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Writer's pictureChloë Dickens

My First Week in New York

Updated: Dec 11, 2022

So I’ve officially been living in New York for one week now. Crazy! I finally have wifi in my flat so I can merrily tip-tap away at my computer. 👩‍💻


Day 1: A very long day of traveling. I counted it out, and it came to something like a 24 hour day with intermittent naps on the plane. At this stage I hadn’t been accepted into my flat yet, so it was off to a B&B for the next few nights, crossing all my fingers that I’d be accepted soon! Once I’d got settled in the B&B, that evening I went for a little walk to Queens College, just to see it and get my bearings. I stood outside the main gate and it felt sort of surreal, but really exciting. 😁 Looking at the college, I felt so grateful to everyone who has helped make this possible for me. When I got in I thought to myself ‘great, now I can call everyone and tell them I arrived safely’. But I was a fool who had already forgotten the time difference….So that would have to wait until tomorrow. I managed to stay awake until 9pm before I conked out. 😴


Day 2: I met Sara Arango for the first time, my new housemate! We met outside Lincoln Centre, and the route I took to meet her happened to take me down Broadway,🎭 not a bad way to start! Sara took me for a walk down 9th Avenue, and while we were chatting she got the phone call that our apartment application had been accepted! We were so relieved and absolutely over the moon, and got a nice cold drink to celebrate.🥳 Oh yeah, had I mentioned it’s roasting here?! 🥵We can’t move in until Saturday, so time to sort myself a bed frame that will arrive on time!


After that I met some of my very talented London friends who do the jazz thing. They were here on holiday and I managed to catch them on their final afternoon. It was really lovely to get to see people I recognized so soon after I moved away from everything I know! They told me about their experiences at the NY jams, and which venues to hit up :) After that I went for a walk to Central Park to eat some lunch, and called home to say I’m alive, I’m not lost and I’m settling well! 🗽


Day 3: Today I headed to Dante Park to watch a free jazz performance that’s happening every Wednesday for the rest of August.🎶 It was joyous and I hope I can catch some more. Then I headed downtown to meet my cousin, also here on her last days of holiday! I met her and her friends at the ferry to Staten Island and we walked the streets of Soho for a while swapping stories. Again, I was so glad to be seeing a familiar face, and travelled back to the b&b with a smile on my face. 😊


Day 4: Exam day! ✍️Today I had my first experience at Queens College. I had a two hour history exam, 📚followed by a three hour theory and musicianship exam. It felt long, but I knew I’d done my best! ✅


Then I tried to book a practice room, which I did successfully! And then I went to look for said practice room and couldn’t find it ANYWHERE. I went all the way round both floors multiple times. Couldn’t find it. Eventually I did, in a little cranny round the side of the concert hall, only to find it locked. Huh? Do I need a key too? I realized all the rooms were locked, so I gave up and headed back to the B&B. Another day of ‘mental practice’ for me, and the orchestra audition looms ever closer….


Day 5: Orientation day! I got to meet the other graduate music students this morning which was, as we say over here, AWESOME. Everyone seems so nice and I think I’m going to have a lot of fun. I learned that yes, I need my own practice room key 🗝which I can pick up next Thursday. Next Thursday?!?! But I need to practice!!! Duh duh duhhhhh. Something I’ll have to figure out later….


Then I met my advisor, Professor Rosen, who registered me for my classes. My results from yesterday are in! 🤓And I only have to take one catch-up class, so I’m taking that as a win! My classes this semester are all performance-based except for one, so I’m feeling good! 🎻I’ve got:


Baroque

Orchestra

1:1

Chamber

Theory Review


Day 6: Move-in Day! 🏡Sara and I met up at the new flat, had a look around, read the contracts and signed, yippee! 🤩It’s a really lovely third floor apartment in a nice area, only 25 minute walk from ACSM. It seems quite recently refurbished, the cabinets and kitchen appliances look brand new so our cleaning job was pretty easy! I took the smaller room because I like to feel cosy.


Once we finished cleaning Sara’s boyfriend took us to Flushing chinatown for lunch, perhaps the biggest in North America he says! It was awesome, we tried a handful of dishes to share and they were so delicious. 😋Then I headed back to the flat and built my bed frame. It took me a while, but the sense of satisfaction was massive after I put on the mattress and made it up. 💪And so begins the search for furniture!


