the entry my mother is not supposed to read

before i left, did i tell you that i was going to be living in Manhattan?
i lied.

well, i didn't 'lie,' exactly. i just glossed over the truth.
i live in manhattan, sure. but it's not the manhattan you think of--times square and 5th ave and whatever--i live a couple blocks north of central park. That's right. I live in Harlem.

It wasn't a lie, really, because i didn't even know this before i moved here. i was just happy to be living in close proximity to everything, and didn't having never really even come here before, i couldn't tell you what exactly was the difference or distinction between living 'downtown' and 'uptown.' so, the fact that i live in a neighborhood that's notorious for it's ghetto-ness was just as much a surprise to me as it may be to you. or to my mother.

not to worry, though. i feel perfectly fine in harlem. given that my roommate has been out and out broke for the last four days, causing us to walk most everywhere we've gone together since she can't afford the subway, i've done a lot of walking in the area, not to mention my own forays to try and find things, like the gym (which was an eventual success) and to try and find this city arts volunteer outreach thing (which was a failure, though i decided that it's the fact that i attempted to volunteer that counts, and i still get the good karma for trying), which led to me walking around in slowly widening circles for 45 minutes or so. and it is pretty much harmless. or, harmless relative to other places i've live.

what's that? how can harlem be considered harmless relative to provo or stc? that's not what i'm talking about, my dear, you are forgetting the middle east. call me chicken or call me a helpless girl or whatever, but i didn't go walking around the cairo or amman or anywhere by myself--ever. nikki and i were attached at the hip all summer, and in jerusalem, the 3-in-a-group rule was punishable by death. and that's good, because the three, maybe four times i was all by myself, i could tell that it was a bad idea. i just...didn't feel right, at all. the way people watch you, the way the boys watch you. but you know what, i haven't gotten that vibe at all in harlem. i'm sure there are areas like that here, but i haven't hit them yet.

which leads us to the interesting topic of Amman vs. Harlem.
ways that Amman and Harlem are the same:
-there are about 5 million little crap supermarket-type stores that all sell the exact same thing, and mysteriously all are in business, though no one can really figure out how
-the check out girl still does not speak the same language that i do
-if you are trying to get somewhere in a hurry, you can guarantee that the subway/bus/micro/taxi/public transit will be late, broken, or impossible to find
ways that Amman and Harlem are different:
-my minority status. okay, so you may have think that this is actually a similarity, but you are wrong. in both cities, as a white girl i'm the minority, but the way that people treat you is completely different. in amman, you are oogled not just for being a girl but for being a white girl. you are by nature a curiosity. i'll just assume that that's because of the ethnicity difference coupled with foreigner status, and not just blame it on some form of racist thinking (the jury is still out on this). here in harlem, i am once again the minority, but instead of people poking each other and saying "oh, look at the white girl," people see you and it's like, "a white girl, so what?" even though i am definitely, definitely an obvious minority here. i like it. because it really is "so what?"

so, harlem sounds great, right? mom shouldn't even worry about me living here!

in fact, on top of harlem being totally fine, this place is chock full of mormons. young, single, poor mormons. my block especially--there's at about 8 or 9 apartments of mormons/with mormon residents in my building, plus a couple of apartments across the street. there was even an article about my building in byu magazine last fall (i totally didn't know this before i moved here, it's just luck or whatever. link: http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2281 ).

except for, the other day when i was walking home from church with a group of the kids that live in my building, one of the guys re-enacted the at-gun-point robbing that happened to him last year about a block from where we live. and if you read the whole byu magazine article, it details other crimes muggings/robbings that have happened in the past to my new neighbors. and of course, there's just the fact that whatever i say to ease her peace-of-mind, the fact of the matter is, i'm living in harlem. whenever someone asks what my parents think about me living here, though, i realize that they just think i'm living "in manhattan," whatever that means. my mom probably conjures images of the same block that my railroad consultant grandfather lived on thirty-whatever years ago. no doubt he and o'ma and their country-club lifestyle were somewhere a little bit classier than harlem.

anyway, no worries! i know when an SUV pulls up to the side of the road and the people are like "hey sweetie come here" that is definitely what i should not do (this actually happened the other day)! so no worries, mom, i got this ghetto thing down.