After Years of Trying, I've Successfully Given Up School for Lent

I always feel like so much has happened since the last time I updated that I just don't even know where to start.

For one, some of you may have noticed that it SNOWED in New York City last week.  Apparently the mere presence of snow constitutes a blizzard here because the mayor announced school would be cancelled the day before it even BEGAN to snow.  Locals defended this decision with some arguments about insurance and liability, but my no-nonsense supervisor, who's from Ecuador (I believe) and in New York by way of California and Montreal, briskly informed us of Montreal's fabulous snow removal strategies that leave no slushy messes to cause traffic accidents.  Maybe NYC just got a little Snowpocalypse fever,  but we're just a little bit north of it.  I personally fall in the camp that the number of snow days a school district needs is directly proportional to the number of students who get to school using gravel roads.  As in, if none of your students get to school on a gravel road, you probably don't need any snow days, unless there's a real blizzard out.  I'm pretty sure this is just latent jealousy of all the snow days consolidated schools took off while I still had to do my homework and go to class every day.

Anyway, since school was cancelled, so was tutoring and Free Arts, so I left work early to play in the snow in Central Park, which was fabulous.  So many kids sledding down hills, making snow angels, and building snowmen (some were really intense, too).  I'll put up a post of all pictures soon so

This weekend, Christine and Rachel, the volunteers from the Boston house, came to visit.  Since they both went to school in Boston, they've been to New York many a time, which lessened the need to do things like go to tourist meccas like Times Square.  Of course we ended up in Times Square anyway, but we also walked through New York Fashion Week in Bryant Park, the remnants of the Chinese New Year festival in Chinatown, and some cool shops in SoHo.  We also slept in and lounged around watching bad movies on TV.  All in all, a successful, long weekend.

I'm still getting used to the idea that it can be both 40 degrees outside and February.  And the idea that going an entire week without any snow at all isn't weird.  I'm still not sure if trading the perenial, winter-long sheet of black ice around the doors to Wartburg's student center for gross slush puddles that grace every street corner is an upgrade, but I'm getting used to it.