What a trip! I haven't blogged for two days because each night when I took my computer out I was too tired to write. So here's a recap on the past two days.
Brukab, Italy, and I flew out of Seattle on Tuesday evening on a red-eye flight. Normally, I'm fine with red-eye flights, but this one was particularly unenjoyable as the guy next to me kept hitting my elbow since his arm was on my side of the seat. Geez.
So after only two hours of sleep on our four and a half hour flight, I arrived in New York around 5:30 AM. Still dark out. We needed to take a taxi to the Hilton New York, where we'd be presenting on the Dream Project at the College Board Forum 2009.
As we walked out of JFK airport, some guy asked if we needed a taxi and asked us to follow him. Hmm...we made it as far as his large car with no visible signs it was a taxi. Once we saw the skateboard lying in the back of the car and the fact that he said cash only, we ditched that plan and went for the yellow taxis we passed. Must've been that two hours of sleep that got me since I remember hearing "take yellow taxis only."
We finally made it to our hotel around 7 AM. Turns out though, we couldn't check in since the hotel was full the night before. So we dropped our bags off and headed out into the sunrise in downtown Manhattan. The streets were already getting busy as people, almost all wearing business suits and nice clothes, headed in every direction to work. We walked the few blocks over to Times Square where we watched Good Morning, America being taped and just chilled at the tables in the square. Even got WiFi there.
Later that morning, we headed to the UN just past Grand Central Station and took a tour of the building. 'Twas pretty awesome. I bought another flag for my flag collection and picked up a few other trinkets as well. By the time we finished, it was past noon, so back to the hotel we went.
Thankfully, despite all the College Board people all around the lobby, we got our rooms. Italy went straight to bed. Brukab and I unpacked. I bought internet for two days (no free WiFi), took a shower, and then headed to a session on undocumented students. I enjoy attending conferences like these since you get to learn so much from other people...plus talk about the Dream Project. : )
On Wednesday evening, we ended up going out to eat dinner at a pub and restaurant down the street. Delicious burger and French onion soup. Then back to our room to practice for our presentation on Thursday.
Stan arrived later that evening as we were practicing. He got upgraded to a nice suite on the 39th floor (we're on the 14th). Pretty awesome.
Thursday morning, I didn't make it to breakfast at 7:30 AM as I had thought I would. Too tired. Besides, at midnight on Wednesday, Brukab and I had gone out to the block downstairs and got a plate of chicken and lamb over rice from the street vendor. It was soooooooo good. Except I killed my tongue by putting extremely hot sauce on it.
So after waking up, I headed towards Grand Central to visit the Humanity in Action headquarters. I had never visited it before since when I was a Fellow, we were in DC and then off to Europe. So I had called Judy, the executive director and my mentor for my Action Project, and it turns out she was in Istanbul. So I went to see office anyway and say hello to Phil, the center director in New York.
It was a great visit, and we got to chat lots about the Dream Project. Very exciting stuff. After that though, I headed back to the hotel and headed into a session on philanthropic partnerships a bit late. Quite fascinating though.
For lunch, I went to the luncheon in the Grand Ballroom while Brukab and Italy continued practicing. The luncheon was nice. It featured an awards ceremony for the most inspirational high schools in the country. Pretty fascinating. I sat with a gentleman from the College Board who actually knows some folks I worked with at UW. I skipped Gwen Ifill's speech though and headed back to the room since our session was coming up soon.
After gathering all our stuff, we headed down to our room for the presentation. As our time drew nearer, there were only a few folks in the room. Not the kind of turnout we were expecting at a national conference. Turns out though, Gwen Ifill went over on her time, so people trickled in late. Soon, we had a fairly good sized audience and got started.
Our presentation went smoothly and our audience asked great questions and engaged in the conversation with us. It went so well, in fact, an audience member wrote us a check for our program! : )
After that, we debriefed and explored some other sessions, but since we had debriefed so long and didn't get to anything else, we headed back upstairs. I had made reservations at 6 pm to visit my aunt's friend's sports bar, so we changed and headed out. Stan brought us to Rockefeller Center and past the diamond district before heading near Times Square where the sports bar was located.
Dinner was delicious as Paul had a special steak entree that night. Brukab and I both got it. Man, it was good. It was great to see Paul too again, but since there was a Yankees game that night, he was pretty busy. Well, he's always busy anyway. Afterward, we headed out to Times Square and bought a whole bunch of souvenirs. So touristy. Oh well.
We made it to ESPNZone though where we played a few rounds of basketball and football games. It was awesome! I felt right at home.
After that, we called it a night since Stan was flying out early this morning. In fact, I kept falling asleep while watching Slumdog Millionaire. This morning, I totally slept past my alarm and didn't get to the session I wanted to get to. We're heading out now though, and I finally got my suitcase closed.
We fly home at 7:30 PM tonight, so it'll be nice to not have to drag all my luggage around. That's all for now. I didn't really take many pictures and haven't really uploaded them, so sadly, this blog post has few pictures and more writing than I would've liked. Oh well. Overall, a very successful trip with plenty more connections made for the Dream Project. Toodles.
Sam
