The Big Apple

So I'm finally sitting down to tell you all about my adventures over the past couple of days. I flew to New York on Monday night at 11:45 pm. I had the nasty red eye flight but luckily JetBlue gave us free flight vouchers so it didn't cost me anything! I got into New York at 5:45 am. Then I met up with the other BYU interns that had been on my flight and we all took a shuttle together to our apartment complex. We are staying at the International House at Columbia University. It is this really awesome kind of dorm thing were Columbia graduate students from all over the world come to live. It's in this really old building that has been here forever. It's on the Upper West Side of Manhattan right next to Riverside Park and just a couple of streets over from the Hudson River. It really is an awesome location and the subway is about 2 minutes away from our building.
So anyway after that nice tangent...it took forever to get to our building on the first day because the traffic was so horrible but we did eventually get there. Once we got to the building we checked in and got set up with our rooms. I'm on the eighth floor of the building and my room is pretty much the size of a closet. I'm getting used to it thought and I guess it really isn't that bad. I'll have to post some pictures of it. The view is actually kind of neat and it does have a bed and a dresser and a desk. So after I put my stuff away I had breakfast in the cafeteria and met some of the other kids from BYU. Then we had an orientation meeting to learn all about I-House. After the meeting was over I was pretty much dead tired so I took a little nap and then got ready for some afternoon activities. Our faculty adviser had planned a scavenger hunt so we all met to get ready for that. Before the activity a couple of the kids and I went over to the subway to get our monthly passes. It's $81 for a month long, unlimited use pass. It's probably the best $81 I've ever spent because the subway is pretty much amazing -- I think it will take me a while to get used to driving again in Utah.
Ok, so then we got into groups of three for the scavenger hunt. I got with these two awesome girls named Allison and Monica. We decided that we didn't really want to do the scavenger hunt so we just went and explored for a while in the city. We headed downtown and found my internship which is with the Today Show. The office is in the GE building at 30 Rockefeller Center which is pretty much amazing!!! After we found that building we just kind of wandered around the city and explored for a while. It was a really good way to kind of learn our way around the New York grid system. We even got library cards at the New York Public Library -- which is pretty much the sweetest library ever. It is soooo gorgeous inside. We also tracked down Monica's internship spot which is in the oh so cool fashion district of NYC with all kinds of awesome shopping. After that we found a K Mart and got a few things for our rooms - including towels that actually cover your body and fitted sheets for our beds. Then we had dinner at this cute little sandwich place called Cosi. After that we just came back to our building and hit the sack and got ready for our first day of work!! yay!!
So my first day of work didn't really go as planned. I left 4o minutes before work thinking I would have no problem getting there. But of course I got completely lost like I always do and ended up being 30 minutes late for work. The story is almost to painful to retell but I basically got off the subway way too early and then I couldn't figure out which way was east, west, north or south. I got completely turned around and found the place when I finally asked for directions. Then once I got checked in at the security desk I got lost again because I didn't know which elevators to take. I finally got up to the office at about 10:30. And of course I was practically in tears! It didn't help that my eyes were watery from allergies and the sun and I was so upset that I had gotten lost. I felt so unprofessional because I was half crying and I was soooo late. But in the end it turned out all right.
From there the internship coordinator took Mallory and I around the office and introduced us to people and just kind of got us familiarized with the place (Mallory is the other BYU intern at the Today Show). We did a lot of arbitrary paperwork and talking to people in the morning before lunch. We had lunch at a cute salad place that is in the food court underneath the building. A good tip actually if you ever visit the city and need a place to eat -- if you just go to the concourse level of Rockefeller Center there are TONS of good restaurants that are pretty reasonably priced -- meaning like $9 for sandwich. After lunch we went back up to the office. My job for the rest of the afternoon was to sit at the front desk and answer the phones. I would forward people to whomever they needed to talk to or talk to the viewers that called in with story ideas or comments about the show and then send them to the appropriate place. The phone calls you get are pretty funny sometimes so it was a fun afternoon. I also got trained on how to do a couple of other things by some of the other interns.
I just have to say it is going to be so cool working for the Today Show. Everyone is really nice and I'm going to get to meet lots of amazing people. Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira's offices are right in our area. They are both out of town so I haven't seen them yet but I have seen their offices! Haha...exciting I know! The executive office suite is on our floor too so the President and Vice President of NBC have their offices right by our front desk. I did see the Vice President today and I saw the back of Brian Williams while he was talking to someone in the hall!
Anyway -- I got off at 5 and then decided to do a little exploring around the city. I knew there was a subway I could take on 59th street right by Central Park so I decided to walk down 5th avenue and look at all the amazing shops. For dinner I ate a hot dog at the park and I saw some sweet break dancers that were doing show on the corner by the Plaza. I got home around 7 and just kind of hung out in my room the rest of the night because I was sooo tired. But it was a good first day of work!
Today was my second day of work and it was a really good one too. I of course got lost again and was a few minutes late but nothing like yesterday! Thank goodness! Luckily after work today I found the best fool-proof route for getting to work that I'm planning on taking tomorrow. Anywho -- when I got in this morning my first job was to learn how to dub tapes which is something the interns do a lot. The basic idea is that producers often want copies of their segments that air on the show either for themselves or for one of their guests. It's the interns job to get the tapes of the show from the tape library and then make DVD's of the segments that the producers want. Today I was also in charge of filing everyone's mail in the mail room and I also learned how to log tape. It was a pretty basic day but I was able to get the hang of jobs that I'll be doing on a regular basis while I'm here. Oh the one highlight of the day was that our internship supervisor took Mallory and I on a tour of the Today show studio. We got to go on the set and we even saw Kathie Lee Gifford live on the set! I didn't get very close to her though because they were actually on the air when we went on the set. The set is a lot smaller than you expect it too be which is usually the case for any news set -- but it was really neat to get to see all the behind the scenes stuff.
After work I headed back to I-House. Then I met up with another one of the BYU interns named Sarah, who is on the same floor as me at I-House. Neither of use know very many of the kids that are here so we decided to go out to dinner together. Sarah had found the address of Cafe Lalo, which is the cafe in You've Got Mail that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks meet up at for the first time -- you know the part where she sits with Pride and Prejudice and a red rose and then he sees who she is and acts like a real jerk to her? Yeah that's where we had dinner...pretty cool, huh? It was a tad pricey - about $20 for dinner and dessert -- but I guess that's cheap by New York standards. I had this Morrocan egg dish thing that was kind of interesting. It was different than I expected it to be and I'll have to say I was a little disappointed -- it was still good but it didn't really fulfill my taste buds the way I wanted it too. I did have a really yummy piece of cake for dessert though -- it was white cake with a creamy filling and topped with all different kinds of fruit. If I ever went back I would probably stick with just dessert which seems to be their specialty. After dinner we just came back to I-house. It was a pretty full day and I am totally exhausted and ready for bed. Tomorrow I have work again from 9-5 and then all the BYU kids are meeting up to go to the MOMA (museum of modern art) -- which I am sooo excited about. It should be really fun. Saturday I'm hoping to hit up Canal street to buy some fake designer purses and then maybe catch a Broadway show. You can get special student tickets for about $20 to tons of the really popular shows so I'm planning on taking advantage of that! That's it for today! I'll try and update this again tomorrow or Saturday! I hope you aren't too bored reading about my stay so far in New York. I know I haven't done anything too exciting yet but I know I will eventually!