Luv U NJ...

Back in NJ after a short stint in India. Landed here sharp at 10:30 AM as scheduled.
I always craved for flight journeys. From my childhood, the take off and landing and the aerial view of the landscape below the flight has fascinated me a lot. The size of the buildings, cars, trees slowly diminishing makes me feel like using google maps slowly minimizing the size of the map. The take off at chennai was at night, the city was twinkling with powerful lights. I tried to identify the buildings, all in vain, but it was fun. Journeys have always excited me a lot. This especially is challenging.

The view of New Jersey from plane was fabulous. Chennai has only buildings and lamps. NJ looks like a forest with some water bodies here and there. Stepping foot in Newark International Airport made me nostalgic. We are not planning to go back to our earlier home, but my hearts longs for that home. The home that is filled with happiness and luv, a great start for our beautiful life, that added a lot of beauty to the powerful bond between us.

Anyways, I missed lot of things.. The starbucks coffee, the clean roads, car drives in the highway, a different fragrance in the air and much more.
I really cudn't believe what is happening. Some things, which we long for, if they happen all of a sudden we may not be able to believe.
I saw a lady smoking today after a year's time, a rare sight in chennai. This struck me that I am in US.

:-) Hope this stay becomes as cherishable as the first one.

Luv U NJ....

NewYork Yathra

For quite sometime, I was longing to go on the double-deckered bus and visit the whole of newyork in a single day. We had been to all the places of interest before. Yet visiting them in a 2 days trip is different.

On the first day..

Got up lil late. We had plans from 8:00Am.. But we cudnt start that early. Slowly we got ready and left to the starting node of the trip - to the grayline service hop on point for the uptown loop.

I thought the uptown loop wudnt interest us much as we had planned for some museums and art galleries. But to my amazement, i enjoyed the first day trip a lot. The bus moved thru the street towards the colombus center - Only from this point the distance from newyork to any part of the world is calculated. Our guide, an afro american, spoke in a very clear tone, explaining a lot bout a lot of buildings in the city. Thru the streets around broadway our bus moved slowly that we cud take a lot of snaps. We passed the Lincoln center, the art school. Robin Williams had come from that school. Lot of people took snaps of the lincoln center. We crossed the Natural History Museum.

We had plans to go to Jewish Museum, but we werent in a good mood to get down there. Our guide told us a lot of stories about the most expensive apartments in the world, the Dakota apartments.. He listed all the celebrities living there. He pointed to one of the building and said Merryl Streep is in that apt. I am a big fan of Merryl Streep, so i cud recollect only her name from the looong list he gave.

The driver maneuvered the bus along the central park streets. Flabbergasted by the beaty of this man made park, I stared at the arboreal landscape with silent prayers to stay in this beautiful city for ever. Newyork may be one of the largest and populous city, may be the city with largest vehicle population. But cannot be compared with Chennai in pollution and population. Everytime me and my hubby talk about America and India, we inevitably feel jealous of residents of America for keeping the city clean. I live near a park in NJ and we go for a walk everyday. Its very refreshing. We chat all the way to the park and strut in the park for a while making our evenings very pleasent. I stayed at much closer distance to Natesan park in Chennai. Never felt like going everyday. This city is clean. I feel healthier everyday breathing in a clean air. Ok.. Back to the trip. Central park is man made and out of seven lakes in it only one is natural. Central Park covers 843 acres, which is 6% of Manhattan and is very well maintained. Still i heard the guide saying - 'Children in NewYork is not having enuf parks to play'. I wondered what we are going to do for the children of Chennai.

We crossed the conservatory garden.. Kinda started to feel hungry.. The very thought of my puliodharai and Vazhaikai podimas kindled my hunger. We had plans to go to the Metropolitan museum of art.

I had some preconceived notion about museums. Thought nobody will be interested to have a glimpse at the baubles that are centuries old. And the only reason i acceded to stop by the museum is coz its free for our credit card. But to my surprise, the entrance of the museum was overcrowded. We went to central park to finish of our lunch. Such a calm environment gave a romantic touch to our lunch. We took some snaps there. We decided to spend one full day at the central park on a later date.

