NYNYNY! At least the passing of the old year part…

Less than eight weeks left to this semester! Although my classmates and I are happy that the semester is moving along quickly, we know that once the summer hits, we will be in clinicals full time and have to really be on our game! It’s a lot of pressure, but I think it will be much better than some of the extraneous stuff that’s wasting our time now. We are just ready to focus solely on anesthesia.

So! NYNYNY! It was such a wonderful trip! Shortly after returning home from seeing our families for Christmas, we drove down to the City to spend New Year’s Eve with our great friends Chad and Stacie Cannon. The drive was fine except for the last ten miles! Getting into the Lincoln Tunnel was a nightmare.

We couldn’t even figure out why in the world things were moving SO SLOOOOWly… Anyway, we finally made it, and Chad had totally scored booking an awesome hotel for us! It’s was the hotel right across from Dunder Mifflin’s corporate office. ;)

We ate at this unique pizza place called John’s Pizzeria. It is this huge pizza eatery in an old church. The atmosphere was very interesting… You want to be quiet because it was a church, but it’s obviously undergone a major transformation, and with the reverberations of the dinner crowd, quiet was nowhere to be found. Fun place! For as busy as it was, it really didn’t seem to take very long to get our food.

Afterwards Spence and I explored the town, mostly gawking at all of the Christmas decorations scattered about. The tree was so big! We wanted to go ice skating underneath, but we just didn’t have the time while we were there. It’s a good excuse to come back during Christmastime another year. =)

We sauntered into Central Park after visiting the Plaza again, and Spence took me on a romantic horse drawn carriage ride through the park. It was magical.

After our carriage ride, we decided that some kind of warm drink was in order. We never really spend money on drinks unless it’s a special occasion, and Spence is even less likely than I am to get something. Well, he got some kind of warm apple cider holiday drink from Starbucks, and I have to admit – it was much tastier than my hot chocolate! I’m glad he enjoyed it.

We retired to the hotel for the night to gear up for our mega-adventure the next day. And oh, boy, was it! All of us trekked down to Times Square around 12:30pm. The streets looked busy, but not too crowded. We were told that you needed to be down there by 3pm to get a good spot (if you wanted to actually be in Times Square – you can see the ball drop all the way back to the Park). So we wandered to a few stores, and then came back out right before 2pm to PACKED streets. We were worried. They were already closing off some of the closer “corrals,” and people were getting crazy. We decided that it was probably time to try to get our spot. Then things really got nuts.

After waiting in one spot for awhile, we were informed that it wasn’t the way to get into that particular corral, and of course we and the hundreds of people around us who thought it was the line began to get frustrated. There was a lot of pushing and getting totally squeezed and checking all your pockets and zippers to make sure no one had pick-pocketed you. NOT fun at all. Chad and Stacie bowed out pretty quickly (and they had quite the night exploring the City away from Times Square!). After waiting for a little while longer and getting squeezed in a big crowd a little (lot) more, we almost decided that this wasn’t for us, either. It felt claustrophobic and dangerous. You couldn’t get out of there if you wanted to. Not a place I wanted to be. Just before we decided that we would try to force our way out somehow, we were basically pushed towards a corral that looked like it had an opening close to us. We tried to get our heads back in the game so that at least we could make it in.

Finally, after more stressful pushing and yelling from the NYPD and claustrophobic fun, we got into a corral or “pin” as it is also affectionately known. We had seen lots of people get in with their backpacks in closer pins, and now they were telling us that we couldn’t have ours. Of course, after going through all that, I was about to lose it if we were going to be turned away now. We waited awhile, acting like we were taking things out, and finally we found a cop that let us take it in. Thank God! I don’t know what I would have done without water and food for so long. Obviously I would have survived, but this was supposed to be a fun thing!

We were still very close, right beside the TKTS red stairs in Times Square. Once we found our spot in the corral, we soon realized that we would have to stand in that exact spot for the next ten or more hours. Although there was plenty of room in each corral for everyone, everyone also wanted the best spot in the corral. So just when you think you can relax, you have to continue to stand in your “spot” for hours! And it seemed like there were so many people on the network in such close proximity (they were expecting 1 million people to turn up from Times Square and then spread out from there) that our phones weren’t working that great either. So we just talked and watched people and looked around… for… hours…
It was actually really quiet most of the time for how many people were in one small space.

At one point, Spence decided that he couldn’t stand any longer and sat down into a bivouac. He didn’t sit for too long, though. You never know what might be on that ground! We heard stories of major public urination that we would definitely be seeing and drunken fools, but that wasn’t really our experience at all. That might have even been better than the weird/gross/annoying stuff we experienced.

Nivea passed out hats and balloons and lip balm. Well, the lip stuff was great, but the balloons and hats just ended up in our faces all night. There were a lot of kids there, and they leaned a lot, which really disrupted everyone’s personal space. There was one kid that just kept farting, and his brother told him to stop, and the kid just shrugged his shoulders. Ewwww. That went on for hours. People can be so gross!

We waited some more… Finally around 6pm the musical guests (Ke$ha, Taio Cruz, Backstreet Boys & New Kids on the Block, and that kid from Ellen/YouTube who sings Lady Gaga songs) started doing their promo shots and sound checks. Although we aren’t the biggest fans of any of those “artists,” we were desperate for entertainment. It took a few hours for everyone to go through their stuff twice. A couple of TV crews came by so we smiled and waved at the camera. It was good to keep us distracted from reality at that point!

Finally around 10pm, we started to get excited, and time began to accelerate. We watched everyone’s live for TV performances on the Nivea stage and watched the other performances on other random stages throughout the city broadcast on the Times Square mega-screen.

Before we knew it, the New Year was only ONE MINUTE away! And I guarantee you, that was the fastest minute of the whole night! We counted down with the loud tick-tocks as the energy of the moment exploded. There were hundreds of thousands of people all around us counting, too, finally all happy that they had made it to 2011 and through the craziness of being in New York City during such a time! The confetti throwers in their offices above got their boxes ready for the big moment. And finally… it came!

And then... we were exhausted.

It was the beginning of 2011, a New Year fresh with promises of adventure, life, and hope…

New goals to set, new challenges to try, and love not only to take… but also to give.

Happy New Year everyone! It’s nearly ¼ over already. Time just keeps flying faster with each passing year.

I’ll write about the rest of our trip and recent happenings ASAP!

Meg

P.S. Was it worth it to be there when the famous "ball" dropped? Yes, but only to cross it off the list! It was an "adventure," like climbing a mountain. It may not be fun the whole time, but you're sure glad you did it and even more happy when it's all done!