It's Up to you New York, New York...

One of the many sights we squeezed in during our too short trip

The chronicle of our trip to New York City and Good Morning America is just taking me too much time, so I am going to attempt to finish it in the next couple of posts so I can move on to other things.

...CONTINUED FROM HERE.

After lunch, we went back to Millineum Hotel where our room was finally ready. And it was worth the wait!

Our room was on the 50th floor- a two room suite with two flat screen TVs and high speed internet access (a must since I had some work to do), and a beautiful view of the east river and the New York Public Library/Bryant Park.


A Room With a View


Quite a view!

I was expecting a pre-interview call from someone at Good Morning America and also hoped to get a nap in. It was still only a little after 1:30 in the afternoon, so I made a few phone calls and sent some emails for work, plus I called my cousin Chinwe to let her know that we were finally at the hotel and invited her to stop by when she got off work. She agreed and would drop by around 5:00. The kids quickly found some cartoons on the TV and we waited for the call from GMA so Laura could go take a nap (she still hadn't been to sleep from the night before.)


Getting some work done? Sort of.

Thankfully, the pre-interviewer from GMA called soon after we got to our room, so I let Laura talk to her first so she could get a snooze in. I continued to get some work done until it was my turn to talk to her. When I finally talked to her, she pretty much asked me some questions I expected. "How do you pronounce Chinenye Ogike" (chi-nay'-nyeh o-gee'-kay) "How did it feel to meet your father?" "Do you plan on moving to Nigeria?" plus several others. She also linformed me we needed to be at the studio at 7:00 A.M- thankfully it only a half block down and across the street.

After I hung up the phone I realized that I too was tired and we had a couple hours before my cousin was to stop by so I took some time just to chill out for a while and watch TV. As tired as Laura was, she couldn't sleep, so she and Aly decided to wander around Times Square for a while to take some pictures and do a little souvenir shopping. GT didn't want to go so he and I attempted a nap too, to no avail, and waited for them to get back.

The girls came back and just before 5:00 and a few minutes later, we heard a knock on the door- it was my beautiful cousin Chinwe. I was extremely happy to finally see her in person. When I first discoverd my Nigerian family, Chinwe was the second member of the family I actually talked to after my Aunty Christy. We had also corresponded by email sent emails to each other for almost three years. It was wonderful to be able to have her standing right in front of me.


Finally we get to meet Chinwe in person!

We had a very nice visit where I learned about her job at the International Girl Scouts, and seeing pictures of her husband and their traditional wedding. He lives in Boston right now but they will be getting a place of their own in the city (hopefully soon.) We also decided that since Jason was taking my family out to dinner that night, we would come to Aunty Christy's house for dinner the next night. There we would meet more of the family.

After she left, we got ourselves ready to go out to dinner- the car was picking us up at 7:30 and would be taking us to the restaurant. Jason asked me early in the week if I like BBQ joints, which I definitely do. I was however a little wary about what BBQ in New York City would be like. You see, I'm somewhat of a connisseur of barbecue having been to some of the best rib joints in the country- Gates' and Sons in Kansas City, Bandana's just outside of Saint Louis, Corky's in Memphis, Big Daddy's in Des Moines, or even the Famous Dave's in the Linden Hills area of Minneapolis. Everyone of those places have some Killer Q'.

We were going to Blue Smoke on east 17th Street in Manhattan, meeting Jason and Jordan (our friendly fact checker0 for dinner at 8:00 and my mother, Kathleen, and two sisters, Mei-Lee and Francis, would meet us there when their plane got in.

TO BE CONTINUED...