Metropolitan museum of art was nowhere near my idea of a museum. It had an exquisite collection of knickknacks from various civilizations. By the time we finished the egyptian civilization, my legs didnt budge to move further. Still we forced ourselves thru the Victorian and American art galleries. We missed the Greek and Roman though. Final visit to the museum gift shop hoping to buy some souvenir. Nothing was affordable. I liked one Ganesha idol, worth may be aroud 350 Rs, sold at $350.. The Price kept a check on my urge to buy Ganesh idols whenever i see them.

Night tour...

We hopped on our bus to continue on our NY tour. Next the night loop. Near times square we hopped off to have a veggie delight at the nearest subway. I liked subway veggie delights with honey mustard.. Hunger free, we started on our next journey. NY is excellent in the night. Timesquare- empire state - Manhattan bridge - brooklyn - Manhattan bridge again - back to time square - this is the night loop. Bunny was testing the our camera performance in the night effect. Got some nice snaps.

Around 11:oo PM, we took a train and reached home. Exhausted physically, but with a sense of achievement mentally - donno why - our first day of NY trip comes to an end.

Will continue about the second day trip in my next post..

I posted some snaps on my foto blog
http://colorfoto.blogspot.com

VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

This is wat i c everyday. The view from my window. I cherish the moments i watch the cars, the school kids, the church ,the sky... Everything I c thru this window looks beautiful.. I wud say this is my America..

First day in US

First day at New Jersey was quite interesting for me.
We reached the Newark international airport by sunday afternoon. When I boarded the flight in Brussels airport, one of the passengers scared me enquiring about the snow storm in NJ. This was my first trip to such a cold country. All the worst snow storms i had seen in the movies came to my mind. The flight was supposed to reach by 11:00. But it whirled round n round and the landing happened two hours later.I had a weird feeling for those 2 hours, as our flight moved in and out of the clouds, with a lot of turbulance. The airport looked beautiful with the snowclad runway and the hazy atmosphere. After 30 minutes at immigration, we got our luggages at the baggage claim.
We had planned earlier to book a car and do lot of shopping after reaching home. We came to our new home by 3:30 PM. Both of us were very hungry but we dint have enuf time to have our lunch, as the flight wasted our two hours of shopping time.
We hurriedly started towards walmart.
Setting up a new home couldn't be more fun. We bought watever we saw in walmart. With 2 shopping carts full, i felt i became the object of attention to many people there. I am listing here all the items that may be useful for setting up a new home.
By evening, I started experiencing a mild drowsiness. This must be the jet lag. My husband still looked fresh and he did the whole shopping. We had peppermint mocha which quenched our thirst and hunger to some extent. On our way back to home, we bought all the groceries and vegetables needed for the next day cooking.
Our grahapravesham happened at 10:30PM. We started our life at our new home in states with the traditional 'milk boiling' ceremony.Had the chappathis we brought for our flight trip. Within minutes we were sound asleep.

Almost everything that happened on this day was completely planned. Credit goes to my husband.
1. The car we hired was wonderful. Ford Edge helped us in all aspects. For such a shopping and transferring all the luggages we bring in the flight, I would suggest this SUV.
2. Whatever we need to buy in walmart - we made a list and classified them based on their priority and the frequency of purchase(either we have to purchase every month or one time investment).
3. List of groceries required for the month.
4. Maps and travel direction printouts to n fro our home to the shops. Google helped us a lot in this regard. We had the print outs of google maps and directions. The car had the GPS in it. And with this much organised traffic, driving becomes a pleasure.
5. Cameras and batteries as i felt clikclik all i c. But I cudnt take much snaps as i felt very hungry. Lesson learnt - Fill ur tummy b4 going out in US. Shopping takes minimum 3 hours.
6. Good quality winter gears - jackets, ear grips, gloves and shoes.

All these we decided in advance. This helped us a lot in our trip.

My Trip to America

This blog is about my trip to new jersey with my husband. We came here a week after our marraige, so NJ looks doubly beautiful to us.
Me and my husband started our life in NJ by setting up a new home for us.
I would luv to write our experiences in setting up our sweet home, our trips to New york and the Indian life we are enjoying in America.