PA
I have about 100 pages left to read of a book that I'm presenting in 4 hours, but I would much rather procrastinate and post in here instead. Let me present to you...
My Adventures in Philly!
First of all, I'm proud to report that the weekend wasn't a shit-show as Liz and I originally anticipated. It was still pretty nuts, but not in the disastrous kind of way. Whew.
We left Friday afternoon on the 4pm Chinatown Bus. This bus is notoriously famous in the NYU community because its cheap and efficient, but also comes with many a horror story. Here's mine: I had to walk to the bus stop from work (about a mile away) in the pouring rain with all of my stuff because I couldn't get a cab. When I finally get there, I'm drenched (and so was my stuff!) and Liz was no where to be found. I bought us some snacks from a woman who didn't speak English (2 bottles of water, pretzels, and doritos... all for $2. hmmm...) and Liz shows up maybe 5 minutes before the bus was set to leave. We're immediately harassed by the woman selling tickets and shoved onto a bus, where two guys start talking to us (hey mami, you goin' to Philly? I'll give you sexies a private tour etc) and then follow us to the back so that they could sit near us. Oy. The bus was pretty empty, so Liz and I each took up a row and sprawled out everywhere. The two guys kept talking to us for the entire 2 1/2 hour ride - they were narrating everything we were doing. At one point, we were both drinking our water and they were like "Mmmmm girl, drink that water down. Drink that ice cold water, nice and slow mami." hahaha we both spit our water out and started cracking up. So inappropriate. Got a lot of reading done for my class, so that was good.
We get into Philly around 6:30, then had to figure out the "SEPTA" system - the subway line there. Didn't take us too long. We arrived at St. Joseph's University at around 7:00, where Liz's friend Carl was waiting to pick us up with one of his friends. First things first: food! We went to this divey joint so Liz could get a cheese steak... and when I ordered a vegetarian cheesey hoagie, the woman looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently there aren't too many vegetarians in Philly lol. A bunch of Liz and Carl's friends showed up and as per usual I was surrounded by Brooklyn in a matter of seconds.
Next stop: the house. Carl lives in an eight bedroom house close to campus with nine guys, four of which are Liz's good friends from the high school days. When we pull up to the house, I'm blown away. It's HUGE, 3 stories and a basement, made of pretty stone, its got this awesome wrap-around porch, a pretty walk way up to it. I was really impressed... until we went inside. Nine guys living together = the messiest thing I've ever seen. Garbage everywhere. Never been cleaned. Decorations were all alcohol themed. Porn on the bathroom floors. Dishes. Cigarettes. You get the idea. I just kind of laughed because it was so surreal, I felt like I was in a frat house movie or something. My favorite part of the house was Killa, the black and white kitten that the guys found outside and decided to adopt. She is maybe 12-14 weeks old and SO CUTE. She's super playful and likes people and is such a trooper for living with 9 boys haha. Liz hates cats, so of course every chance I could I would scoop up Killa and bring her near Liz to watch her freak out. How a person could find a little teeny kitten repulsive, I'll never know.
Later that night, the guys threw a kegger at the house. It started out with some friendly beer pong between me, Liz, and all the guys who live at the house, but of course word got out and soon the house was PACKED. We were all dancing and playing Nintendo Wii and pong etc, but I started to get a little anxious as more and more people showed up. Sometimes being in a really crowded unfamiliar place with strangers makes me really nervous and socially anxious, even when I'm drinking. I could feel myself getting all panicky and such... and then I saw a group of guys going upstairs, one of whom is Liz's really good friend that I've hung out with a bunch, so I was like WAIT FOR ME!! We chilled on the third floor of the house and I calmed down pretty quick so it was all good. The rest of the night was way fun, once I gained composure of the situation. Met some cool people, and some creepers, but so it goes. I kept worrying about Killa the whole time, because she likes to play with the ping pong balls that get dropped, so she was getting under everyone's feet and since everyone was drunk they weren't paying attention so I finally picked her up and made one of the boys put her in his room, away from all the action. Poor baby probably would have gotten trampled! Seriously, boys don't think about this stuff sometimes. The hi-light of the night was at around 4am, Liz and I decided we had had enough and we went upstairs to get ready for bed. A group of guys were on the second-floor landing, snickering. This guy goes, "Hey girls, go peek into Carl's room, a freshman passed out in his bed and we don't know who it is!" So we go in, cautiously creep over to the bed, and then start screaming because Carl was passed out completely naked on top of the covers. HAHAHAHAHAHA. So then every time someone else came upstairs we said the same thing. One guy shined a flashlight over in the corner, and another guy just flat out turned the lights on. SO FUNNY!
