**SUN 6/16 DRIVE 286 miles to New York
With our Toll estimator app, we think we are in for about $134 in road/bridge tolls today. Holy Moly! The George Washington bridge alone was $84! The drive time ended up being 7 hours, compared to what should have been 4 according to Google--ain't traffic fun? But we made it and we are here!
We ate apples for our map picture to commemorate making it to "The Big Apple".
We found a campground on Long Island that we could leave the RV in the site unattended while we leave for a hotel for two nights. We don't have luggage, we had to fit everything we needed for two and a half days in the city into what we can carry ourselves. Tonight we packed our things so we each had a backpack to carry.
Then we had to hustle to get as much school work done as possible because we don't want to be doing work in NYC, and everything is due on Wednesday. (Combination of stress and excitement here!)
**MON 6/17 TRAIN TRAVEL to hotel in NYC, 9/11 Memorial & Museum
We enjoyed our train and subway adventure to get from Long Island to Manhattan. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and found our way to lower Manhattan.
We walked by the Empire State building and found the Girl Scout store at GS HQ. They saw the Thin Mint cookie costume used in a commercial campaign, learned a bit of GS history, and got some patches for their uniform.
We saw The Charging Bull and the NYSE for Chris. His coworkers took appreciation to the picture he sent of Marissa. Good luck maybe?
NYSE happens to be next to Federal Hall, where in 1789 our country inaugurated its first president into office, and where government affairs were held until a new capitol was built.
Then we went to Ground Zero. Addisyn did her last history assignment on 9/11. The memorial & museum were a very moving tribute to the people killed and to the healing process. Walking through we learned about what happened, how people near and far were affected, the lasting impact, and why history is so important to "Never Forget".
Addisyn Rand, History--week 43/44 , Topic: 9/11 Tragedy
WHAT IS 9/11?
On September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists boarded at least four flights in commercial airplanes then hijacked the cockpit and purposefully crashed into the twin towers and the Pentagon. The twin towers also are known as the world trade center was burned down to shreds. 2,977 people died, lots of people were injured, and many buildings were ruined. They call them the twin towers because they were built exactly the same and next to each other. This was a huge event in American history because it was the second time terrorists attacked the WTC (the first time was in 1993), but this time it was much worse, bigger, and messier. Americans grounded all planes over the U.S. and we went on really high security. Americans had to cope with tragedy and got very patriotic afterward, showing their love of freedom, and aren’t going to let it be taken away from us. New York decided to build a memorial to “never forget” and built a new tower called Freedom Tower, a.k.a. One World Trade Center. It is the tallest building on this side of the globe. It stands at 1776 feet tall exactly, which is symbolic because that is the year our country declared freedom.
MY IMPRESSIONS OF THE MEMORIAL MUSEUM AT GROUND ZEROThis memorial is to help us remember that these people die so that we don’t forget like we did when the bombings happened in 1993.
I found someone with the same last name as me, which was neat, but sad that they died.
When I walked into the memorial and saw all the faces, I feel sad for all the people who died and I even saw a little girl that might’ve been on the plane she looked about four years old.
I felt sad that all these people died. I was sad that terrorists wanted to hurt us because we have freedom. I wonder if they were jealous of us. But if they were jealous of us why didn’t they move to the U.S.? If they don’t like what we believe, they should agree to disagree, and stay in their own country. You can try to convince people of your ideas, but not kill over it. I think it was good to visit this memorial to learn about it. I’m glad I got to go see it.
“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.”
—Sandy Dahl, wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in 2002
This is meaningful because she is saying why to spend all of our time hating when we can spend time loving and helping each other. Her husband died by these people, but she doesn’t want to focus on hating them, she wants to focus on peace.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King Jr.
This is meaningful because it is about the same issue from the 1960s all over again.
“No day shall erase you from the memory of time” -Virgil
This quote inside the memorial remembering your loved ones even after they die, and they are still a part of who you are. A memorial is to help us remember for all time.
**TUE 6/18 (Rainy Day) Statue of Liberty / Big B Bus TourTo make sure we saw more of the city despite the rain, we took the Big B hop on/hop off bus tour. We took advantage of the free rain ponchos, wearing them most of the day. The tour guides taught us a few things too.
-The Broadway district has about 30 theaters, although only 2 are actually on Broadway Ave. (We considered going to a show, but time and cost were not in our favor. One more thing to look forward to one day.)
-Many of the street and community names like Queens and Harlem have roots from Netherlands and Amsterdam. New York was originally named New Amsterdam.
-Rockefeller was the worlds first Billionaire (we later walked through Rockefeller plaza from the subway station looking for a restroom)
We saw many trucks set up for filming various unknown movies, and Marissa wants to see the movie they are filming.