Day 7: Today I practiced and it felt really really good, quite relaxing for the end of a crazy week.🎻 I headed out to find bits for the house, we’re not near any big home stores so it was a trek, but worth it. Not much else to report from today!


Day 8: I met Madeline, my new Upper West Side friend! 🏙I got to see her apartment and she had made breakfast which was scrummy. Her and her husband Rudy are real upper west-siders, they’ve lived here for over forty years! We swapped stories before Madeline took me out on a tour of Manhattan, she knows literally everything you could possibly want to know to live here. It was amazing! She took me to a Jewish deli I can’t remember the name of, but everything looked and smelled delicious. We walked into the Lincoln Centre Museum and she told me about all the different parts of Lincoln Centre. I need to get myself a library card! 📖 Then we walked down Broadway to Carnegie Hall and I got all the inside info all along the way. The bill at Carnegie Hall right now is INSANE. 😱Sadly I have classes during some of my idols’ performances 😫 (Namely Maxim Vengerov and Janine Jansen….). But that’s ok…I’ll catch them on the radio….🥲


Anyways we parted at Bryant Park and I headed home to await the arrival of Sara’s mattress (doesn’t feel much like home yet but what else do I call it? if I say it enough it’ll go in through osmosis). After that I went out to collect a very nice sofa we bought on facebook marketplace. 🛋 I was quite nervous about this, as neither of us drive, I was going to have to order an UberXL and hope that they would take me with a dismantled sofa. I was SO not keen, but what choice did I have? It was disgruntled uber driver, or no sofa. So anyways the people who sold me the sofa were incredibly nice, they helped me carry it down their stairs and into the uber. And yes, the uber driver was incredibly nice! Tip to anyone who needs to do this, book the uber and then call them to check they’re ok with it! My driver happened to fit an entire motorcycle in the back the day before, 🏍 so he was pretty confident we could fit the sofa and we did to my great relief! Thank you Mr Uber driver.🙏 Then I carried the whole thing up three flights of stairs on my own, and the sense of satisfaction was just that bit more than when I built my bed frame, so good vibes all round. 💪💪💪


Day 9: I checked out the 7 train to manhattan per Madeline’s recommendation (her mother used to take it to work from Queens every day). The view on the journey was amazing. There is so much culture in Queens alone, and the manhattan skyline isn’t bad either!🌇 I overheard somebody in a thick NY accent say ‘I am dying for a hawt dawg’ today 🌭and that’s amazing because you literally can’t make it up.


The best bit of today was the fact that I couldn’t find a mug. And I know what you’re thinking, that doesn’t make any sense. As a brit, it has been of high importance to me since arriving that I find myself a nice mug that I can enjoy sipping my steaming morning brown from every morning, no matter the temperature outside. 🫖 After a few days of searching, I couldn’t find any that I liked that were in an immigrant student’s budget, so by the end of the day I was desperate. I’m eight days in without a proper cup of tea remember (I did have one on the plane✈️ but it’s not the same).


So it’s the end of the day, I’m in Kohl’s, and all the mugs either cost a pretty penny 😅or you have to buy a whole dinnerware set, which I do not need. So I head to the clearance section and lo and behold, 😮 a stylish looking white box with an inoffensive plain blue mug inside. $3. So I buy it right? Now is not the time to be picky, now is the time to find a hot beverage receptacle. Any will do. This plain blue one mug seemed to fit those requirements. Seemed. 😑I got home, opened the box and see that somewhere along the line, perhaps on its journey from retail to clearance section, this mug had been turned around in its box. Printed in large white letters on the rear side of this mug are the words ‘TROPHY HUSBAND’. Fantastic. This is the most classically Chloë Dickens thing I have done so far in NY and that’s why I must keep this mug for as long as I can. At some stage, in a backwards way, this industrial-sized tackily sloganned mug is going to gain sentimental value and even though its weight will take up half of my baggage allowance, 🧳I will be throwing away clothes in order to take it with me on my travels, because that is the sort of sentimental sop I am. 🤗


Tune in next week for the tales of my first week at college, I start tomorrow with my orchestra audition!🎼
























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