Just came back from an extended (birthday) weekend in NYC. I haven't visited that place since I moved back to Toronto, in fact, the last time I was there was four years ago.
I didn't realized how badly I needed to get away from town & visit some of my friends until the plane was descending over NY in preparation for landing. My face was literally plastered against the window, watching our descent, and I was positively giddy. Something I hadn't felt for a while.
The actual trip was a bit of a whirlwind. I was trying to pack my high school, college, and law school friends, on top of shopping, all in the space of under 72 hours. Plus I had a good friend from DC come up, just to see me while I was in her neck of the woods. Some of these friends I hadn't seen for years, so we could have spent a whole week together and it wouldn't have been enough time, never mind only have two days. It felt so incredibly good to be able to see some of them again, and it was kinda cool seeing people from different parts of my life in the same room, getting along, and having fun. Maybe next time I visit, they'll all already be friends with each other and won't mind me having huge group activities again.
I am pleased to report that the shopping was very successful. Thanks to much advance online research, I managed to buy everything on my list, except for a handbag, all in the span of a few hours. Also managed to hit SoHo with my DC friend & my gay guy friend but didn't manage to find anything....at least not anything I could afford. Though I was very impressed that I managed to fit all my new purchases into my carryon.
I guess part of the reason I hadn't gone back for a while (on top of the cost of all my shopping!) was that part of me was a little scared. Although I love it in Toronto, part of me will always wish that I had stayed in the U.S. and moved to NY. Had I not graduated in the year the dot com bubble burst, I would have moved to NY as I had a job there. And after this trip, I've come to realize that although I will always have a soft spot for NYC, I belong in Toronto. Maybe if I had made the move five years ago it would have been fun, but my body just can't party as hard as it used to be able to.
I think it was on my way back that I kinda came to that realization that even though the partying is good in NY, and that I will always miss my friends that live there, there are other things keeping me in Toronto. On my way back, I ended up talking to this guy who was sitting next to me, and I'm not normally up to talking with strangers, but we ended up chatting for the entire flight. He had gone to NY to hang out with his sister, and was heading back to his job in Northern Alberta. But what was cool was how he lived in so many places, and travelled to a bunch of places that I want to go to, like Egypt. In the U.S., I had just gotten used to people who had never even stepped foot outside of their own country, or who had never eaten anything besides burgers or pasta. It was just cool to talk to someone who lives in Alberta, yet is so open-minded. I'd forgotten how it's almost the norm here, while it's an anomaly down there.
So, I'll be making more frequent visits to the U.S. from now on. This trip made me realize how much I miss my college friends. It's cool to see how they've all moved on to different careers, each with their own respectively successes, yet we're still essentially the same people we were years ago. Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same eh?
