9/11/01

Since the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up very soon, and Scott and I visited the WTC site in June, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. On September 11th, 2001, I was in my dorm room at Iowa State. Scott was actually the one who called me and told me what was going on. He woke me up and the convo went something like this...
Scott: Hey, you need to get up and turn on your TV.
Me: What? Why?
Scott: You just need to. Do it now.
Me: Why? What's going on?

I remember asking over and over again and he couldn't really explain it to me until I finally got off my top bunk and turned on the TV. I saw what was going on and remembered asking him who did this? He told me terrorists, and I remember thinking "what? who are terrorists and why would they do such a thing?"
I was stuck to my TV the rest of the day, and I remember watching them collapse.
Then in June of this year, I got to go to NYC with Scott on his business trip. I knew I wanted to see the site, but had read ahead and learned that there wasn't much to see because of construction. We still went to the site and found a small make-shift museum a block away. It had a large time line and small models of what the finished buildings will look like. Being in that small space with the other tourists and New Yorkers really really made it sink in how much it affected the city. I mean, I know how big of a deal it was. But to be there at ground zero and imagine all of the dust and devastation was amazing. During my stay, I had about 4 different bus tour guides. Only one talked about 9/11 and it was after we were 6 blocks away. He said he didn't like to talk about it, but someone asked him to anyways. He said he was on south side when it happened and he was close enough to see people jumping from the buildings. He then began to cough and told us he coughs involuntarily every time he thinks of 9/11 because of all of the smoke and dust that covered the city...apparently everything looked like it had a layer of dry wall over it, it was so white.
Not trying to get political here, but I really understand why so many people had problems with the mosque/prayer room going up a block and a half away from ground zero. A block and a half away is nothing compared to how "far away" it supposedly is from the site. And out of respect, I would think they would find somewhere else to put it. In my opinion I would consider the bottom half of the island as Ground Zero. It's where the dust covered and where most of the people lost their lives.
**end rant** :)
Sorry to be so serious folks, but I just wanted to make sure to write down where I was on 9/11/01, I may not be old and 30 yet, but my memory is not what it used to be :)
I'll end with some pictures from our trip...



This was a large amount of tiles painted by children and teenagers. It was on the Soho area, but will be moved to the memorial when it is finished.

This is as close as we could get to ground zero. The blue wall is surrounding the whole block while they build the memorial and Freedom Tower.


This was inside a shopping center looking out towards the site where the towers stood. The large building on the left is the Freedom Tower. All of those trees in the middle surround the two pools that will be placed where the towers were.

And to put it in perspective, here's a picture I found of 9/11. The shopping center where that last picture was taken is directly between the two identical buildings in the middle, just to the right of the fireman.