A couple weekends ago, my family and friends (who are my family) came into Newark to visit from the great state of Kansas! My mom, her boyfriend Dave, my brother Andy, and my friends Matt and Kelsey all made it up and decided to see what the Northeast had to offer. Kelsey and Dave had been to this area and to NYC before, but nobody else had.
While most of the party hadn't been to the city, the touristy things were things that absolutely had to happen. The first day I played the tour guide and took them all into Manhattan. We began with a walk to the train station which is about a 15 minute walk through downtown Newark. The walk consists mostly of walking on Market Street which is mostly shoe shops, clothing stores, and places to get weaves/buy wigs. I have taken this walk countless times now and it doesn't effect me anymore, but I could tell that it was kind of a culture shock for some of the others in the party when they noticed that they were the only white people on the street. I embrace this and can't say enough about the diversity that this area and the school and going back to Clemson will likely be a challenge to me.
We get onto the train to the World Trade Center and land on the South side of the island in order to walk to see the Statue of Liberty (again). We get great placement on the Staten Island Ferry and actually ran into a fellow KU grad in which we shared "Rock Chalks" before we went on our merry ways! The view of the symbol of freedom doesn't get old (and I'm not the biggest patriot for sure), but the looks on my mom's face was worth it. She never stopped taking pictures the whole time and enjoyed the experience thoroughly.
After that adventure, we had decided to go uptown to the Museum of Natural History! If you haven't been there, its the most intense museum ever! You could literally spend your whole day there and not even get close to seeing everything. The most noteworthy thing to see there are definitely the films that they play. We bought tickets to the space themed film that is shown in the planetarium. All of the seats in the room tilt up in order to see the spherical screen above the audience. The screen essentially makes you feel like you are watching a 3D movies except way better! You literally feel like you are zooming through the universe and learning crazy stuff about the forming of planets, stars, and everything else! The other awesome part of the museum is the dinosaur bones! Every kid/adult loves dinosaurs and want to see the remains of these dominant beasts. My mom couldn't keep her excitement within herself and we had an absolute blast looking at things within the museum and sharing a great experience. Not being used to the walking, the rest of the party was so tired that we decided to go back to Newark.
While in Newark, Dave was determined to find a liquor store within walking distance, which I assured him that there wasn't one (I would've found that a long time ago son!) and after a while, he returned saying that he had found a bar that was close to where we were. We went to this bar that was about a block away, in which there were only about 4 other people in when we first arrived. By the end of the night, it was totally packed with people. We also noticed that we were once again the only white people within this bar. You could tell that all of the people within the bar were frequents to the karaoke night that was about to start and were excited to see some new people! One man came up and asked who was going to sing and of course, everyone said that they wouldn't sing... and I said I would! If you know me at all, you know that I only sing songs that are pure gold, so I quickly flipped until I found a Phil Collins song and found, "Another Day In Paradise" (youtube it). I, as you expected, absolutely killed the song and people wept with how beautifully my rendition was. Phil himself would be proud. Either way, the cranberry vodkas I had been drinking, which were about 99 percent vodka, helped sing that song for me. I was quickly asked to come back the next week.
The rest of their trip was a lot of fun, but not particularly worthy of blogging... We had an excellent time and I enjoyed their visit so much!
The next Friday, my friend Nick, who is one of the other interns, and I decided to go into the city and find a cool place to have a drink or two (or however many fit in our bodies). While in the east village, we notice that we wouldn't fit in to many of these upscale places so we Googled anything that had "pub" in the name. We found an Irish pub that was really close to use and sat down to watch a baseball game and be served by legit Irish people! Our bartender was super nice to us and was an Irish chap named Patrick. After Nick and I had talked with Patrick and consumed a few drinks, Patrick offered us a free shot... we accepted and chose Jameson (what else would you get in the most Irish experience that NYC has to offer?) and decide to start making our way back home. We ran across a Taco Bell on the way back and decided, while its not as good as authentic Mexican food, it was about to fill our bellies with goodness. We hadn't had it the whole summer and the nearest one to Newark is about 15 miles away. It wasn't as good as hearing all the fun stories that Big T tells us in Clemson, but it did the trick. We made it back home and passed out in order to get up and have another adventure the next day.
Saturday, Nick and I decided to do what everyone had told us we should do from the first second that we accepted this postion... GO TO THE SHORE! We walked to the train station once again and on this occasion, while in the financial district, there was a particularly vocal homeless person that decided to sing, "white boys.... white boys" to us. We thanked him for his input and continued our venture. We missed the first train by about 3 minutes so we got our tickets and got Dunkin while waiting for the next train. We took two trains to get to Point Pleasant Beach and walked the 2 blocks from the train station to the beach. Side note: everybody calls it the shore up here and if you call in the beach, you may be corrected... Anyway, everyone was heading to the shore on this incredibly perfect day. We made it to the boardwalk in which there your juicehead gorillas and guidettes scattered about throughout trying to get into the various bars that are on the water. We, on the other hand, decided to get a good spot next to the water and take a dip. Meanwhile, I've seen a beach once before... in the winter and at night... so this is my real official experience with the ocean. The sight of endless water was overwhelming and my heart almost jumped out of my chest when laying eyes on how beautiful it was!
I was ready to get into the water and swim! I found out quickly that there is no slow way to get into the water when the tide pulls you in! My body bobbed around in the waves and the feeling of waves splashing on my head was something I enjoyed thoroughly! I could have stayed there the whole day/week/life. I even cut my foot on something below the water, but didn't seem to notice because of the fun that I was having!
After a while of swimming, we explored more of the boardwalk and saw a place that served quite possibly the most intriguing deserts ever... fried twinkies and oreos (I can hear all of the Southern mouths watering now!). I, while feeling absolutely gross, had to try these sinful goodies that are unique to the shore. Both of them are battered and deep fried and covered in powdered sugar... and yes, they are as good as that sounds, so you can be jealous.
We had had our fill of the Jersey Shore cast wannabees and made our way back to Newark. We quickly got ready and headed into NYC to go to a comedy show in Times Square starring Judah Friedlander (Frank from 30 Rock). We got into the place and noticed that Judah had just finished an earlier show and was signing things and meeting those that had shown up. This excited us and we hoped we would be as lucky! The show was absolutely hilarious! The first comedian stayed mostly on racial jokes, which I'm not usually a fan of, but he was very real and advertised the fact that we all need to make fun of ourselves, which I try to do quite a bit. The second comedian relied on jokes about how he can't get women, which was totally believable, but funny. Judah Friedlander came on and absolutely killed! His show contains mostly a huge bit on how he the the "world champion" and can do anything better than anybody else, which if you have seen him in real life, you would get the joke. Youtube him and you can see how hysterical he is, but we had an amazing time! Afterwards, we were at the front of the line to meet him and it turns out, he is a super nice and sweet guy to meet!
This was one of the best days of my entire life and will be a valuable memory of my summer here in Newark. I couldn't have asked for anything else for that day and the weekend itself was phenomenal. I can only hope that everyone else has as much fun with the things they are doing as I am right now!
I apologize for how long this post is, but it's been a busy time and I thought you all should know! As for my last weekend here (tear) I'm going to be sharing it with Tina Choi! It's time for the baby person to meet the big apple! We have fun to have and things to see! Please go out and find some fun for yourself and let me know how that works out!
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