Monika Klinar: The best month of the year

November is the month that I am looking forward to most in the whole year. One reason is that my birthday is in the beginning of the month, which continues the birthday season in my family, another is because "happy December" is just a few weeks away. 

The month started by early morning cheering for more than 40,000 participants of the NYC Marathon, the world's largest marathon. We saw the majority of participants, just when they were running down from the Queensboro Bridge to enter Manhattan. The marathon takes runners through New York's five boroughs. It starts at Staten Island, continues through Brooklyn and Queens, crosses East River to enter Manhattan at the 59th Street and First Avenue and up to the Bronx, where it turns down back to the finish in Central Park. I tell you, even if you are not a runner, watching a marathon makes you start up running or at least buy all the necessary equipment. This year's NYC Marathon was held the day after Halloween, so you could spot some participants running dressed up in costume. To this post I've also attached some crazy photos from the Village Halloween Parade.

Spending a birthday away from family and friends, being abroad, is normally not much fun. But this is not the case, if you work in the Corporate Research Department at Bonnier Corporation.  On the b-day I took in a bunch of cupcakes for my co-workers, not expecting that they are going to surprise me with a delicious homemade chocolate cake, with a bunch of roses, with very useful small presents and with a birthday card containing individual b-day wishes from everyone. But as this was not enough, I also was invited to two b-day lunches. Thank you again! But my friends from home did surprise me; thanks to internet shopping VS's present box arrived and so did a bunch of yummy cheesecakes from Eileen's, although the delivery guy had troubles getting hold of me.

I'm not sure yet which sport has the most supporters here, but for the last weeks it has been all about baseball. After six years of not being part of the World Series, NY Yankees won its 27th World Series title after beating last year's champions Philadelphia Phillies. So when Yankees were playing, Empire State Building was in Yankees' colors (blue and white), newspapers' cover stories were about the team's stars and their enthusiastic fans, schedules of the TV programs were changed and of course when they won, a big ticker-tape parade (a parade allowing the jettison of large amounts of shredded paper products from office buildings onto the parade route) was held in their honor, where Yankees supporters could see their stars. I did not manage to see any of them, but I did see a bunch of fans wearing at least a Yankees' cap, if not holding flags and signs like "In New York we smoke Phillies".

I've ended the birthday week by spending a weekend on Long Island, where I was hosted by my kind colleague's parents, who own a French restaurant. They were very busy that weekend as it was a restaurant week, when restaurants who participate at the restaurant week offer pre-fixed menus for a very affordable price. It is basically a week of promotion to new customers. So you can imagine that I was very well fed that weekend, not to forget to mention that I saw how fancy the Hamptons look like and experienced the benefits of outlet shopping.

On Monday my sister and mum arrived for a week. It's great having them here as describing NYC and experiencing it could be so different. You can show photos, tell what you have experienced, but still it is not the same as experiencing this in real life. If I had to choose, the two highlights of their visits would definitely be seeing the Dreamgirls show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem and listening to the jazz singer Hilary Kole at the Birdland Jazz club.