I have arrived!

Hello my dear family and friends,

Welcome to my brand new blog all about my life in New York! I've never written a blog before so if this is your first time reading a blog it's new for both of us. I really enjoyed writing emails to all of you in my first years at St. Olaf and I'd like to continue to write about my experiences here so that I can share them with you.

First of order of business: Where do I live? Many of you have asked for my mailing address so here it is...(This is a small P.O box in the lobby of my building)

Maren Lankford
511 East 20th Street 7F
New York, NY 10010

If you have anything to send that is larger than a card or letter, perhaps a fresh batch of cookies, send it to this address where I can receive packages:

Maren Lankford
c/o Oval Concierge
276 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009

My email address at marenlankford@gmail.com is still what I will be using while I am here. I don't know how long I will be using my St. Olaf address (lankford@stolaf.edu) so take that one out of your address books! I also have a new NYU email address!!!! It is mdl377@nyu.edu. You can reach me there too!

That takes care of business I suppose.

So far, life here is great. I couldn't ask for more. My apartment is wonderful and BIG and my roommates are very very nice. Alex will be a graduate student in September too. He will be studying photography. He is an artsy Russian guy who moved to the U.S. 15 years ago with his family and has lived in NYC ever since. On my first night here he volunteered to help me assemble my dresser which I appreciated SO much. It took us over 2 hours and Neal, my other roommate came to help too! Neal is a Jewish guy from Tennessee who went to NYU for his undergrad. He is currently some kind of political campaign organizer for the Democratic Party in NY. I don't quite understand everything about his job yet, but his interests are very similar to Carmen's (my St. Olaf friend and roommate) so I like him already!

I spent all of yesterday assembling furniture in my room. It's hard work, but now I have almost everything put together. Dad is busy going to museums during the day (surprise, surprise) and so we had dinner together at a little Italian place by his hotel last night and will have dinner together again tonight.

Anyway, that's all the news I have for now. I don't exactly know what I'm going to do today because I am waiting for more boxes to arrive so I can unpack more of my things. Maybe I'll organize the kitchen in the mean time.

Please tell other family and friends about my blog so that they can keep up with me too. I really appreciate all the support and thoughtful messages I've already received from some of you. I miss you all a great deal and hope that this blog can help keep us connected!

Much love from the Big Apple,
~Maren