Ever seen that show "The Wire?"
Because seriously. It's so accurate in showing all the frickin trouble Baltimore has.
So yes, I'm back from Baltimore~ I got home last evening, and until I got my bed made up (I slept at Dad's last night, so I have to pull out the futon) I was literally falling asleep all over the place. I sat down to watch Stargate with him (cuz he's a Trekkie/Sci Fi kinda guy) and I ended up falling asleep with my head on his knee I was so tired; I don't think I've done that since I was like, maybe five? xD
Anyway, here's a summary of my trip.
Tuesday: All us seniors met up around 9 AM at school before taking off around 9:45. I realized as soon as I was seated and watching people walk on that I was thankfully NOT on the party bus -- we had all the soft spoken/relatively quiet in comparison to the others in our grade peoples on the bus I was on, so I was really grateful for that. I sat next to my friend Terrance, as always, since we've made it a tradition since seventh grade when he came to sit together on any and all extended bus trips, since we're the only two people who can deal with each others energy for extended periods of time xD Anyway, I'm mentioning this because it's actually awesome since it gives me an automatic excuse not to have to sit next to Lainey -- this girl who thinks I'm her best friend and that she's mine while being somehow oblivious to the fact that her presence irks every fiber in my being. So I fell asleep on Terry for a little and listened to Simon and Garfunkel and played games on my iPod until we got there five hours later. We stayed in a dorm building (McCoy) at Johns Hopikins University, actually. We all stayed in suites that were made up of two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small kitchen space. The dorm was RIDICULOUSLY secure, btw. So if you want a safe college building, JH is a good bet. I roomed with Shamika, while we paired up in a group of four with Amrita and Lainey, cuz Murphy's stupid law makes me deal with her as much as possible. OH OH and Matthew, Kit, Duncan and Ciaran (my first ex-bf) roomed across the hall from us, and I got really excited about it and exclaimed "IT'S JUST LIKE FRIENDS, YOU GUYS!" but then my Kit-nii-chan just... crushed my dreams with a deadpan "No Jess, it's not." We settled in and then met up with our advisers to sign up for some sort of community service. I signed up (and got!) Habitat for Humanity, where we build houses. We went out in groups of three or more for the rest of the evening till 10 to look around, and after buying cereal and milk and such for the morning, we went out to explore the area. We ended up going out to Inner Harbor that night to eat at UNO -- "we" was me and my roommates. OH and we had the sweetest, old waiter--like, I'm not even kidding, I kept saying that I wanted to adopt him as my uncle or something~ I think his name was Joh, though, which kinda freaked me out >_> And because everyone had discovered Coldstone Creameries just about as soon as we unloaded from the buses earlier, we went over to get ice cream, where the service even impressed me, and I didn't even GET any ice cream xD If you're interested in finding out more about the awesomeness of it if you don't already know, just go here: www.coldstonecreamery.com/. Um...what else. Then we just picked up a deck of cards before heading back and played different games with Terrance until we had to be back in our rooms at 10. I conked out that nigh pretty fast, so I'm done with Tuesday, I think.
