I know three weeks is a vacationer's glimpse of a city, but I am actually surprised by how much I like NYC. Last summer, when I was in Buenos Aires, I lived every day feeling lonely and afraid — emotions I attributed to the sheer size of the city. NYC boasts almost three times as many people living within its city limits (and it's more than five times bigger in terms of surface area), but my summer experience has been vastly different — in a good way.
This is obviously due to several factors: because living in a domestic city is much less challenging than living in a foreign city (where I barely knew the language); because I know lots of people (who know lots of people) in NYC this summer, as opposed to knowing hardly anyone in Buenos Aires; because I love my jobs this summer and hated work last summer; because it's genuinely summer here and was winter in Buenos Aires; because I got mugged my first weekend in Buenos Aires and haven't been in remotely a similar situation in NYC....
On second thought, it isn't surprising at all that I love it here as contrasted to last summer.
I wonder if my enthusiasm for every single day will wear off as the summer progresses? I've noticed that whenever I'm away from home for longer than a couple of weeks, I start getting homesick just after the halfway point of my trip. This was the case on my Outward Bound backpacking trip the summer after I graduated high school, during my summer in New Orleans, during my summer in Argentina and during my semester in Spain. So I'm semi-expecting homesickness to set in around Week 6 of my 10 weeks in NYC, but I'm optimistic that I won't get tired of it at all! I have loved every day of my first three weeks here.
happy happy happy :)
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