Sunday, May 17, 2009

Shopping In NYC

I went shopping yesterday with a girlfriend in New York City. We took the train and then had to find the right subway. What a disaster! We were on the wrong one, and instead of 20 min we were on Subways for about 2 hours!

All was not lost... at least i could people watch. Some people were interesting. There was a dad with his two young kids. They were all over the place and he was trying his best to keep them under control. It was so cute when the little girls hair started to fall out of her pony tail. The dad had to put it back up and he was so good at it mashallah. It was just sweet to see. New York is full of strange people, so I was surprised that so many people looked at me! Not the usual..oh...she has a veil on. They actually watched me. Odd. One guy in a business suit just could not stop... whatever.

Once we finally got to where we were going we didn't have much time to shop at all. We were tired and frustrated from the eternal subway ride, so it didn't turn out to be much fun. I got some black seed oil and an abaya... No time for much else. One other thing that made me crazy was that no store had change. If you gave them a $10 or $20 they had to run next door and get change... this happened in 3 places!

The subway trip pack to Penn station was fine. We made sure to ask people this time. We asked the people that work at the subway station and they were kind of mean about it. Then we asked a nice police man and he helped us more.

Once on the train I tried to do some henna for my friend... that was funny. It came out ok, but you could tell we were on a train. It was a bit shaky!
At one stop a girl got on and sat with the guy behind us. Most of the time I try to ignore people's conversations but she had such a 'valley girl' voice (remember that from the 80's?) that I could not help it. She was on the phone with a friend and kept saying things like 'be sure to save a beer for me' and 'you've been drinking way too much...hehehe'. I have the feeling she was trying to impress the guy next to her. Yuck. Once they started talking it was all flirting and giggling from her. I was dying to see what she looked like! At that point I had only heard her. When we finally got up I was not disappointed. She was very tan and had about 5 different highlight colors in her hair. It reminded me of how much I don't miss the way I was. Granted I never flirted with men on trains or talked excessively about drinking, but I was so concerned with outward things that I had little time for anything else. Alhamdulilah I'm not like that anymore.

So I think we won't be going back for a while unless my husband drives us. That was rough!

5 comments:

PerplxinTexan♥ said...

Do you not drive on your own? I know it probably seemed like a disaster...actually it was but, honestly those times make for the BEST stories. You and her are forever bonded because of that accidental mix up.

Jamilah said...

I do drive, but not into a City like that... :)

We did have fun anyway, you are right, but it was just a tiring and looooong day

blahblah said...

sounds exhausting to me.....:/

jazain said...

thanks for the smile..i actually found myself laughing at your story. even though you were on an eternal subway ride, you still enjoyed yourself. i love to ppl watch!!

again, thanks for the smile...you know i dont do that much these days.

ishqia said...

its such a pleasure to real ur experiences in a western country and a revert muslimah, i m living in islamic country alhamdulillah, thats why ur experiences are pretty amusing to me, tc