The Travels of Flat Stanley, Part 2

Flat Stanley's adventures have come to an end.

As you may recall, Flat Stanley arrived in my mailbox last fall, a manila-enveloped package from my second-grade cousin, Junior. Could I take Flat Stanley to see the sites -- and take photos to prove it?

It's the end of the school year now, and so when I went home to Ohio this past weekend, I packed up Flat Stanley and the last batch of photos to hand off to Junior. Flat Stanley had quite a year -- he saw the major attractions of New York, and a few things besides. A few highlights:

Times Square

Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.

Washington Monument, Washington, DC

Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Colonia, Uruguay

An Afternoon in Chinatown

It's almost always fun to explore New York City with out-of-town visitors, but I've rarely had as good a time as I did with Sarah, my college roommate who came to town a couple of weekends ago.

We hadn't seen each other in at least four or five years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. And as we were catching up, we walked. And walked and walked.

First we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Then we walked up Broadway and explored Chinatown. Then we took the subway to Times Square and walked up and down the corridor until Sarah had to catch her bus back to Philadelphia.

What made our walk so interesting -- aside from the talk -- were Sarah's observations. Graffiti, signs, business names -- nothing escaped her notice or her camera's lens. I'm not as attentive, and I'm sure my photos are necessarily more boring. Nevertheless, this week's blog posts are dedicated to the neighborhood where we spent most of our Sunday afternoon: Chinatown.

Even Flat Stanley made an appearance!

The Travels of Flat Stanley, Part 1

About a month ago I opened our mailbox to find a small manila envelope with my name on it.

Unused to receiving mail that wasn't either a bill or a campaign flier, I was excited. But that turned to mystification when I saw the return address -- it was from my cousin Junior, a second-grader in my very own former school district in Ohio.

Inside the envelope was a letter and a paper doll. The letter explained that his class read "Flat Stanley."

The book is "about a boy whose bulletin board falls on him one night in his bedroom. At first he is sad, but then he finds all sorts of things that he is able to do when he is flat. One thing he can do is fold himself in an envelope and mail himself to visit friends in faraway places."

I was charged to take photos of Stanley at local landmarks and then send them back to Junior to share with his classmates.

I was excited -- I got my very own kind of traveling garden gnome!

I've already sent Junior a few pictures, but I plan to take more before Stanley travels back to Defiance in a few months. Here's the first installment:

At the Brooklyn Bridge

At the Statue of Liberty

On the Staten Island Ferry

In New York Harbor