Wednesday: Woke up at 6 AM cuz ShamSham said Ms. Warner told her we all needed to meet up at 7.45 even if you had a different scheduled time to meet up for your particular form of community service (this included either doing manual labor for Habitat for Humanity, working in a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, volunteering to work at the Maritime Museum, or strangely enough, making lunches for everyone with Ms. Fibelman, idk). So then we thought we were doing a favor by waking up Lainey and Amrita, but it turned out Ms. Warner LIED and so they went back to bed since they didn't need to be up till later. So me and Shamika ate and got ready and stuff before heading down and splitting up for our individual duties for the day. I sat through orientation for Habitat with about 40 other students, which lasted around 10 minutes, before we headed out for different neighborhoods -- I was assigned to "Pigtown," where we painted the entirety of the inside of one of a series of three houses, dug and evened out land in the back for gardens to be planted in, and took out heaps and heaps of trash in the back alley. Ten minutes of work felt more like a half HOUR. The best parts of the day were when we met a gorgeous stray cat who hung around we fondly named Rita, who had two kittens she proudly paraded around in her mouth on occasion (we ended up making a cat house for her and her babies~) and when Emma initiated a word game called "Picnic" and waited for a good hour for our Scottish exchange student named Callum to figure out the pattern in the game. Oh, and when the lunches were dropped off by Ms. Fibelman and co, we discovered that Rita REALLY liked sour cream and onion chips. Anyway, that night me and eight other guys friends went out to Inner Harbor again to spend $300 FRICKIN DOLLARS on a totally worth it meal from M&S consisting of like at least fifteen different dishes. Crab from Maryland = EPIC. And because tempora = WIN, CRAB TEMPORA = EPIC WIN. So yeah, then we took the bus back to the dorms -- Ciaran and Daniel pretended to race the bus even though they were only a half block away from the next bus stop, since they're idiots and pretended to be macho for all of five seconds before we informed them that WE WATCHED THEM FROM OUTSIDE THE WINDOW OF THE BUS.When we went back, I was intending to sit in and watch a game of poker, but the boys got mad at me cuz I was "DISTRACTING." So I left and played card games again--it was okay, cuz I learned an epic new card game called "Spoons" WHICH IS SO MUCH FUN as well as "learning" another card game called Egyptian Cat-scratch--I'm putting that in quotations, cuz I honestly had no idea what I was doing, which really amused everyone but only for a little cuz I apparently was doing really well despite not knowing WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING, and then we went to bed.
Thursday: Terrance had whined the previous night that he wanted a "hot breakfast" the next morning, and we wanted more sleep, so we compromised and went out at 7 in the morning after waking up at 6:40. It was just me and Terry and Shamy, and we ended up going to a small grocery store/deli called Eddie's Market, where we got egg sandwiches --"we" being me and Terry, cuz Shamika had already eaten fruit loops, so when we went to pay, this short Asian woman started crowing about how Shamika was saving up her money like a smart girl, and she'd be rich in ten years xD After that we sat and ate in Starbucks before rushing over to the buses, because me and Terry both got Habitat for the day again, but we were sent to East Baltimore this time. Which was really cool cuz I learned how to assemble AND disassemble scaffolding. Note: jackhammers get boys' egos and testosterone RIDICULOUSLY pumped. It's actually kinda hilarious. So yeah... Terrance destroyed his palms with blisters from jackhammering while I escaped relatively unscathed with sore wrists and hands from using an electric hand-saw. Oh...and a plank smacked me in the shin, but it's healing pretty quickly... LOL my left leg is COMPLETELY bruised and band-aid'd up. We went home to just...relax and play s'more card games, because everyone was utterly exhausted, and somehow during those two hours, Ciaran and I ended up getting back on good terms, somehow, which REALLY made my day, and the trip for me, because I've been wanting to fix things between us for four years now. I really dunno how it happened, we were playing card games and throwing cards and punching each other one minute, and the next everyone had left to do something else and left us chilling together on the floor in the hallway while he sang Irish songs to me (he's a good singer) and cuddled with me and occupied himself for a kinda weridly long time just rubbing my tummy, explaining the fascanation by just saying "You're -really soft-." XD Anywho, after that our entire grade ended up having a freaking indoor PICNIC because we were GOING to have one outside but it started raining. So we ate inside, and the cooks at J H were AWESOME and gave us yummy BBQ food--I feasted upon veggie burgers and potato salad and fruit. And this brownie that tasted like someone added a whole freaking bottle of Sherry. OH AND THEY GAVE US BACK LETTERS WE WROTE TO OURSELVES IN NINTH GRADE OH GAWD XDDD I was SUCH a depressing child; and I made myself cry a little because I had asked myself to pretty please make up with Ciaran, and I had JUST BEFORE THAT and I was kinda d'awwing over me. Everyone really enjoyed the letters. OH and this kid Lloyd accidently slept through the whole event cuz no one remembered to wake him, so Julian (my prom date--...I should prolly post pics of that, too, huh >3>) brought him food like a good friend. We returned just in time to watch America's Got Talent with Ms. Warner and a buncha girls in one common lounge in the dorms, before a random dance party ensued, where I heard my new current favorite song, which I'll provide a video for.
