Grey Lady

On Thursday, Levon and I went to the Statue. You know, THE statue.It worked out a little differently than I’d thought it would. To go up inside the statue (which I very much wanted to do) you need a time pass. The time passes are free, and you can get them with your ticket. Here’s the thing though, they only have so many of them, and they’re given out on a first come, first served basis. So generally, if you want a time pass, you have to reserve your tickets in advance, because they don’t often have extras if you’re buying your tickets onsite.
Weds night, I call Levon & suggest we go to the statue on Friday, which means we can buy the tickets online and reserve our time passes early. He says yeah fine, let’s do that. However, Thursday he calls me up and asks if we can go today, because something has come up for him. Being the good friend that I am, and since I was planning to do homework and could switch the days easily, I said yes. However … what that meant was, no time pass. Now, I’m sure I’ll be back there again, but I did miss having the chance to go up.The day was windy & cold, and we had to wait for almost 1.5 hours from the time we go the tickets till we got on the ferry to go out to Liberty Island. And we had to pass through a security checkpoint that was like the ones at the airport, but much less efficient. And the guards didn’t have a good handle on what they were doing. (I asked the guard ahead of time, do you want me to take off my belt and/or my shoes. He waves me forward. I walk through the detector, which beeps, and get yelled at for not having taken off my belt.) But, guards & weather aside, we got out there ok.
And it was impressive, I must admit. The view of the city from the island is really cool too. It’s one thing to see her in pictures, but quite another to see her in person. Levon complained that she wasn’t as big as he’d imagined or been hoping, but I’d say she was about the size I would have imagined. (Although I have always thought her face doesn’t look very feminine, and I thought that again when seeing her there in person) The most deeply moving experience I’ve ever had at a national monument was at the Lincoln Memorial in DC when I was there some years ago, and I don’t think anything could top that for me; that one was almost like a religious experience. This wasn’t overwhelming, but being there and thinking about what she has meant & what she means today, was very cool. So it was a good spring break week. Got to catch up on work, chill out a bit, and have some good adventures. Other than the food poisoning bit at the end, couldn’t really ask for much more. (Although Levon and I have decided that next year we’re going to go somewhere and do something crazy during the spring break of our senior year. That’s something else I’ll be looking forward to …)