Saturday, May 31
After spending the night at my friend Anna's place (who is now engaged and on youtube!), she and Mitch drop me off at Living Hope for the wedding on Saturday morning. Congrats to Dave and Sheila, a classy couple who threw one heck of a party. We doubted that people would be out on the dance floor at 3pm, but these Harvard kids sure know how to party (the open bar probably didn't hurt). Paul led worship at the wedding, and he was glad to be reunited with his old band. Above are John, John, and Rana causing trouble at our table.
Well, the wedding was such a good party that at 6pm (it was an 11am wedding) the music was still pumping! But we had tickets to the Mets/Dodgers game, so what to do? We piled in John's car and booked it to Shea Stadium...and got there in time to see the Mets beat the Dodgers 3-2. We literally saw one batter go up and the game was over. But hey, parking was free. Should I be rooting for LA now? I'm not sure if I can undo 7 years of brainwashing to love the Mets. But the Dodgers have Brooklyn roots, so I guess we'll consider it.
No visit to Flushing is complete without some tasty Asian food. So we decided to take a break from the sticky, humid day and make a pit stop at You-Chun on Northern Blvd. for some naeng-myun, a Korean cold buckwheat noodle soup in beef broth which is always a perfect treat for a hot summer day. Add some mustard and vinegar to taste and bulgogi on the side, and we were happy as clams. We got dropped off at our temporary home at Paul's sister Suzi's apartment in Brooklyn after a long day and topped our evening off at Stonehome Wine Bar, a neighborhood joint in Fort Greene where Paul and I tasted two flights of wine and indulged in three delicious cheeses and a plate of charcuterie.
Sunday, June 1
We started the morning off at church with our friend Oscar, who attends a new church plant on the Upper West Side called Grace. It was a super cool service, with a straightforward and culturally relevant message, an amazing funk-influenced worship band, and friendly people. They meet in a black box theater on top of a storefront space on 72nd street. After church, we had lunch and then Paul and I headed over to my recording engineer's studio to do a final listen through of my album. And, it's done! I'm very pleased with how everything turned out and walked away with my official master CD. Hopefully in a few weeks it will be duplicated and ready to sell.
We had some time before dinner to enjoy a stroll through Central Park after picking up some goodies from Savoy Bakery on the Upper East Side. They are an amazing Chinese-owned bakery with all the classic Chinese bakery goods- pork buns, egg custards and lots of fluffy cakes along with lots of croissants and a pretty tasty pain au chocolat. Wow.
Dinner couldn't be more enjoyable. Food is an expression of love in both our families, and when we lived in NY we were routinely spoiled by the scrumptious home cooking of Paul's mom, grandma, and aunt. That evening they drove all the way over to Suzi's place from Jersey for a feast of Korean BBQ (his grandmother has some secret recipe for making the kalbi amazingly tender and perfectly sweet) and some other homemade treats. We also celebrated Suzi's birthday a few days early. She's turning 1 in this picture.
Monday, June 2
We spent the night at my mother-in-law's place and had the chance to see one of Paul's aunts in the hospital, where she is being treated for leukemia. It was a somber visit and I don't know if she was fully aware of our presence. While we are not particularly close with her, it was heartbreaking to see her in that condition and to see the pain that her Paul's uncle is going through. It was a very brief visit and after some more time with Paul's mom, we took the bus back into the city.
We visited one of our college hot spots, Taqueria y Fonda, for our favorite thing on their menu- the chicken quesadilla. This is not your average quesadilla. Flavorful grilled chicken is trapped in a handmade flour tortilla and topped with romaine lettuce, freshly made sour cream and quesa fresca. We still haven't found anything quite like it in SD. I often daydream about their tortilla chips- greasy, crispy and always fresh out of the fryer.
Then a stopover at my friend Julie's apt on the UWS to see her and her baby Anna. Anna is now crawling and she is absolutely adorable. Just one look in those big blue-gray eyes and she gives you a huge smile that would undoubtedly melt even the coldest of hearts. I could spend hours oogling over her. I like the way she's eyeing me in the picture above. Seeing Julie as a mommy is pretty amazing. She's my closest friend from Juilliard and we went through school, graduating, getting married all at the same time- except now she's leapfrogged me into another lifestage! Anna has her sweet disposition and is a pretty happy, smiley little girl.
