Friends!

The last couple of weeks has involved myself being a tour guide of New York City for many of my friends and family that are taking advantage of my living arrangement for the summer.

Before my friends got here, I had an impromptu dinner in the city with my supervisor and one of the co-interns at an Ethiopian place. Upon entering, it was really dark and festive looking! We loved the atmosphere they were trying to create and quickly were impressed by the place. Our supervisor showed up and we asked if we could move to the more "traditional" seating which involved sitting around a table made of some sort of straw. It kind of looked like you were eating out of a sombrero. We all ordered something knowing absolutely nothing about whatever it was we ordered. None of us had had Ethiopian before and the menus were either very vague, or they explained the tastes of things in ways that none of us could understand. The food gets to our little sombrero and there doesn't seem to be a lot of it. We had ordered a little bit of everything and it came on one big bread/tortilla/flat bread looking thing. Each one of the dishes was a sort of brown paste that looked kind of like excrement, but I'm not one to judge especially when I'm hungry! So we had to take the same kind of break that the pastes were on and scoop it up from the sombrero using our hands. Many of the pastes were good, but were very bitter. All in all, I liked the place, but its not something I would crave and make a trip to go to again.

The next day, my friend Mr. Tony Paquette (pronounced pack-it) showed up to visit for the 4th of July weekend. I had to go meet him in the city at the Port Authority Bus Terminal which is right outside Times Square. I quickly found him wandering in the terminal (to my surprise) and we decided to walk around a little before going back to the wonderful world of Newark. I showed him Times, which was right outside, then progressed to some street food outside of the 34th street Macy's (the largest department store in the world... no big deal). Tony was tired of carrying his luggage around and having to dodge all of the tourists so we headed back. After coming back, we decided to go get a drink in Newark. I have been to a place called Nick's (not that one Clemson people) a few times and enjoyed it, so we headed that way. We get to the door of Nick's and there is a tall, built woman in an all black security outfit with the doors shut (which I'd never seen before). The lady was nice, but told us that there was a cover... alright... and then she said that there was a lesbian party that night... I don't think we fit in and we didn't want to crash their party. We then went to the bar across the street which was a sort of Irish pub, but it was very inviting and full of cheer (and 90's music! Hooray!) so we had a few there.

When we woke up the next day, we decided to go into the city and do some exploring. We took the World Trade Center train into the city and were going to walk down to the Staten Island Ferry. The walk down is long, but full of interesting things to see. We went into the financial district (Wall Street, etc) and saw a lot of people observing the stock exchange and all the other settings of corruption. Eventually, we get down to the water and can see the place we are going. We remind ourselves of how many dead bodies/trash/whatever else makes it into these waters and continue on our journey. The sea of people in the ferry station is overwhelming, but luckily, I'm a New Yorker for the day and snake my way toward the front. We get a pretty choice spot on the railing of the ferry and have an excellent view of the Statue of Liberty (put your hand on your heart Jenna). I've seen it before, but this day was as sunny as it gets and on the most patriotic weekend of the year... it definitely meant something new to me this time. After coming all the way back, we continued into Central Park and wandered around that area for a while. While resting, we decided to people watch for a bit and see what crazies we could see in the park! We saw a guy trying to sell balloons that he had clearly bought from the guy further up the path and cat calling every girl that walked by (and failing miserably), a bunch of model-looking women, and, of course, a celebrity. After hanging out for a while, we decided to meet up with my supervisor at his friends swanky apartment that I have mentioned before! Tony and I journeyed over to the apartment and he had the same awe that I did when we were walking toward it. Also, there was some sort of kids playground that had been blown up like a bounce house, but it was all striped. It looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie, so it was pretty trippy. We get up to the apartment and the view is still unbelievably breathtaking and I imagine it was more so for Tony, who hadn't even really seen the city before. We enjoyed beverages on balcony of the 35th while Shigeo took pictures of us with his fancy new camera (look on my Facebook and you'll see them!) while enjoying the high life! Shigeo once again showed off the perks of the apartment complex, which the highlight is always the arcade. Tony was impressed by the bubble hockey, I was impressed by the Golden Tee golf, and we all were impressed by the bar-style multi-game touch screen game that includes Photo-Hunt. After a while, we said our goodbyes and came back to Newark so that we could get up early in the morning for the next part of the story...

In the morning we made our way to Queens in order to see... The Subway Series game! No, not the Subway sandwiches (which I refer to as "Sub-dub"), I'm referring to when the Yankees play the Mets. We got tickets the day before and were pumped about seeing this intense rivalry game and witnessing the occasion that few outside of NY have done. First of all, it was raining it **** off and we were worried that the game would get rescheduled for when we couldn't go. Luckily, by the time we arrived to Queens, the rain had lessened and the game had been delayed just enough to allow for some relaxation time. We arrived at the new Citi Field, which is just as impressive at New Yankee Stadium, to the gaggle of Mets/Yankees flooded into the stadium. We found our way to our nosebleed seats (which I still think were awesome) and quickly remembered that we are at a baseball game... beer! With the game being delayed, it gave us time to enjoy an adult beverage or two (at $8 a pop... not tooooooo horrible). Now that we are good and relaxed, the game starts and we decide to move around a bit to see if we can stand in a better place to see. We roamed around and saw the game from at least 7 different spots, but the game was so close the whole way. We enjoyed the chants that went "Lets go Yank-ees... Yankees Suck!" and viewed the game as it became heated. By the bottom of the 9th, the game had been tied with a series of great hits by the Mets, so we headed into extra innings! I will skip the play by play, but the Mets ended up winning in the 10th and we got excited that we saw the team that we root(root root)ed for won (if they didn't it would have been a shame). Overall, we enjoyed it and its something I will remember for the rest of my years!

On Tony's last day we had no real plans, but to watch fireworks! We roamed around the East Village, which was not touristy and full of artsy fartsy people! We went into a bar that looked like it should have been in Italy somewhere (hwhy hyello Majka!) and we enjoyed a couple very expensive drinks while admiring this establishment! We decided to venture on down the block and go into a less swanky bar to enjoy a baseball game. The bar we came to was about as wide as a residence hall room, but about as deep as 3. It was covered in that stuff that they make hula skirts in and had American flags weaved into them. The only bartender was the old man that was the owner of the place, which was a change to the obviously once art student from that midwest who is now a big city person because they where skinny black jeans and have white streaks in their hair and kisses both people's cheeks when they say hello... just making assumptions. Either way, this place was more our style. We enjoyed a few drinks and watch some of America's national past time before calling it a day and heading back to Newark. We came back and called Shigeo to see if he had any plans for the night to watch fireworks (and I had that stupid Katy Perry song stuck in my head the whole night... thanks Kristen!) and we found out we could get on the roof of the residence hall we were in. We had a great view of all of the surrounding fireworks displays, including NYC's which is the biggest in the US! It was a great way to end the night and Tony's visit to the city!

The next day Tony was on his way back to Ithaca to observe more of the crazy hippies that are up there and I went back to work with the crazies here! I enjoyed having him here and can't wait for more of you to come! My family's in right now and there may be a few of you coming in later... Until then, have a great rest of the summer and hopefully you enjoyed reading!