Chris was noticing all the NYPD cameras mounted on signal lights for enforcement, interesting because his brother Mike was telling him about the camera he is trying to set up in Lemon Grove for the Sheriff Dept.
Our bus finally made it to the south tip of Manhattan where we were to pick up our ferry passes to Liberty and Ellis Islands. Glad Chris purchased our tickets online earlier because they were sold out by the time we got there. We had to take our wet rain ponchos off and on for security checkpoints--that, and our squishy wet shoes didn't make us want to linger too long. Marissa had to hold her poncho up or tie it up or she'd trip on it.
We all wanted to take the Statue of Liberty tour up the steps to the Crown, but those tours are scheduled 3 months out. Frankly, with the rain, the view would be better to save for another time. So the kids now have a good excuse to visit when they are older.
We did go in the pedestal. We learned about how Lady Liberty was built, that she came to the US in a whopping 350 pieces, and was born in 1886 as a gift from France as a tribute to the countries' friendship and to commemorate the American Revolution. It was supposed to be ready for the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1876, but money. (A few more years and it could have been the centennial of the constitution (ratified in 1789).) There were many different renderings of what the statue and base would look like. The fabrication included banging out her shape on copper sheets just 3/32" thick. The final product stands 305' tall, taller than anything else in NYC at the time. We saw part of Lady Liberty's tie rods (huge bolts) that are 4 1/2 stories tall. She takes a lot of maintenance to maintain her image over 100 years.
July
IV
MDCCLXXVI
Knowing is says July 4, 1776, We did a little figuring to figure out what each letter is....
M = 1000 milli (good metric system review for the kids)
C = 100 centi
X = 10
V = 5
I = 1
Not knowing what D and L are, we figured them out to be 500 and 50 since the year must be 1776.
From Liberty Island, we ferried to Ellis Island. Ellis Island opened in 1892 and processed over 12 million immigrants to our country. We have (great) grandparents who immigrated through here.
We probably would have gotten more out of the visit if we weren't soaked and tired, but it was still quite impressionable. Interesting how half the island was dedicated to preventing disease spread with a hospital on site. Addisyn remembered learning how people would have their eyes checked with a scary looking hook tool, and we saw that here. To make a meaningful connection for the kids, we compared packing for this 3 month trip, only taking what you can fit in your bag, to packing for a permanent move and only taking what you can fit in your bag. It gave them a moment of reflection on what possessions of theirs are truly important (but not long enough, IMO).
The rain took a pause!
**WED 6/19 Central Park & Museum of Moving Image
Hmmm, for some reason, no one wanted to wake up at 4am to go see the ABC morning news show filmed in Times Square. We considered a tour of NBC studios or the UN, but those weren't panning out either.
We had Piper calculate the area of Central Park in square miles (that was in one of her last units for math this year), so at a half-mile wide and 2.5 miles long, she correctly figured 1 1/4 square miles of park land. We would have enjoyed a concert in the park or ice skating, but we settled for ice cream, one of the 21 playgrounds, and hanging out with the turtles (and people watching).
Off Manhattan, it's a different culture. More average working class atmosphere, regular street and sidewalk traffic.
We ventured to Queens to see the Museum of Moving Image. There was supposed to be an actual size Yoda, but it was off display, but we were not disappointed by what we did find. The biggest area was the Jim Henson Muppet's exhibit. We learned how they imagined, created, scripted, and operated/performed. It was neat seeing the creation phases so the kids can see that there's a lot of pre-work before a final product. I was particularly impressed with how the script was written, changed, edited, and re-worked before the final performance. The sets are all about 5' high and the performers must get tired arms from holding them up the whole time!
We now know what NY movie to watch--"Muppets take Manhattan" because it's NY, Muppets, and has Empire State bldg in it!
The other memorable parts of the museum were learning about sound effects--the kids picked their own sound choice for a scene from the Simpsons and listened to the scene to see how it feels different with different sound effects, and making a stop motion animation movie.
**THUR 6/20 DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE
Today is the official last day of school and we got our last few assignments done yesterday on the train and turned in last night, so today we are happy to relax and enjoy no more school! (Although Chris is refusing to DJ "School's Out for Summer" since his school is only amping up right now.)
Bye Bye New York. We drove separate to try to keep the tolls low... not sure what we are being charged... signs say they will mail us a bill. (!) It took 3 hours to get off Long Island. We took the long route way because we were warned to stay on the expressways and off the parkways due to truck restrictions.
As we leave, we are still wondering why New York license plates say "Empire State", how the Empire State building got its name, and essentially what kind of Empire NY was.
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