Saturday morning, we all were wide awake at around 9:30, so we did what anyone would do that early on a Saturday: went to McDonald's for breakfast. Blech. The pancakes and hash browns were alright tho. Came back to the house, napped, watched sports on TV (house full of guys, remember that), cleaned (well ok, Liz cleaned), fed Killa, got ready, and then went to a St. Joe's varsity rugby game. It was actually pretty fun, I've never watched rugby before and its uber violent with all these cool stunts. Much more amusing to watch than football, in my opinion. Then we all went and had chinese for lunch, where the boys bugged me about being a vegetarian and then made fun of tofu. I should have seen it coming haha. We went back to the house, and Liz proposed a girls v. boys Wii Bowling challenge. We kicked their ass. Twice. One game I bowled like a 265... they were not pleased =). Then the guys flipped on more sports before deciding they wanted to play touch football. At this point, Liz and I were completely sick of sports and anything masculine and we were like WE NEED GO SHOPPING RIGHT NOW. So one of the guys called his girlfriend Elisa, she came right over and picked us up for some much needed girl time. She took us into the city, where we shopped, gossiped and ate cold stone. I hate playing to gender stereotypes, especially because sometimes I really enjoy just hanging out with guys, but I definitely needed to do something "feminine."
More beer pong and sports were waiting for us when we got back to the house, and then we went to a random apartment party. It was fun, but there were a lot of young'uns that got kind of annoying after a while. We played lots of drinking games, but got tired out pretty early and had had enough by 1:30. Our ride had been drinking (great!) so it took us a while to find an alternate ride back. This guy finally offered to give me, Liz, Elisa and her boyfriend a ride home, but we had to smush 8 people in a 5 passenger car. Flashback to high school when I did that in the Jetta, many a time lol. We went to bed at around 2:30, but I guess the apartment party was a dud so everyone moved from the apartment back to the house. Drunk people kept stumbling into the bedroom where we were sleeping (one tried to climb into bed with Liz while smoking a cigarette HAHAHA!) so we had to deal with that and got like 0.00 hours of sleep. Oh well.
Got up bright and early to go back to New York. I gave a small wave to the Liberty Bell as we passed by it on the bus. If I ever go back, I want to go see the Bell and the Continental Congress stuff up close, because I'm a dork and like to do that kind of stuff.
I know this was too detailed and that most of you are probably bored right now haha. Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away.
<3 much love.
My Adventures in Philly!
First of all, I'm proud to report that the weekend wasn't a shit-show as Liz and I originally anticipated. It was still pretty nuts, but not in the disastrous kind of way. Whew.
We left Friday afternoon on the 4pm Chinatown Bus. This bus is notoriously famous in the NYU community because its cheap and efficient, but also comes with many a horror story. Here's mine: I had to walk to the bus stop from work (about a mile away) in the pouring rain with all of my stuff because I couldn't get a cab. When I finally get there, I'm drenched (and so was my stuff!) and Liz was no where to be found. I bought us some snacks from a woman who didn't speak English (2 bottles of water, pretzels, and doritos... all for $2. hmmm...) and Liz shows up maybe 5 minutes before the bus was set to leave. We're immediately harassed by the woman selling tickets and shoved onto a bus, where two guys start talking to us (hey mami, you goin' to Philly? I'll give you sexies a private tour etc) and then follow us to the back so that they could sit near us. Oy. The bus was pretty empty, so Liz and I each took up a row and sprawled out everywhere. The two guys kept talking to us for the entire 2 1/2 hour ride - they were narrating everything we were doing. At one point, we were both drinking our water and they were like "Mmmmm girl, drink that water down. Drink that ice cold water, nice and slow mami." hahaha we both spit our water out and started cracking up. So inappropriate. Got a lot of reading done for my class, so that was good.
We get into Philly around 6:30, then had to figure out the "SEPTA" system - the subway line there. Didn't take us too long. We arrived at St. Joseph's University at around 7:00, where Liz's friend Carl was waiting to pick us up with one of his friends. First things first: food! We went to this divey joint so Liz could get a cheese steak... and when I ordered a vegetarian cheesey hoagie, the woman looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently there aren't too many vegetarians in Philly lol. A bunch of Liz and Carl's friends showed up and as per usual I was surrounded by Brooklyn in a matter of seconds.