After an overpriced pitcher of sangria with Josh and Miriam at The Yard at the Soho Grand (the very hotel where we spent our wedding night!), we headed over to meet Dan, Naomi, and Maureen for dinner at Aurora, one of my favorite Italian restaurants in the city. They are a Brooklyn joint that now has a Soho location, and it surely did not disappoint. My papardelle with wild boar ragu had me pining for Tuscany and left enough savory goodness in my mouth to last me a few more months in California. For dessert, a panna cotta with roasted blueberries, a chocolate ganache with fior di latte gelato, and a flourless chocolate cake with hazelnut gelato. Ahhhh....
As if this weren't enough activity, we had scheduled after-dinner drinks with Paul's two best buddies from high school, Woojin and Seung-joo at the Brandy Library, which has got to be one of the coolest places in the city. Completely unassuming from the outside, walking in is like a different world- there are bottles of aged cognac, scotch, whiskey, various other spirits on the shelves that are arranged in the fashion of well, a library. The furniture is dark and polished and has the feel of an old Ivy League study room. There was even a live pianist playing Joplin. The bottles seemed to be alphabetized according to some sort of Dewey decimal system for liquor. I'm not huge on the hard stuff, but the boys seemed to have a good time and we all shared a bunch of different tasting flights while catching up and celebrating Woojin's recent engagement. We got home exhausted at about 2am and decided to sleep in the next morning.
Tuesday, June 3
After getting up at 10:30am, there was only one thought on our minds...DIM SUM! We hop on the subway to Chinatown and land at Golden Unicorn, a restaurant where we had spent many a Saturday morning at before. The best thing about getting dim sum on a weekday is that there is nobody there! Wow, what a discovery. We had all the carts to ourselves and I didn't hold back from ordering most of my favorites, which was probably enough for 4 people. Stuffed, we make our way back to Brooklyn and realize that there is only one thing left on the food list that lies unaccomplished. A slice of New York pizza! Pizza being Paul's favorite food, we don't know how we let this one slide. The line at Not Ray's Pizza on Fulton St. was a little on the long side, and by the time we finished a gooey fresh mozzarella slice we're a little behind schedule for our trip to the airport. Uh-oh. Here's where the fun begins.
Well, we managed to find ourselves arriving at the airport for a 3:25pm flight at about 3:01pm. I am panicking all the way. I usually like to get to the airport about 1 hour and 15 minutes before my flight, and we narrowly miss an earlier train to the airport and the Airtrain takes forever as well. Paul is an expert at nearly missing and definitely missing more than a few flights in his time. He has clearly done this before, and as I'm worrying over how in the world we are going to get home and who I have to call to reschedule things, he sweet talks his way to the front of the first class/business class check-in line after the self check-in computer tells us that it is too late to check in for our flight. Somehow he convinces the agent to not only check us in (even though we're in economy), but to call the gate and tell them that we are on our way to what has got to be the furthest gate from that check-in counter in all of JFK. She tells us that we might not make it since the gate is really far, and we start sprinting towards the security line. We squeeze our way to the front, apologizing to everyone and explaining we are "really, really late" while taking out a laptop, toiletries, shoes and throwing everything back in/on, and continue the sprint up and down escalators, running past the moving walkways and large groups of tourists, losing my shoe a few times, all the while with our luggage in tow. I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack by the time we arrive at Gate 41, and an agent is looking around for the two crazy, sweaty people who are making this flight wait for us. I wave frantically at her as about 4 different people move out of the way as if they are going to be run over by a pick-up truck. We somehow stow our huge garment bags on board, and the flight attendants are courteous and helpful as if nothing has happened. Wiping our faces and fanning ourselves, we land exhausted in our seats and burst into uncontrollable laughter. To top it off, Paul drops his cell phone under the seat and we cause another raucous getting two different rows of people to stand up and look for it. What troublemakers we are! I always roll my eyes at the people who get on the plane at the last minute while everyone else is seated. And I couldn't believe that I was now one of them!
The pilot announces that "the weather in America's finest city is a comfortable 65 degrees," and 5 1/2 hours later, we arrive at the San Diego Airport in classic Chun style. Seth and Courtney pick us up and take us for a tasty meal at In n' Out. I woke up this morning very, very sore...from sprinting through JFK like a madwoman.
And all for a slice of pizza.
1 comment:
you guys had more new york in 4 days than i had in the past 2 yearsssssss. aggghhhh i have no lifeeeeeeee.
so are you guys going to move back here or what??? :D
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