Yep. So. Enjoy this epic piece of music. Anyway, I finally managed to ACTUALLY LEARN the rules to Egyptian Cat-scratch, so that was good... oh, and I learned how to play Crazy Eights. Then bed.
Friday:
So I woke up reaaaaaally sore. It reaaaaaally sucked, too, because I got HABITAT AGAIN, surprise surprise, even though I signed up for making those lunches with Ms. Fibelman. But apparently over 30 other kids did, too cuz we were all so tired by this point xD So Rafe, Hudson and Olivia made our lunches; I know this because they were really territorial about the lunches they made. But I sucked it up, got out of bed with what I like to think was minimal complaining and wincing and went out to breakfast again for the same thing with Terrance, ShamySham and, unfortunately, Lainey. But I dealt with it, and we ate and hurried back to do our respective forms of community service. We managed to finish up TWO HOUSES! Oh...and at some point, Ciaran ended up going shirtless which was funny because he made a whole migila out of it by announcing "I'M GOIN ' SHIRTLESS, GAIS, CUZ I'M SO MANRY!" or something along the lines of that, and so everyone started talking about him negatively. Uhh...what else...Terrance ruined his hands some more, I bandaged them up, and then we all headed back early--like, around 1:30 I think, and we picked up snacks, rejoiced over the discovery that they're FINALLY starting to sell this Australian treat called Tim-Tams in the US, and then we loaded up the bus after a few too many group pictures of our grade smooshing together on the front steps of the dorms. Annnd that's about it! I really enjoyed it in the end.
TL;DR; if you ever get the chance to do Habitat for Humanity, it's a really rewarding experience!
So yes, I'm back from Baltimore~ I got home last evening, and until I got my bed made up (I slept at Dad's last night, so I have to pull out the futon) I was literally falling asleep all over the place. I sat down to watch Stargate with him (cuz he's a Trekkie/Sci Fi kinda guy) and I ended up falling asleep with my head on his knee I was so tired; I don't think I've done that since I was like, maybe five? xD
Anyway, here's a summary of my trip.
Tuesday: All us seniors met up around 9 AM at school before taking off around 9:45. I realized as soon as I was seated and watching people walk on that I was thankfully NOT on the party bus -- we had all the soft spoken/relatively quiet in comparison to the others in our grade peoples on the bus I was on, so I was really grateful for that. I sat next to my friend Terrance, as always, since we've made it a tradition since seventh grade when he came to sit together on any and all extended bus trips, since we're the only two people who can deal with each others energy for extended periods of time xD Anyway, I'm mentioning this because it's actually awesome since it gives me an automatic excuse not to have to sit next to Lainey -- this girl who thinks I'm her best friend and that she's mine while being somehow oblivious to the fact that her presence irks every fiber in my being. So I fell asleep on Terry for a little and listened to Simon and Garfunkel and played games on my iPod until we got there five hours later. We stayed in a dorm building (McCoy) at Johns Hopikins University, actually. We all stayed in suites that were made up of two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small kitchen space. The dorm was RIDICULOUSLY secure, btw. So if you want a safe college building, JH is a good bet. I roomed with Shamika, while we paired up in a group of four with Amrita and Lainey, cuz Murphy's stupid law makes me deal with her as much as possible. OH OH and Matthew, Kit, Duncan and Ciaran (my first ex-bf) roomed across the hall from us, and I got really excited about it and exclaimed "IT'S JUST LIKE FRIENDS, YOU GUYS!" but then my Kit-nii-chan just... crushed my dreams with a deadpan "No Jess, it's not." We settled in and then met up with our advisers to sign up for some sort of community service. I signed up (and got!) Habitat for Humanity, where we build houses. We went out in groups of three or more for the rest of the evening till 10 to look around, and after buying cereal and milk and such for the morning, we went out to explore the area. We ended up going out to Inner Harbor that night to eat at UNO -- "we" was me and my roommates. OH and we had the sweetest, old waiter--like, I'm not even kidding, I kept saying that I wanted to adopt him as my uncle or something~ I think his name was Joh, though, which kinda freaked me out >_> And because everyone had discovered Coldstone Creameries just about as soon as we unloaded from the buses earlier, we went over to get ice cream, where the service even impressed me, and I didn't even GET any ice cream xD If you're interested in finding out more about the awesomeness of it if you don't already know, just go here: www.coldstonecreamery.com/. Um...what else. Then we just picked up a deck of cards before heading back and played different games with Terrance until we had to be back in our rooms at 10. I conked out that nigh pretty fast, so I'm done with Tuesday, I think.