Next stop: the house. Carl lives in an eight bedroom house close to campus with nine guys, four of which are Liz's good friends from the high school days. When we pull up to the house, I'm blown away. It's HUGE, 3 stories and a basement, made of pretty stone, its got this awesome wrap-around porch, a pretty walk way up to it. I was really impressed... until we went inside. Nine guys living together = the messiest thing I've ever seen. Garbage everywhere. Never been cleaned. Decorations were all alcohol themed. Porn on the bathroom floors. Dishes. Cigarettes. You get the idea. I just kind of laughed because it was so surreal, I felt like I was in a frat house movie or something. My favorite part of the house was Killa, the black and white kitten that the guys found outside and decided to adopt. She is maybe 12-14 weeks old and SO CUTE. She's super playful and likes people and is such a trooper for living with 9 boys haha. Liz hates cats, so of course every chance I could I would scoop up Killa and bring her near Liz to watch her freak out. How a person could find a little teeny kitten repulsive, I'll never know.
Later that night, the guys threw a kegger at the house. It started out with some friendly beer pong between me, Liz, and all the guys who live at the house, but of course word got out and soon the house was PACKED. We were all dancing and playing Nintendo Wii and pong etc, but I started to get a little anxious as more and more people showed up. Sometimes being in a really crowded unfamiliar place with strangers makes me really nervous and socially anxious, even when I'm drinking. I could feel myself getting all panicky and such... and then I saw a group of guys going upstairs, one of whom is Liz's really good friend that I've hung out with a bunch, so I was like WAIT FOR ME!! We chilled on the third floor of the house and I calmed down pretty quick so it was all good. The rest of the night was way fun, once I gained composure of the situation. Met some cool people, and some creepers, but so it goes. I kept worrying about Killa the whole time, because she likes to play with the ping pong balls that get dropped, so she was getting under everyone's feet and since everyone was drunk they weren't paying attention so I finally picked her up and made one of the boys put her in his room, away from all the action. Poor baby probably would have gotten trampled! Seriously, boys don't think about this stuff sometimes. The hi-light of the night was at around 4am, Liz and I decided we had had enough and we went upstairs to get ready for bed. A group of guys were on the second-floor landing, snickering. This guy goes, "Hey girls, go peek into Carl's room, a freshman passed out in his bed and we don't know who it is!" So we go in, cautiously creep over to the bed, and then start screaming because Carl was passed out completely naked on top of the covers. HAHAHAHAHAHA. So then every time someone else came upstairs we said the same thing. One guy shined a flashlight over in the corner, and another guy just flat out turned the lights on. SO FUNNY!
Saturday morning, we all were wide awake at around 9:30, so we did what anyone would do that early on a Saturday: went to McDonald's for breakfast. Blech. The pancakes and hash browns were alright tho. Came back to the house, napped, watched sports on TV (house full of guys, remember that), cleaned (well ok, Liz cleaned), fed Killa, got ready, and then went to a St. Joe's varsity rugby game. It was actually pretty fun, I've never watched rugby before and its uber violent with all these cool stunts. Much more amusing to watch than football, in my opinion. Then we all went and had chinese for lunch, where the boys bugged me about being a vegetarian and then made fun of tofu. I should have seen it coming haha. We went back to the house, and Liz proposed a girls v. boys Wii Bowling challenge. We kicked their ass. Twice. One game I bowled like a 265... they were not pleased =). Then the guys flipped on more sports before deciding they wanted to play touch football. At this point, Liz and I were completely sick of sports and anything masculine and we were like WE NEED GO SHOPPING RIGHT NOW. So one of the guys called his girlfriend Elisa, she came right over and picked us up for some much needed girl time. She took us into the city, where we shopped, gossiped and ate cold stone. I hate playing to gender stereotypes, especially because sometimes I really enjoy just hanging out with guys, but I definitely needed to do something "feminine."
More beer pong and sports were waiting for us when we got back to the house, and then we went to a random apartment party. It was fun, but there were a lot of young'uns that got kind of annoying after a while. We played lots of drinking games, but got tired out pretty early and had had enough by 1:30. Our ride had been drinking (great!) so it took us a while to find an alternate ride back. This guy finally offered to give me, Liz, Elisa and her boyfriend a ride home, but we had to smush 8 people in a 5 passenger car. Flashback to high school when I did that in the Jetta, many a time lol. We went to bed at around 2:30, but I guess the apartment party was a dud so everyone moved from the apartment back to the house. Drunk people kept stumbling into the bedroom where we were sleeping (one tried to climb into bed with Liz while smoking a cigarette HAHAHA!) so we had to deal with that and got like 0.00 hours of sleep. Oh well.
Got up bright and early to go back to New York. I gave a small wave to the Liberty Bell as we passed by it on the bus. If I ever go back, I want to go see the Bell and the Continental Congress stuff up close, because I'm a dork and like to do that kind of stuff.
I know this was too detailed and that most of you are probably bored right now haha. Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away.
<3 much love.