Weekend: Oct 13-15

Oh it was a crazy long weekend. This is probably cause I'm in school less days then I'm out of it (tues, wed, thurs). What made it especially nice, in the long run, is that I worked all week on a prospectus for IED Middle East class and turned it in on Thursday only to be told that it was due this Thursday. So I asked the prof for early critique and I'm somewhat ahead of the game. With just my basic reading to do (which I usually complete a few hours before class) I'm just brimming with time.

Friday during the day I met up with Melinda Jaffe! Melinda and I were very close during high school, we were friends from camp. Though we haven't' spoken in about 5 years or so, we decided to get together and had such a great time! Melinda is cute as a button, she's studying speech-language pathology at NYU, and dating a great guy. It's just really great to have someone who is in the same place as me in a lot of ways so close; we have the same sort of Jewish background, we're both from Chicago, we're both trying to figure out NY and want to run around together. I'm really looking forward to hanging out a lot more!
Pictured: Melinda, courtesy Facebook

Friday night, usually a pub night at The Pub in my dorm. This Friday was especially special because it was American Culture Hour! Every month or so I-House residents prepare a series of skits, music, food, and good times in general in order to learn about a specific country. Since about 30% of the residents here are American, and we're a super power with nuclear capability, we got to go first! I had a pre-party with Prithvi, he came over for dinner of curry. Being Indian, and a consumer of actual curry, he was very kind to me and only butted-in when it came to adding more spice and he let me put my beloved pineapple in. We then headed down to Cultural Hour where we met up with other friends and got samples of American food: stew, sweet potatoes, corn bread, pecan pie, and of course sweet tea. Then we sat for the show, which featured two American and one foreigner on a road trip of America. They started in New England, then headed South, towards the Southwest, stopped in California, went to Alaska and Hawaii, through Midwest and back to NY. In each area they either focused on scenery (New England leaves in Autumn, Midwest was a lot of cows and corn), music played by a full band (jazz down south, blues grass, blues in Chicago), language (Southern and Californian accents, and Hawaiian pidgin), or games (Alaskan kicking game, which got the Inuit performer who went from the floor to 12 feet in the air a lot of phone numbers), or even American traditional dancing, the Charleston! Then we headed down to The Pub which had been turned into a Western Saloon. It featured $1 Beers and Whiskey Shots that were dispensed from plastic guns and shot into your mouth. It was a very good time, and I hung out with the normal crowd (Suzana, Prithvi, Imre, Cyrus) and some new people (Lithuanian pool guy, French dart person, TC girl in early ed).

Saturday morning I wasn't feeling so hot. I was up at 8:30 am and had a strong need to call people. Obviously no one was awake in the US, so I called good old Yohoshua! He wasn't able to talk too much, because his family, the Harmonious Harris Household, is currently visiting! So I pretty much did nothing all day and awaited the next party that night. That night was Brittany's house warming and so I went up to Washington Heights (ghetto) by taxi you best believe. I got to Brittany's beautiful apartment and hung out a bit with her flatmate and her boyfriend, Greg, while noshing on the Puerto Rican food and drinking fantastic sangria.

Pictured: Brittany, Armen, Me. Photo courtesy of Vinnie
I pretty much hung out with our TC friends, Armen and Mike. This was largely due to the fact that the rest of the invitees were the roommate's friends, and it felt sort of like a bad high school reunion with too much alcohol. One girl pulled out a 40 (I haven't' seen a 40 since that one weekend back in California at David's going away party, and that's whole 'nother story). I had brought a bottle of wine, and I assumed this too was a type of wine and I asked if she was going to pass it around. Ohno, this was for her, and I said "Oh it lasts you all night?" and she said "It lasts me an hour" and indeed it did. She went on to have a lot more to drink and ended up kicking over the cat water bowl and pouring beer on herself in the middle of a conversation with me (conversation isn't quite the term for the rambling I was trying to decipher). So, good times! Armen and I took the train home, which wasn't a problem except Armen, who's a pretty muscle-y Armenian with chest hair that would embarrass an Italian, kept telling me we were going to be mugged and killed. But we weren't, and I went on to Sunday...
Pcitured: Armen, Me, Mike, bottom Greg & Brittany

When I met up with Shira! We had lunch at our favorite tea place, Alice's Tea Cup. Then we did some Israeli-inspired shopping at Sabon for soaps and candles and on to Lush, recommended by Yohoshua and I made her buy the stuff I wanted for myself (mmmm, massage bars). I helped her do her grocery shopping and helped her with her bags home. There we hung out.

I had a great weekend, and now it's a Monday, and I want my weekend to continue! I'm awaiting Brittany to come over and help me eat Shira's pumpkin bread and walk around the park.