Wednesday: Woke up at 6 AM cuz ShamSham said Ms. Warner told her we all needed to meet up at 7.45 even if you had a different scheduled time to meet up for your particular form of community service (this included either doing manual labor for Habitat for Humanity, working in a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, volunteering to work at the Maritime Museum, or strangely enough, making lunches for everyone with Ms. Fibelman, idk). So then we thought we were doing a favor by waking up Lainey and Amrita, but it turned out Ms. Warner LIED and so they went back to bed since they didn't need to be up till later. So me and Shamika ate and got ready and stuff before heading down and splitting up for our individual duties for the day. I sat through orientation for Habitat with about 40 other students, which lasted around 10 minutes, before we headed out for different neighborhoods -- I was assigned to "Pigtown," where we painted the entirety of the inside of one of a series of three houses, dug and evened out land in the back for gardens to be planted in, and took out heaps and heaps of trash in the back alley. Ten minutes of work felt more like a half HOUR. The best parts of the day were when we met a gorgeous stray cat who hung around we fondly named Rita, who had two kittens she proudly paraded around in her mouth on occasion (we ended up making a cat house for her and her babies~) and when Emma initiated a word game called "Picnic" and waited for a good hour for our Scottish exchange student named Callum to figure out the pattern in the game. Oh, and when the lunches were dropped off by Ms. Fibelman and co, we discovered that Rita REALLY liked sour cream and onion chips. Anyway, that night me and eight other guys friends went out to Inner Harbor again to spend $300 FRICKIN DOLLARS on a totally worth it meal from M&S consisting of like at least fifteen different dishes. Crab from Maryland = EPIC. And because tempora = WIN, CRAB TEMPORA = EPIC WIN. So yeah, then we took the bus back to the dorms -- Ciaran and Daniel pretended to race the bus even though they were only a half block away from the next bus stop, since they're idiots and pretended to be macho for all of five seconds before we informed them that WE WATCHED THEM FROM OUTSIDE THE WINDOW OF THE BUS.When we went back, I was intending to sit in and watch a game of poker, but the boys got mad at me cuz I was "DISTRACTING." So I left and played card games again--it was okay, cuz I learned an epic new card game called "Spoons" WHICH IS SO MUCH FUN as well as "learning" another card game called Egyptian Cat-scratch--I'm putting that in quotations, cuz I honestly had no idea what I was doing, which really amused everyone but only for a little cuz I apparently was doing really well despite not knowing WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING, and then we went to bed.
