The Present And The Past

The last two days in NYC was pretty much the same as the first 3 days, just as brilliant. We started day 4 at a tour of the United Nations Building. We had a great, interactive, lively guide (posted to UN from South Korea) who brought us all over the place. First, she showed us the many artworks that were donated by the member-states and placed in the building itself. First she gave us a brief tour about the functions, role and structure of the UN (nothing new as our history lessons covered it all). Then she showed us some struggles the United Nations had in the past as well as shared some personal experiences, like the fact that she had met Malala Yousafzai, the brave women who stood up to the Taliban for Women’s rights (inspirational figure). I learnt some new facts like the UN nations had 6 main languages and i had trouble guessing them! I missed out Arabic and Russian *facepalm*. After this, we were allowed to see the Security Council. This building in NYC, housed the Security Council, arguably the strong arm of the UN. It was quite amazing to see the room in which so many world leaders had sat and come up with decisions/resolutions that changed the world (at that time). It was quite hard to take it all in, the importance of the room i stood in. After the tour, we headed over to the General Assembly chamber, which was like the Security Council, just magnificent. It was a shame we could not go down all the way to the bottom of the chamber but it was still great to be able to see the chamber at all 🙂

After the tour, we decided to check out the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was a definite requirement when doing NYC. This Museum is featured regularly in books, stories and TV shows due to it’s immense collections. I was really really excited to see it. We had only about 2.5 hours to see the Museum and i had no idea how big it really was until i was inside it. There were four floors that had exhibits from all corners of the globe spanning most of recorded civilisation. There were points where i had o run from exhibit to exhibit to hit the stuff i wanted to see. There was no way i would finish the Museum in a day, let alone 2.5 hours so i picked and chose my sights.  I ended up exploring exhibits such as Ancient Egypt,Greece,Rome,America, Africa exhibits. I prioritised the older exhibits as well, history was more my thing. I was completely exhausted by the end but throughly enjoyed my time there.