So much city, so little time

By Christi Chesnut
Special to The Star
03-18-2006, 5:05 p.m.

Christi Chesnut, 17, a senior member of the Oxford High School marching band, is writing a daily journal for The Star's Web site about the band's trip to New York for the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Christi, who plays the saxophone, will enroll in Auburn in the fall, where she will study veterinary medicine. This is her ninth journal entry, as told this afternoon to editors at The Star. She filed her report shortly after the band visited Chinatown. It takes forever to get anywhere, so we were running about two hours late. It just takes forever. We had only 30 minutes on Ellis Island, which is not nearly enough time. There was so much stuff. For the Statue of Liberty, because of the security and that it takes so much time, it was pretty much get off and take a picture and then go again. The ferry was running late, but those are interesting, because there are so many people everywhere. We came to Ground Zero, and you could get off the buses if you wanted to or just stay on to see it. That sparked everyone talking about where they were when it happened and what they remembered about the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Then we were off to Chinatown, where we were supposed to have about four hours. We were running so late, we only had an hour in Chinatown. Everybody went on a power shop — and I mean a power shop. People were just grabbing purses and sunglasses and scarves and jewelry. Everybody is pulling out their stuff right now. It was, I guess, knock-off city, and everyone was loving that. Tonight we’re going to the awards banquet for the parade. We don’t know where it is. It’s just at a hangar somewhere. It’s supposed to be really nice. The coolest thing so far, of everything we’ve seen and done, would still have to be the parade. That was just awesome and unbelievable.