NY trip

It really depends on my perspective how to describe my trip. I think it might be better to give the highlights.

The city we stayed is about 30 miles north of NYC. My husband's new company rent a temporary apartment for us, which is very convenient. It is more like a hotel room, so it is pretty nice. The location is great too. Everything is in walking distance. (For example, H&M store is just one block away!)
the view from our temporary apartment. The state of New York certainly has a lot of trees. Everywhere you go, it feels like driving in a forest, well, except in NYC.

Although it is near the train station, we could barely hear anything. Going to NYC is made super easy because the train comes almost every 10 or 15 minutes and it takes only 30 mins to get to the Grand Central station.

We have found a Chinese grocery store nearby, so at least my husband won't be starved to death when I am not there. They even sell one of his favorite food---freshly hand-made dumplings.

Woodbury outlet mall was awesome. You can find basically every single brand you see in the magazine, including Gucci, Burberry, Marc Jocobs, etc. Three hours there was in the blink of an eye. :)

Most of the time the weather was warm and sunny. One evening we drove to another city because there is a park there by the sea. They actually have a midsize playland there. We did not play anything, but it was very nice and sometimes humorous to walk by the shore, see the lights, listen to the music and people screaming on top of their lung while flying into the sky.
the beach was closed by the time we got there

but it was still nice to take a walk around

I found this game rather amusing

Two of my husband's friends happened to be in NYC this weekend for the US Open, so we managed to meet them there. We haven't seen each other for a year. It was really great to hang out together, eat, shop and joke around.
the place I wish I had been in when Dave Matthews was playing there

It is noteworthy that a close friend of our friends came to join us. We were told that his wife was in US Olympic table-tennis team this year. This was probably my closest contact with Olympics, although his wife is still in China with her family. He himself was originally studying fluid mechanics in ME department. Ha!

We did not have time to go to the central park, but I believe I will have abundant chance to do that during my next visit there.

Other than that, I am thankful that both flights were very smooth. I was able to finish reading the book "walking from east to west" by Ravi Zacharias (recommend it!) during my trip.