The New York Art Institute, Simmons College

I've lived here all my life, but now I'm back as a tourist and guide. The City is everything I remember--frenetic, smelly, noisy and overwhelming. But it also pulses with creativity, and we are in the middle of it for an entire month.

We have been here for three days, but our days are so packed, they feel like weeks. We have chatted with accomplished arts professionals, navigated the subways, visited museums, galleries, and the High Line and enjoyed an irreverent, but relevant, performance of Avenue Q. Today we are off to Queens, where some of us will attend a Carnegie Hall sponsored community concert at the Flushing Public Library, hang out at a block party/art/music event sponsored by the Queens Museum and Louis Armstrong House, and if we have any energy left, we will check out Greater New York at P.S. 1.

-Michele