Day 2-4
Alright so I'll admit I'm a little behind, but what can I say? A lot of things have happened. So we'll take it one day at a time.
Sunday. Food shopping. We made the decision to travel down to 14th st. or Union Square as it’s more commonly known to Trader Joe’s. The store is great; prices are low and the food is like Whole Foods. The line however, wrapped around the store and we waited in line for almost just as long as we shopped. Being the eco-friendly young adult we are, we brought 6 tote bags, two of each of us. Oh the naivety. Although we had enough bags, we didn’t realize how heavy it would be. We trudged back to the subway and back home. Tired we proceeded to cook dinner on the one burner of the two burner hot plate we have. An hour and a half later we had rice pilaf, corn, and chicken breast. To conclude our Sunday we watched The Wedding Date on my laptop, haha which was difficult since the speakers weren’t loud enough.
Monday began with me nervously moving about the apartment while Em and Alyssa slept. By fate it seemed that Monday was placement auditions for A-K. I fretted about before walking over to Ailey, took a minute. We met in room 1C where they welcomed us and spilt us into 3 groups based on the amount/years of ballet training we had. 10+ years at 6 times a week with patterning, 5-10 at least 3 or 2 times a week, and 3 or less years of training. Naturally I went in the middle group despite the fact that I’ve been dancing for at least 13 years, I’m not stupid my ballet is nowhere where it should be. I became the blue group and number 199. I’m not going to go into extensive details about the auditions, but I will break them down.
Graham or as at Ailey what they like to call Modern. Having no experience we just had a little mini class in Graham while the people in my color group who did have experience went with another teacher to actually do a Graham class. I liked the little of Graham I saw, I’m thinking of taking a class at the Martha Graham school if they have open classes.
Next came ballet. Ugh. What a slight disaster that was. I was so shaky in arabesque and my developpes. Then when petite allegro came I was feeling more confindent, but what an ass am I to assume that. The combo was simple enough. Glissade, jete, passé releve, tombe pas da borre, glissade, assemble, contraton, soute arabesque, shasay, soute passé, shasay, soute arabesque, shasay assemble. The other side, but I got fumbled on the left when we did in small groups and then I got called out to do it again with some other people, and fumbled again. Ugh.
Horton was last, and sadly the worse. They said if you didn’t remember/know the fortifications to go in the group that sat down after the quick warm up of lunges, flat backs, and release swings. Of course on my paper I said I had Horton for a year twice a week and they put in the middle group. I admit that I didn’t remember the fortifications, but they still wanted to see me move.
To make a frustrating story short…I placed in Level 2 of 5 levels in Ballet, and In Graham and Horton I placed in Level 1 of 4 levels. I’m not surprised by Graham and Ballet is iffy because I know I’m not great at it. But I was hoping to be in at least Horton 2.
I met up with Em and Alyssa after making my schedule and we went off in a mini adventure. We stopped at Sephora at Columbus circle and I got my face did. Found a great foundation and the funny thing is that the girl who did my face dances at the Ailey School. Departing from Columbus circle we wondered down to Times Square. We stopped the MTV store which is slowly dying it looks. Bought some stickers. They had a vampire shirt I almost bought, but decided against it. From there we did the tourist thing of taking pictures of Times Square. I made a panoramic on my computer out of all the ones I took. Eventually came home and had dinner. My night to cook. I made ground turkey burgers with breadcrumbs in them with a salad and jasmine rice. Finished off the night with another movie; She’s the Man. I promise to soon dedicate one entire blog to Times Square and all that is happening there.
Yesterday, the best day so far. I slept in until 8:30 when Emily and Alyssa left and I had to lock the door behind them. We share one set of keys in case I didn’t mention that earlier. Sometime after that I showered and got ready to walk around by myself. I was in desperate need of wall putty. Walgreens and Office Depot didn’t have it the day before when we went. So I head to the Staples on 56th and something. With putty in hand and half of my goals for the day done, I walked to Times Square & the Sephora there. I promptly returned the blush named Orgasm that I had bought the day before for the Kat Von D eye shadow palate called Beethoven. With that done and it only being a little before 11 and not needing to be back at the apartment until 1. I proceeded to wonder around. I walked past a LOVE statue, Rockafella Center, NBC studios, and Bryant Park before ending at the location I had been mindlessly heading to 46th and 6th, the HBO building and store. Snagged a True Blood mug and poster and a Merlotte’s waitress shirt from True Blood. I came back home and had lunch with them, where we discussed the plans for the night.
See this is where some of you will think things got a little crazy, I might partially agree with you. Alright I will totally admit right now that I was freaking out a little bit in the giddy way us girls do sometimes. A couple of days before I moved here I was asked by this guy I chat with on Twitter to grab a slice of pizza when I arrived. It’s me we’re talking about, of course I said yes. So last night was the night. Em and Alyssa came with me to meet him at the W 4th st station. Upon actually coming face to face Em and Alyssa went exploring and Matt and I went exploring, on our own. The idea being if things got bad or weird I could bail saying my roommates needed the keys to the apartment, which in reality they had. Keep in mind I met up with Matt at 6. We walked heading downtown into SoHo to see his friend’s art gallery. Yes that’s correct art gallery. I should probably give a little background on him that I learned as we were walking and talking. When we met all I knew was his name was Matt, he was 29 and I had a vague idea of what he looked like from this MySpace photos. Matt apparently used to tour around with bands in his early twenties, then he started selling rare books, and then very shortly after 9/11 he and his ex-girlfriend, girlfriend at the time, left NYC for LA, where he opened his own art gallery. Sadly shit happened with a business partner and he moved back to NYC, Brooklyn to be exact, and is playing around between the art and rare book world as of now. But anyways back to his friend’s gallery. We arrived only to sadly find it closed. (I plan on taking Em and Alyssa to see it). The closed part of his friend’s gallery that we could see from the closed door was a Warhol I’d never seen before, some Matt’s own work on his friend’s desk and this gigantic cow statue that was painted black and had a pink skeleton painted on it. From there we walked through some more of SoHo and then over to Bowery St. All along the way we talked about various things and he told me different things about the part of the city we were in. We passed the New Museum, which looked very different then the brick buildings around it with its silver mesh metal sides. We then arrived at the pizza place he swears has the best pizza in the city, for the life of me I can’t remember the name, but I know what it looks like if I see it again. Unfortunately I have to cut a lot out of the story, due to the fact most of it is still a blur in my head.
Next we walked through part of the East Village and up to the Flat Iron. I love that building. From there to Chelsea on 8th. Walked by the Hotel Chelsea, which is the most beautiful building I’ve seen here yet. It’s also the place where Sid Nancy died and a bunch of other artists. Up past Penn Station and into the Garment District we continued on, him talking about the buildings and me asking questions. We arrived at me street, w 55th, and he asked if I wanted to go or keep walking. I was having such a fun time I agreed to keep walking. Walking past Lincoln Center we continued our journey uptown. We walked all the way up to W 96th and Broadway. From there we both agreed to begin walking back downtown. Along the way down Central Park West he showed me where John Lennon was shot. That building is beautiful. And our journey ended at W 55th when he walked to my building before deciding to walk home to Brooklyn, haha. So when I arrived back at the apartment it was close to 10:30. I spent at least 4 hours walking around the city and seeing a whole lot more than I expected too. In total we walked over 100 blocks. I sadly have blisters today which hurt, but last night was fun and I would continue to write but I have a hip hop master class at Ailey at 6 and still need to get dressed.