![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daytrip with Sara, medical students-- argh
Apr. 3rd, 2002 12:42 pmYesterday i spent the day with Sara. She's four, but the smartest four-year old I know. In fact, she is a fluent billingual (English and Japanese), attends a Japanese school, the CLC pre-K school I used to work at, and a special school for gifted children. She knows how to read signs at the train station so she knows if she's going uptown or downtown. She even knows that Bronx is north, Brooklyn is on the downtown train though you really head east (she told me she saw this on a map), she counted off her fingers how many stops were between 125th St and 66th ("Seven!" she exclaimed proudly), that whales were really mammals, and even added that old people are normally really smart (she drew her conclusion from the ideas that she knew more than when she was three, that her grandpa knows a lot, and that i know a lot more than she does).
She pointed out that Express buses travel faster because they dont' make as many stops, but trains still go faster than buses because they dont have to stop at traffic lights. She told me that she's allergic to cheese, and rattled off a list of cheese-containing products to avoid. She reminded me to put my wallet away before we started walking, or else people might try and take it away. She tied my shoelace for me when it came undone (insisted). We visited the zoo and the petting zoo and we fed the goats, pointed at turtles in the sun, and chased ducks.
She tells her dad that I go to Barnard College. That soon I'll be graduating in June to go to New Jersey. She remembers that I am a biology major. She knows I live on 116th street. How a 4-year old can tell her dad with such clarity is amazing. We had such a great time together and she's got a vibrant loud talkative personality, that strangers kept stopping with a big smile and wondering if she was my daughter, my younger sister, or if I was a nanny. Most assumed the first since she's half-Asian, and she hugged me oh-so-tight and giggled. We had matching red shoes, and we held hands the entire time.
I can't believe I get paid to have fun with her. I want a daughter just like her.
~~~~~~~~~~
Oh-- and before I forget-- I was walking to work behind a group of 5 or 6 medical students from Mt Sinai Medical Center, and they were confessing embarassedly with giggles that they had just spend the morning examining patients and had forgotten to change gloves between examinations. And giggled some more. (One of them added just as I was leaving in a different direction: "I *SOOoOOO* have to remember to change gloves between patients. At least I wash my hands before lunch!") How gross is that.
~~~~~~
I hate the INS. While my I-20 is renewed till 2009, apparently I still need to go down to te office to get a new stamp and stuff in my passport. I go an hour out of my way downtown to the office, only to find about 100 people in line waiting to *enter* the building. I mean, we are not even talking getting ot the office, or the counters to get the forms. There was a big sign over the entrance in red reading: "Line for Forms and Information" and it was a hundred-people long. Most of them Hispanic or Black (Jamaican maybe), reading newspapers while in line, chatting with their friends, some mothers had their babies in carriages (crying, of course). I wished immigrants went to work (yes, i know they can't). I couldn't wait in the line because I had to be at work in 2 hours, and that line certainly ddint' look like it was getting cleared anytime soon. The worse was the police were swarming everywhere, and they really didnt' give a hoot about clearing the line (to enter the building, yo uneed to have your purse checked, go through the metal detector, etc.) but instead the police sat in their vans with their police dogs, drinking coffee and laughing. Even had the music playing loud. While the line of a hudnred people stood, fanning themselves with a newsppaer, in the 60 degree heat. Life sucks.
She pointed out that Express buses travel faster because they dont' make as many stops, but trains still go faster than buses because they dont have to stop at traffic lights. She told me that she's allergic to cheese, and rattled off a list of cheese-containing products to avoid. She reminded me to put my wallet away before we started walking, or else people might try and take it away. She tied my shoelace for me when it came undone (insisted). We visited the zoo and the petting zoo and we fed the goats, pointed at turtles in the sun, and chased ducks.
She tells her dad that I go to Barnard College. That soon I'll be graduating in June to go to New Jersey. She remembers that I am a biology major. She knows I live on 116th street. How a 4-year old can tell her dad with such clarity is amazing. We had such a great time together and she's got a vibrant loud talkative personality, that strangers kept stopping with a big smile and wondering if she was my daughter, my younger sister, or if I was a nanny. Most assumed the first since she's half-Asian, and she hugged me oh-so-tight and giggled. We had matching red shoes, and we held hands the entire time.
I can't believe I get paid to have fun with her. I want a daughter just like her.
~~~~~~~~~~
Oh-- and before I forget-- I was walking to work behind a group of 5 or 6 medical students from Mt Sinai Medical Center, and they were confessing embarassedly with giggles that they had just spend the morning examining patients and had forgotten to change gloves between examinations. And giggled some more. (One of them added just as I was leaving in a different direction: "I *SOOoOOO* have to remember to change gloves between patients. At least I wash my hands before lunch!") How gross is that.
~~~~~~
I hate the INS. While my I-20 is renewed till 2009, apparently I still need to go down to te office to get a new stamp and stuff in my passport. I go an hour out of my way downtown to the office, only to find about 100 people in line waiting to *enter* the building. I mean, we are not even talking getting ot the office, or the counters to get the forms. There was a big sign over the entrance in red reading: "Line for Forms and Information" and it was a hundred-people long. Most of them Hispanic or Black (Jamaican maybe), reading newspapers while in line, chatting with their friends, some mothers had their babies in carriages (crying, of course). I wished immigrants went to work (yes, i know they can't). I couldn't wait in the line because I had to be at work in 2 hours, and that line certainly ddint' look like it was getting cleared anytime soon. The worse was the police were swarming everywhere, and they really didnt' give a hoot about clearing the line (to enter the building, yo uneed to have your purse checked, go through the metal detector, etc.) but instead the police sat in their vans with their police dogs, drinking coffee and laughing. Even had the music playing loud. While the line of a hudnred people stood, fanning themselves with a newsppaer, in the 60 degree heat. Life sucks.
