussten wir auch nochmal zum nathan's! hier finden jaehrlich hot dog wettessen statt. mal sehen ob dieses jahr der rekord nochmal gebrochen wird...

baileys mint?? muss ich mal probieren...

wednesday, january 3rd

on wednesday 3rd we woke up at 5:30 in the morning when the alarm went on. i ran downstairs to turn it off. on the way to the first floor the alarm company called to ask if everything is okay. so i checked the first floor and the kitchen window which activated the alarm. but i couldn't see anything at first view. when i checked the window again i saw that the runner was open although the window was still closed. otherwise we would have been confident with the thought that something was loose because of the constructions, but now we got really scared! did he just run away? or was he still in the house or the basement? (we never thought about the fact that there could have been more than one...) since we still couldn't see anybody we went back to bed (both at the library this time) but of course we couldn't sleep. so around 6:30 i called david who told me the constructions must have caused a false alarm. so we felt a little better. the longer we thought about the fact that somebody actually could have come in let us hear some weird sounds. first we heard noise from david and ilene's room, than the stairs, the girls room... it sounded like he turned the light on - but who would be so dumb to use the light switch???

because we were still a little scared and didn't want him to leave successful, we finally went out of the room and checked the whole house.. of course we couldn't find anybody and it didn't seem like anything was missing.
around 9 a guy from the alarm company came to fix something which was already intact. but he came although his appointment was canceled and i was glad that he came. so i let him check the kitchen window. he told me the constructions must have caused it...

after that scary morning we had planned something really relaxing: we had a spa appointment! we got a good offer for $45 each at nardis. that included haircut with shampoo and conditioner, eyebrow waxing, facial and massage. a place where "many stars go" (...) but the weren't very nice at this place. in fact they got pissed-off when they tried to sell us stuff which we didn't want to buy... but all together it was nice enough :)
on thursday i got an even better offer from another spa: 3 tickets for $23 each with much more service. including live dj and free wine...

my new haircut

afterwards we walked a little through central park and then went to rockefeller center to enjoy the beautiful view from the top :)
view from rockefeller center 1
view from rockefeller center 2

central park

top of the rock:









toys "r" rus:

tuesday, january 2nd

pier17

brooklyn bridge

brooklyn skyline

ground zero

new jersey

downtown manhattan skyline

on tuesday 2nd we finally made it to ground zero and the liberty ferry station. but it was so crowded (i thought the tourists are gone after new years...) that we decided to take the free ferry to staten island.

skyline view from the ferry