Thursday: Terrance had whined the previous night that he wanted a "hot breakfast" the next morning, and we wanted more sleep, so we compromised and went out at 7 in the morning after waking up at 6:40. It was just me and Terry and Shamy, and we ended up going to a small grocery store/deli called Eddie's Market, where we got egg sandwiches --"we" being me and Terry, cuz Shamika had already eaten fruit loops, so when we went to pay, this short Asian woman started crowing about how Shamika was saving up her money like a smart girl, and she'd be rich in ten years xD After that we sat and ate in Starbucks before rushing over to the buses, because me and Terry both got Habitat for the day again, but we were sent to East Baltimore this time. Which was really cool cuz I learned how to assemble AND disassemble scaffolding. Note: jackhammers get boys' egos and testosterone RIDICULOUSLY pumped. It's actually kinda hilarious. So yeah... Terrance destroyed his palms with blisters from jackhammering while I escaped relatively unscathed with sore wrists and hands from using an electric hand-saw. Oh...and a plank smacked me in the shin, but it's healing pretty quickly... LOL my left leg is COMPLETELY bruised and band-aid'd up. We went home to just...relax and play s'more card games, because everyone was utterly exhausted, and somehow during those two hours, Ciaran and I ended up getting back on good terms, somehow, which REALLY made my day, and the trip for me, because I've been wanting to fix things between us for four years now. I really dunno how it happened, we were playing card games and throwing cards and punching each other one minute, and the next everyone had left to do something else and left us chilling together on the floor in the hallway while he sang Irish songs to me (he's a good singer) and cuddled with me and occupied himself for a kinda weridly long time just rubbing my tummy, explaining the fascanation by just saying "You're -really soft-." XD Anywho, after that our entire grade ended up having a freaking indoor PICNIC because we were GOING to have one outside but it started raining. So we ate inside, and the cooks at J H were AWESOME and gave us yummy BBQ food--I feasted upon veggie burgers and potato salad and fruit. And this brownie that tasted like someone added a whole freaking bottle of Sherry. OH AND THEY GAVE US BACK LETTERS WE WROTE TO OURSELVES IN NINTH GRADE OH GAWD XDDD I was SUCH a depressing child; and I made myself cry a little because I had asked myself to pretty please make up with Ciaran, and I had JUST BEFORE THAT and I was kinda d'awwing over me. Everyone really enjoyed the letters. OH and this kid Lloyd accidently slept through the whole event cuz no one remembered to wake him, so Julian (my prom date--...I should prolly post pics of that, too, huh >3>) brought him food like a good friend. We returned just in time to watch America's Got Talent with Ms. Warner and a buncha girls in one common lounge in the dorms, before a random dance party ensued, where I heard my new current favorite song, which I'll provide a video for.
Click to viewYep. So. Enjoy this epic piece of music. Anyway, I finally managed to ACTUALLY LEARN the rules to Egyptian Cat-scratch, so that was good... oh, and I learned how to play Crazy Eights. Then bed.
Friday:
So I woke up reaaaaaally sore. It reaaaaaally sucked, too, because I got HABITAT AGAIN, surprise surprise, even though I signed up for making those lunches with Ms. Fibelman. But apparently over 30 other kids did, too cuz we were all so tired by this point xD So Rafe, Hudson and Olivia made our lunches; I know this because they were really territorial about the lunches they made. But I sucked it up, got out of bed with what I like to think was minimal complaining and wincing and went out to breakfast again for the same thing with Terrance, ShamySham and, unfortunately, Lainey. But I dealt with it, and we ate and hurried back to do our respective forms of community service. We managed to finish up TWO HOUSES! Oh...and at some point, Ciaran ended up going shirtless which was funny because he made a whole migila out of it by announcing "I'M GOIN ' SHIRTLESS, GAIS, CUZ I'M SO MANRY!" or something along the lines of that, and so everyone started talking about him negatively. Uhh...what else...Terrance ruined his hands some more, I bandaged them up, and then we all headed back early--like, around 1:30 I think, and we picked up snacks, rejoiced over the discovery that they're FINALLY starting to sell this Australian treat called Tim-Tams in the US, and then we loaded up the bus after a few too many group pictures of our grade smooshing together on the front steps of the dorms. Annnd that's about it! I really enjoyed it in the end.
TL;DR; if you ever get the chance to do Habitat for Humanity, it's a really rewarding experience!