After an amazing thanksgiving, with amazing food and company we woke up on Friday in Colette’s parents’ house, in Long Island. We got breakfast served again from her wonderful parents (felt like we ate them out of their house). Some people went in to local city to get their nails done while others stayed in the house, packed our bags to get ready to get in to Manhattan, in New York City. At around 12 o’clock we thanked Colette’s parents as much as we could for hosting all of us (!!), we can’t thank them enough. We took the train into Manhattan, got to our hostel where we were supposed to stay for the rest of the trip. The hostel is called YMCA Vanderbilt and is located in midtown Manhattan. Perfectly close to many of our planned study visits. The Swedish mission, Swedish consulate and World bank was literally just over the street. We checked in to our rooms where we stayed two-and-two in small rooms with bunkbeds. There we shared bathroom and we had a common kitchen area, gym and pool free of use. Me and Agnes shared a room and when we got it, it was just like walking into a sauna. Apparently, it was supposed to be like that and they told us to open the windows and use the fan – very sustainable lol. However, in some way we managed to turn the radiator down, thank god! Me, Agnes and Lisen went out for some shopping on fifth avenue, at the same time as the Black Friday chaos. We walked around, went to Bryant park where they had this cosy Christmas market with an ice-skating rink. After a couple of hours, we decided to head back to our hostel and get something to eat. We stopped at grand central station where they had almost like a food market, serving different kinds of food. We went for the Mexican burritos. We had decided with all the twelve of us to meet up at 8 pm in the hostel again to have some drinks and just hang out. Since not so many of us knew each other before the trip it was very nice to get to know each other better. We played some games and then went to a nightclub called Up&Down which was very fun. That created a great end to our Friday, and good start of the weekend.
Written by: Micaela Carhed