A Weekend in Central Park

I can't believe that I am already half way through the course. It has been the greatest two weeks ever. Lots of hard work but lots of fun too. So far I am passing the course which is also a great thing. It's been weird to get back into school mode and learning how to learn all over again. It does make me a bit hungry for school again.

I spent most of my weekend in Cental Park. Yesterday a couple of us went down to the big Apple store to check out all the fun Apple stuff. It's quite an amazing store. You go into this big glass room in the middle of the street and go down stairs to enter the store. Then after being tempted to spend lots of money we went for a New York hot dog off a street vendor. Then enjoyed the NY meal in NY style by walking through the park. We ended up walking the whole park which took about five hours. The park is amazing. There is anything you can imagine there. Here are some of the things we saw.




- dogs that look like their owners
- an old man sitting on the bench singing and playing a hermonica
- the central park zoo
- people on a climbing wall
- more dogs
- people running which also includes an ipod
- sunbathers
- basketball
- volleyball
- baseball
- soccer
- tennis
- kickball
- ultimate frizbee
- a naked (or almost naked) indian man doing some sort of show
- more dogs
- horse carriages
- a SWAT team (didn't stick around to see what that was all about)
- and arobat team that did amzing flips and stuff
- a half pipe for BMX bike riders
- a really nice reservoir with turtles and nice birds
- a trumpet player
- more dogs
- some sort of rock band warming up for a concert later in the day
- boating on a little pond thing
- every different kind of person you could imagine
- oh and did I tell you we saw some dogs?

It was quite the walk. I never thought I would see so much in one park. Then we left the park and headed into Harlem to see a different part of New York. It's not the place I would like to get caught in after dark but it was cool to see during the day. Then it was on the train to head to Grand Central Station. I think the name describes it all. From there we decided to walk the streets a bit and find somewhere to eat. We headed towards Times Square and it started to rain. Walking through Times Square is difficult enough to walk through with all the people but then imagine it with everyone holding umbrella's. It was a dangerous place to be. But we made it through with all of our eyes and found a cool little dinner with a big open window. So we had a great meal and got to watch people walk by trying to fight the rain. My biggest contemplation of the day was if it helps a bald guy to not get his head wet if he holds a napkin on his head. Well I think one guy thought it would help him out. Maybe he just got his head polished. Then it was back to campus for a quick nap to prepare for a night out on the town. A big group of us headed down to the meat packing district for a night of dancing. I thought that I saw strange things in central park, I think my evening out trumped that. There is nothing like dancing in a NY club. So much fun. But I did make it back before the sun came up so that was a good thing.

After getting some sleep in a couple of us headed back to Central Park to study for our exam tomorrow. It was a nice day spent on a blanket discussing our past week of topics, drinking Starbucks and enjoying the weather. I think I'm ready for my exam tomorrow and another full week of lectures and paper writing. But not before I get some sushi in my belly.

Sleep? What's that!

So just in case you think that this NY trip is all just a lot of fun and sightseeing, I'll give you the schedule of my day today.

7:00 am - wake up after going to bed at 3:00 am. Ok the 1 - 3 was fun stuff but I really did work until 1

7:30 - 8:30 - breakfast and drinking as much coffee as possible in anticipation for the long day

8:30 - 12:30 - go to UN head quarters to be a part of a celebration conference on Central America's 20 years of peace. It was kind of cool to see Ban Ki-moon (Secretary-General of the UN) with my own eyes. He just stayed for the opening remarks of the conference but it was great to hear him speak in person. And it was his birthday today so I like to think that I went to Ban Ki-moon's birthday party. Then the current president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias and a firey former President of Guatemala, Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo speak. It was really interesting to hear where Central America is heading and some of the issues they are still battling. It was also just really cool to sit in the UN audience and wear the cool ear peace that you hear the translator through.

12:30 - 2:00 - head back to the campus and eat lunch

2:00 - 3:45 - Learn about the cheery topic of human trifficking

3:45 - 4:00 - more coffee to keep the afternoon sleepies away - why did I stay up until 3 last night?

4:00 - 5:00 - a quick talk from Dr. Cahill about maintaining good health while on the field. Dr. Cahill is the founder of this course and a very well known man in the humanitarian world. Check him out - he's also written lots of books that I should be reading at some point.

5:00 - 6:00 - a nice surprise of learning how to do community health education in South Sudan. It was a nice switch because we usually get really depressing topics like Bio-Terrorism or Child Soldiers, so this was a nice break

6:00 - 7:15 - meet with my group to work on our presentation for Friday. This week we have to answer the question of "When do we as International Humanitarian Organizations, decide that a crisis no longer requires our assistance?"

7:15 - 7:45 - Eat Supper here on campus. They prepare meals for us everyday which is great because we don't have to waste time going out or making something

7:45 - 10:30 - Back meeting with my group and trying to get 8 people to agree on the approach to our answer and how we should present it. Trust me, it's more difficult than it sounds.

10:30 - 12:30 - Head off in smaller groups to do our assigned portion. I get to do a case study on Angola which is actually really interesting.

Currently - well now it's 1:00 am and I still have some reading to do before I can sleep and once again my day tomorrow starts at 7:00 am. But tomorrow I get to learn about International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Law, and Refugee Law. Wow, I think I'm going to have to drink a lot more coffee tomorrow.

NY at Night

Here are some photos of the sights so far. You will notice that most of them are at night. We don't get out much during the day so I have mainly seen NY between the hours of 9 pm to 3 am. Enjoy!

Full Speed Ahead

So I have told a couple of people that I was going to update my blog yesterday and still I have not been able to find the time. This learning stuff is a lot of work. Class starts at 8:30 in the morning and ends at 7:00 at night. We now have group presentations that we have to do tomorrow so that has taken up the 7:30 - 12:00 free slot that we had in the evenings. They also assigned our research papers yesterday so that will take up the Saturday and Sunday free time that we thought we might get. But it's great stuff - at least the information is interesting and exciting to learn. It's amazing how much your brain can take in in a day. Each lexcture seems to be this attack of information that you have to catch and find a place to put it all. But just to ease your mind, I have found time for a little fun earlier this week. On Monday a group of us walked down to Times Square which totally blew my mind and enjoyed the masses of people and overload of advertising and lights. Then Tuesday we went on a boat trip around New York to see all the sights from the water including the Statue of Liberty. After the boat ride some of us headed down to Grenwich Village for some amazing Indian food and then off to a little live music club. Last night I almost stayed in for the night but the city was calling me so I headed out for a drink in a funky bar on Broadway. I don't think I have been in bed before 2 am since I got here. Yep I'm living the high life. But this city truley amazes me and there is so much to see it's hard to waste time sleeping. I have yet to hit Central Park which is only two blocks away but I may join the marathon of people that run there in the morning this weekend. I will try to post some picutres and keep updating you as I find time. I have to run now to meet with my group about our presentation tomorrow on the question of 'Does humanitarian assistance prolong conflicts?" This is great stuff!

New York!

Well I have been a little lazy while I have been home and didn't get in any blogs. But I am now in New York and very happy to be here. I have to keep telling myself that I am actually here - it's seems a little strange. But I arrived in the dark and in the rain so I didn't see to much last night on my way in. Then I have been in a classroom all morning so not a lot of sight seeing yet. This course is going to be so great. I'm really excited about it. There are people from all over the world here and it is so great to be in a fun international setting again. I just love talking the aid talk and discussing things like the impact of war on the environment over lunch. I will write more later but I just wanted to say that I am arrived and soooooo happy to be here.