June 13, 2012
We darted into the banal Queensborough Plaza S ubway station today, a block away from our Comfort Inn Hotel, and I was not impressed. For New York City, it appeared rather tame and unoccupied to me. We did not even have to wait in line to buy the four yellow metro card tickets for my family! However, once we swiped our Metro cards through, which took about five tries for each of my family members I must add, the Q Subway Train arrived thirty seconds later. My jaw dropped when I looked into the door’s windows. People’s faces smacked against them like the innocent victims of the mass deportations to Auschwitz. So many people were compressed into the car that I could not even imagine how I was going to survive the six or so stops being Queensborough and Times Square? When we trampled in, we were forced to hang onto the silver poles for dear life, and my fears of falling on someone from the subway’s turbulent movements exponentially increased by the minute. This experience confirmed the decision that I would never choose to dwell in the “Big Apple”. A suburban girl like me could never handle the daily confrontment of these prolific crowds.
June 16, 2012
Today we took the Four Subway Train to the famed China Town. When we ventured out of the underground station into the noon daylight, I was overcome by the fishy stench. The markets of China town were filled with the sharp, ocean-like smell of the daily catches and my whole family’s olfactory systems were scarred eternally. As we strolled down Canal Street, I saw dead chickens hanging from the windows of one restaurant and their trashy smell and sight was quite undesirable. The heads were all severed painfully, but their lifeless shoulders were hanging from a silver hook and the flexible legs were dangling below. I seriously thought the restaurant was trying to repel customers from their unattractive eatery. As a devoted vegetarian, I dragged my family away from there as fast as I could.
June 17, 2012
We zoomed back to China Town again today on the same route because my mom complained that she never received the opportunity yesterday to fulfill her feminine desire to shop.She wanted to find a “New York”T-shirt, she said.After diving into our first clothing shop of China Town, the East Indian owner suspiciously came by to suggest clothes for my mom to try on. (Shouldn’t China Town’s shops have Chinese owners, not Indian ones?) Unfortunately, my mom never found a shirt because after trying only three tops she discovered that they were all the wrong sizes. The Adult Large was the size of a Kid’s Large! Anyway, when the owner realized that my mom had the audacity to try all those clothes on and not purchase anything, he jumped with rage in front of all his other customers. He verbally abused my mom and cornered her in the shop, preventing her from fleeing. “HOW DARE YOUCOME INTO MY STORE, TRY ALL THESE CLOTHES ON, AND NOT BUY ANYTHING!?!” he exclaimed. I grasped my mom’s arm, dashed out the store, and promised my family that we would never come back to China Town for a long time. I learned that people in New York were extremely money hungry and did not let you walk away without paying your share. This realization was later reconfirmed when my mom posed with a Lady Liberty Man on the streets of Times Square and failed to compensate for her picture with him.
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