The Cloisters, The Met, and Chinatown. And the Reunion!!

 This is the view that we woke up to, from our apartment window.  Here is the link because we loved it, and Gregory, our host, was great to work with.  We're big fans of crowd sharing.  Airbnb enables us to meet people and stay in neighborhoods where real people live.  I don't know about you, but the last person I want to see when I'm traveling is another tourist.

 Anyway, we woke up and grabbed a pastry from a cute little Japanese-owned place down the street, then jumped on the A train and rode it ALLLLLL the way uptown to 190th Street, where we walked to the Cloisters.  Well, that's not true.  We actually got off one stop early because it was Yeshiva University, and I wanted to see it.  We didn't see it because it was in the opposite direction as the Cloisters, but we did have a nice walk through some fun neighborhoods.  Scott gave me a hard time about the long walk, but it was so nice and shady and beautiful and quiet, he secretly didn't mind exploring the area.

 The Cloisters is in a park overlooking New Jersey.  It's gorgeous.  I can't believe I've never been here, because it would definitely be on my highlights list.

 The Cloisters houses all the Metropolitan Museum's medeival stuff.  They have the tapestries that I have always wanted to see.  In fact, we have a poster of one of them right outside our bedroom door at home that says, "Tapestries at the Cloisters."  Finally, to see them in real life!

 Scott likes to make pictures exciting. ;)  We sent a bunch of pictures to my mom because she likes this stuff.  Mom, I see a trip to New York in your future!

 Such a lovely venue.

 There was a discussion on Kelly Oram's Facebook page (The AP Art History teacher) about ugly babies in Medeival art.  I sent him this picture of grumpy old baby Jesus.  It is funny how the babies look less cherubic and more ticked off during this time period.  There's an article about it if you can't remember why from your art history days.

 The Cloisters tickets are good for the main Met too, so we walked through Central Park over to the Met to just see the special exhibit of Van Gogh sunflowers and irises.  I get so turned around in Central Park.  It's a good thing Scott is like a human carrier pigeon.  He squints into the distance, sniffs the air and points to where we're supposed to be going.  Usually it's the exact opposite of what I would have thought.  Scott wonders how I get around when he's not there.  I'm not sure, but if you mapped my routes, we might all discover that I'm hopelessly lost whenever Scott isn't there, I just don't realize it.  It's true that I don't really think if Scott is there because he's so much better at it.

We didn't want to get museum-tired at the huge Met, so we kept saying, "Don't look at anything!  You'll get distracted and we'll never make it."  We tried not to look at anything woven, cast, carved, or dug up out of the ground.  Just strictly artwork from the 19th and 20th century.  It's like how they have the milk and eggs at the back of the grocery store.  We had to book it through miles of Etruscan objets d'art and Far Eastern pottery before catching our first glimpse of a French impressionist.

 It's hard, though, because there are beautiful things everywhere!  I had to take a picture of this for my friends who love this color.  OK, concentrate!  Don't stop until you see pointillism!

 Scott like Hopper

 I love Picasso

Before long, I joked that we looked like the people in this painting from seeing too much art.  Still, though...it's inspiring to see these paintings.

 At that point, we didn't have much time before Golda and Ruby's flight got in.  We were getting excited and anxious!  Scott is so nice, he offered to go to the airport alone while I stayed in the city.  He was dying to see the girls, and he thought I might like to explore more, since Ruby and I were flying home 2 days before him and Golda.  I went back to the Lower East Side because I like it, and I wanted to visit the Museum of Chinese in America.  With my sense of direction being as unreliable as my faulty phone GPS, I saw more streets than I probably needed to, but I did make it to the museum.  It's not a place you can go through without feeling intense sadness and revolt over the treatment of Chinese in the past by the United States of America.  It's appalling, really.

 This is a thought-provoking poem that makes me feel almost guilty for being the white person in the poem who goes to Chinatown for diversion, out of curiosity, to see a different culture.  It does make you think about the immigrant experience, and what it would be like to be marginalized, even as your second-generation children assimilate.  No matter your contributions, you are still shut out of the mainstream.  I heard a story on NPR yesterday about the entrance exam to New York City's prestigious high schools like LaGuardia and Bronx Science.  Summer Khan Academy courses are full of Bangladeshis and other Asians who come from cultures where the expectation is that you do whatever it takes to achieve academic success.  Your peers are studying all summer, and so are you.  Then of course, other students start saying, "It's not fair.  The prestigious high schools are full of Asians."  Well, guess who busted their butts all summer doing calculus, and guess who didn't?  If anything, it is the only fair thing that happens in those Asian immigrants' lives, that they are rewarded on the merits of their studies, which they prioritize above all else while their parents toil away 24 hours a day to afford the tutoring.  I don't mean to generalize, but you can check the numbers or talk to a kid with Bangladeshi or Chinese or Indian parents and ask them if I'm right.  I would like to think that the American Dream is still reachable through hard work, but I still think it can't be argued that some of the least privileged have the fewest opportunities, no matter how hard they work, because of prejudices that we as a society just can't get past.

 After my immersion into Chinatown and the history of it, I went back to Brooklyn to wait for the girls and Scott.  I was so relieved and happy that their flight had arrived safely and on time!  I had forgotten to take a key to the apartment because Scott was there and I wasn't thinking. :)  So I had time to venture all around our neighborhood, Bed-Stuy.  It is safe and filled with families of all ethnic backgrounds going about their lives, probably preparing their children to go away to college in a neighboring borough.  Ha ha.  No, it's actually a vibrant place.  I grabbed a pizza and some Coke and we all met up at the apartment.  It was so wonderful to see Golda and Ruby!  It was late and they were tired, but we talked and talked and talked.  Ah.  What an incredible summer they had.

 This is our street.

 Ruby has been assimilated into Spanish culture.  When we asked her what she wanted to eat, she said, "I guess there aren't many tapas bars around here."  Actually, in NYC, we probably could have found some!  At any rate, it was the happiest of days, being reunited with our two girls.  Back home, everyone ws anxious to see them, but we still had a little bit of New York to do.