So last night was a little adventurous. After a day of rigorous conversation in class, flatmate Aliyah and I decided we would head to the upper east side for dinner at La Goulue. We grabbed a cab and headed uptown, and noticed that a police car was speeding by us. Not concerned, we cabbied on over to Park Avenue to go under Grand Central and head up to the restaurant. Right before we entered the tunnel, Aliyah noticed a huge cloud of smoke in the East. Not immediately alarmed, we went through the tunnel and came out on the other side to what I could only call the closest thing to mass alarm I have ever seen. People were standing in the road, talking on their cell phones, staring at the wall of smoke and steam. Traffic was completely stopped, and the only thing going through our heads was–how do we get further away from this? We got out of the cab and walked 20 blocks to the restaurant, watching everyone around us. It was crazy, scary, and fortunately, we found out very quickly that it was 85 year old infrastructure under the city that caused the explosion, not terrorists. A lady beside us at dinner said she was in Grand Central when the explosion happened, and immediately, everyone started running for the doors. The weirdst part, she said, was watching the armed soldiers running in. At least they responded quickly, was my thought.
This morning, in class, not everyone knew of the explosion. We don’t have TVs at the res, so we got on the internet and looked at the pictures. A bit crazy. Now back to class for the afternoon.
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