Today

Today is such a beautiful day. It is so sunny and bright, and a little chilly, but overall not bad. When the weather is good, Brian and I like to walk home from Church. It's nice because it saves us a subway fare each week, plus we get to stretch our legs, enjoy the weather and talk about what we learned that day. Our conversations along the way are sometimes interrupted as the subways pass overhead. It is impossible to hear each other talking over the noise although we are walking side by side. My part of the conversation usually involves telling Brian all about primary and the funny things the kids said and did. Brian then tells me about the lessons in the grown up classes.

Today in Primary I borrowed some child sized maracas from our primary president and let the Sunbeams take turns shaking them and dancing to the songs. It worked really well at catching their attention and getting them to sing. They could only have a turn if they were singing, and of course they all wanted a turn so they sang! I'm starting to hear actual words coming from their mouths now. It's great, and makes me feel like I'm actually making some progress with them and doing a good job. We also sang "Happy Happy Birthday" to one of the kids today, and I got a stern lecture from all of the sunbeams that that is NOT how the Happy Birthday Song goes. It was really funny...they're so cute! I sometimes feel bad for Brian that he is in regular classes while I'm having so much fun with the kids.

On our walk home we follow the subway tracks, which are above ground in Queens. Along some stretches, the buildings are positioned so close to the tracks on either side. The tops of the buildings are most likely apartments. I would hate to have the subway trains passing only 15 feet away from my window. Our apartment is fairly close to the subway and we can hear the distant rumble every time a train goes by. I would hate to hear the noise of the trains if we were that close!

The structure with the sun shining through it is the platform for the subway tracks.

 This wall has been repainted at least 7 times since we have lived here. Every time the wall is repainted to hide the graffiti, it reappears about a day later. Each time they paint it gray, but the shades never match. A couple coats ago they used silver paint. It's just ridiculous that they keep painting it over and over, when obviously the graffiti is not going to stop.

This next picture is random. Yesterday, Brian and I rode the subway out to the mall in College Point in Flushing, Queens. We were headed to there because we had gotten a couple of Target gift cards for Christmas and wanted to use them. We got off of the Subway and found ourselves in a Chinatown of sorts. It was very busy because it was Saturday...and okay, it's New York so it's always busy. On our walk to the mall we passed by a shop with containers of weird vegetables and shellfish outside the store lining the sidewalk. One of these containers contained skin-like tubular floppy-things (for lack of a better name) soaking in what appeared to be water. I'm not sure what they were, but they were creepy. So of course I took a picture. If anyone knows what they are, please comment and tell us.

P.S. I feel like I only share pictures of what we see when we are being tourists and out seeing the big attractions of the city. I want to start sharing random everyday things so that I can document what life is like here more fully. So be watching for random pictures on the blog/Facebook.