1. Asking your friends where they all got their (superior) apartments, and all they ever say is that they "lucked into it."
2. Needing to pay a broker in order to find and sign a lease.
3. The shame/guilt in not knowing what to say when someone asks you for directions.
4. The first (and last) time you try to buy "wine" at a deli.
5. The amount of money needed up front for broker fee, first and last months' rent, and security deposit.
6. Getting packages delivered, unless you are home at the EXACT moment of delivery.
7. Figuring out the unspoken subway code of behavioral ethics. (Is there one? It's hard to tell.)
8. Trying to understand where you are after getting off the subway. Or before, or during.
9. Getting an actual human from Time Warner Cable on the phone, much less to come to your apartment.
10. Curbing your Midwestern/Southern enthusiasm for seeing people you know.
11. Everyone's faces when you first pronounce Houston Street wrong (the way it looks).
12. The climb up to your sixth floor walk-up apartment.
13. Doing your laundry/getting your laundry done??
14. Buying furniture, getting said furniture into your actual home.
15. Trying to keep up with everyone's trendy combined-neighborhood abbreviations.
16. Assembling your groceries bit by bit depending on how far you're willing to go that day and how much you can carry.
17. Finding cleaning supplies. Why are there so few??
18. The dramatically heightened number of curbs/corners/subway steps/street cellars to trip and fall over.
19. All the sweating.
20. Having enough cash for restaurants/bars/coffee shops that are cash only.
21. The bugs.
22. Going from being one of the trendier people wherever you came from to...not knowing what you'd even call what people here are wearing.
23. Explaining the juice thing to your friends back home.
