March 12, 2023

Ok, get ready for a huge photo dump! Here is our trip to NYC/DC!

On Sunday morning, we were required to get a pass to the UN Headquarters, which ended up taking two hours! It turned out to be okay though, because we were behind an interesting lady from British Columbia who was friendly and chatty. But we were running to try to make it to church! I connected with a friend of Phalla’s that I met in Cambodia a few years ago. She was a missionary at the time and Nichole and I just loved her. Well, I saw that she was doing an intern in NYC and so I asked if we could come to church with her, which ended up being super fun. She was super busy talking to people, so I didn’t get a picture, but Steven and Phalla, it was Oliva Obeng. Her church was held in the upper rooms of the temple, so we got to go and find that. The perfect place to be on the Sabbath Day in NYC.

We discovered late Saturday night that our refrigerator didn’t work. We had gone grocery shopping for food for Sunday, so we ended up putting our yogurt outside our third story window. It was only about 30 degrees outside, so it was perfect. I was worried about the pigeons, but they didn’t bother them. The rest of Sunday we spent walking around Central Park. It was so beautiful and fun. I imagine it’s even more beautiful when the trees are full in the summer. A beautiful respite in a crazy city.

One of the reasons that we went to NYC this week is because it is also the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. I’ve been participating with this for a few years, but this year it was finally in-person again, so I was super excited and grateful to be there in the flesh!

Our first presentation that we went to ended up being my favorite. It was by a group in Singapore and they talked a lot about girls and women mental health. This one presenter was a tv talk show host and former parliamentarian and she talked a lot about making good content for women to view. I was so inspired by her and was glad we could talk with her after and connect on linked-in. I have an idea that I want to work on and hope she might answer some questions about it for me. Very fun!

It looks like I’m doing something important here, but I’m just a grateful audience member. The lady who took my picture was from Nigeria and only spoke French. We did a lot of miming and eventually got good pictures for both of us. The theme for UNCSW this year was about technology and so the woman on the TV screen who was representing META was a busy gal. She hosted a number of events and was a panelist in many others. I had a moment where she was by me looking stressed and I asked how she was doing. She told me how little sleep she’d been getting and some of the stresses she was feeling and then took a deep breath and went on to her next thing. I thought it was interesting that even a very influential woman like that needs to be “mothered” for just a few minutes sometimes.

I spent the mornings at the UN and then our afternoons we went and toured NYC. The first place we went to was The Metropolitan Museum of Art or The MET museum. It was amazing! We spent hours there and still didn’t see everything. But we saw some of our favorites.

When we came out of The Met, we found this man selling poems for 2$. So we bought a couple of poems from him. They were fantastic and he was really fun to talk to. He is an English professor, writer who is waiting for his girlfriend to start Medical school in the Fall in Provo, UT. Until then, they are living in NYC and he writes poems for people. Kind of fun.

A quick stop to M&M world. It was fun and even though I don’t like M&Ms they are some really fun characters.

Here is us at the Empire State Building. Hailey didn’t like the feeling of being up there, but she was a good sport. I forgot how extremely windy it is up on the 80th floor!

On Tuesday night we went and ate dinner with a bunch of friends from American Mothers and some new friends from Nigeria at the Butcher and Banker bank vault restaurant. Unfortunately Hailey and I had to hurry off to make it to the Broadway show that we were going to that night which was Hadestown. Hailey absolutely loved it and I also enjoyed it when I realized it was going to be nice and family friendly so I could relax. Lots of fun!

I caught one presentation the next morning about women in conflict and trying to help refugees who are often very educated and a wonderful untapped resource. It was so interesting. Then I was off to the International Woman’s Day celebration. That was so fun! It included some very important people in the UN women’s world and some really interesting and influential women as a panel. This included a 17 year old girl who was voted “kid of the year” by TIME magazine because of her inventions and STEM contributions. She was fun to listen to. Super smart, but still a teenager. Then they had some broadway singers come and perform. Overall, it was a super fun celebration and moment.

Hailey and I made it to one last presentation about gender-based violence because of technology that was done by some presenters from the Nordic and Baltic countries. I also loved this one! There were a bunch of men on this panel, and though I didn’t agree with everything they said, many of the things they talked about made so much sense. The thing that I kept wanting to do as I listened to many of these presentations was to give everyone the church’s Family Proclamation. I really think that if we could strengthen families, and teach people to live by the principles of the gospel, we would no longer need these presentations at all!

After that last presentation, we went outside and wanted to take a picture by the UNGA letters. It stands for the United Nations General Assembly building where much of the classes we went to were. Well, there was this really fun group from India there, and when they realized we would help them take a picture, Hailey and I ended up with arms full of phones. It was so funny, and they were so funny, and I loved that moment. After we took a ton of pictures of them, one of the younger ones offered to take our picture as well, which was awesome.

We did some more sightseeing and then went to The Lion King on broadway that night. It was amazing! So glad I finally got to see it.

Very early the next morning, we took a train to Washington DC. We stayed in the beautiful Dupont Circle area. It has the tallest escalator out of the metro, but once you get out, you are in the area where all the embassies for other countries are and the homes are really fun. We stayed in the red looking one where Hailey is on the steps.

We spent the rest of that day at the National Mall and then we also went to the International Spy Museum which was really fun.

The next morning we took a tour of the Capitol building which was neat. They had a graduation happening, so we could only really go to a couple of places, but the rotunda is really great so I was glad we went.

It is almost cherry blossom season at DC, so some of the trees were already blooming. I didn’t realize that these blossoms were so big!

This was Smithsonian day for us, so we went to a few of those. I thought it was fun to see the Benitoite gem in the Museum of Natural History. It is only found in San Benito county of California (where we live), so it felt like a piece of home there.

After some Smithsonian’s we went to the Fort Theater museum. I absolutely love Abraham Lincoln, so that was really fun for me. “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

We stopped at a bakery on the way home.

Our last morning there, we went to Arlington National Cemetery. I always love cemeteries that are beautiful and quiet and feel close to heaven, and this is definitely one of those. It was neat to see the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We had a good, but cold visit there. It was 35 degrees with a 15 mph wind making it feel like 24. We enjoyed much of the cemetery from the tour bus, but it was still so amazing.

After some sushi for lunch we got our things and headed off to the airport. Roger picked us up in San Francisco and we were home by 10:30 Saturday night. We had a wonderful trip but were glad to be back with the family.