By DEB NICKLAY, Of The Globe Gazette

NEW YORK CITY - It has been a day of discovery in New York, our first real chance to explore Manhattan, both uptown and down.

The sun doesn't rise in Manhattan; it peeks around corners of the tall buildings.

I discovered this over my $18 breakfast (eggs, corned beef and coffee) in the Central Park Hotel dining room.

Like understanding that you don't eat breakfast in Seventh Avenue hotel dining rooms, the day finally breaks and you realize the sun is out.

It has been an odd and wonderful day - not unlike New York itself, the only city I have ever visited that is exactly like you thought it would be: crowded, colorful, crazy at times.

We have seen personalities and survived.

Evan Sersland, Brian Lalor, Jeff Faust and Brian Schnurr unknowingly crashed a party given by Boston Celtics great Bill Walton, who was holding some sort of dinner meeting at Planet Hollywood for his company, CDI.

The four students still aren't sure whether Walton understands they were just fans, and not new sales representatives for his company.

They got their picture taken with Walton who, in turn, even offered to send them pictures, taking down their addresses.

Some girls on the trip seemed equally excited to find "Saturday Night Live" star Jimmy Fallon standing next to them in line at Starbucks at Rockefeller Center.

Fallon, although in a hurry to get to a SNL taping, still took time out to have his picture taken with associate choir director Sarah Bruce and student teacher Beth Willer.

"For the hometown paper? Why, of course," he said.

The NBC Studio tour and trips to St. Patrick's Cathedral and Ellis Island were highlights of the day.

I would have to say, however, we all felt unsettled after visiting Ground Zero, the site of the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

A green matting covered the fencing around the site, to obscure the view of visitors. There were construction people working within the perimeter, although we believed no one would be there.

Most of us were puzzled at the attempt to close off the site. On Saturday, hundreds visited the site, peeking through holes in the matting.

"This isn't a freak show, you know!" yelled one of the workers to our crowd, leaving a few of our members stunned.

Still, most said they were taken by the words on a huge hanging draped on a nearby building, overlooking the site:

"The human spirit is not measured by the size of one act, but by the size of the heart."

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