A New Yorker day in the life of

So today I left therapy feeling okay. Okay is fine, I'll happily take it.
It's noon. I'm downtown, close to City Hall, and everyone is wearing their work ids around their necks. I can smell the strong spices coming from the food trucks as I walk by the tens of construction workers on their lunch break.
I get into the subway, it's still noon. I'm starting to feel hungry, but I'm pleased to see that it's still noon and I'm up and going, on my way to school. I take the 6 train uptown, as I always do - I could walk to the platform with my eyes closed. I feel the almost unbearable heat as I walk down the stairs and say goodbye to the beautiful sunny day that is today, and hello to the Chinese homeless lady sitting there, as she always does, right next to the busy passersby.
I miss the train by very little. I know I'm not in a big hurry, so I don't hold the doors and let the train go, without me. The next one comes in right after, and I seat down. This train is always full of tourists, and I practice my morning game of trying to guess which ones are Brazilian. I see a couple and two friends, and, once again, I'm right. They get off two stops later, and a mom with a toddler comes in. I give them my seat.
Another mother and a daughter are lost, reading their subway map the whole way. The mother is not holding on the handrails and she's almost falling every time the train accelerates or breaks. A few stops later a guy starts talking to them in Italian, I understand "switch at Union Square". He's very relaxed, they talk and laugh. There's a girl sitting next to him, she is reading a book that has Zac Efron on the front cover. I start imagining what is it about, and why is she reading it. Is it because the movie is coming out soon and she wants to read the book first?
The mother with the toddler is talking to the child in a loud voice, and everyone hears it. She yells at him to "stop eating your cup", and starts telling him that she doesn't eat her cup, and no one in the train is eating their cups. The girl reading the book laughs out loud, and it gets a bit uncomfortable. The Italian tourists are watching the baby boy stomp his feet in the seat, and they smile gracefully at him. The train makes a turn and a lady falls on an Asian teenager. I almost fall, and I'm seated. Everybody laughs and looks at each other, now we are all talking to each other about the reckless conductor. A beautiful tanned girl walks in, and the relaxed Italian guy looks at her. After a while, he says something, and she smiles, barely looking at him. I get up - my stop is next. I look tired and grumpy, even though I'm not grumpy at all. That's how you are supposed to look if you are in New York City taking the train to work.
I get to my school and see all these different people walk through the glass doors - a muslim black guy opens the door for me. I always like watching the students, and how different the groups of undergrads are from where I went to undergraduate school. I hold the keys to the office I use, which my advisor kindly calls "the closet", and I like the feeling of having the keys to one space, even if it's just a tiny space, that belongs to New York. I feel like I belong to New York as well. I push the wrong button in the elevator, and wonder where my mind has been. I remember the day I washed my hair with shampoo three times during the shower, because I kept thinking it was the conditioner, and start worrying about my sanity a little bit.
I get to my "closet", turn on the computer, and start reading some of my thesis drafts. I miss writing other stuff in English, and I think it might be a good exercise to write about the simple train ride here. Instead of writing about how I'm noticing the little things, and feeling okay, and laughing with strangers in the subway, I just started narrating the first few hours of a regular day in New York City. So far, I think it will be just for the sake of getting it out, and I do not intend to post it. Who would like to read about a 20-minute subway ride, one just like all the others I take everyday?
I then remember that this is pretty normal to me, but it might not be to everybody else. I know that a day in New York for those who live in New York is just like that: the smell of coffee, a subway ride, construction, mothers, toddlers, heat (or freezing cold), food trucks, shy smiles in the train and some grumpy faces.