I’m so tired. We got back Mon night and then I had class this morning at 10. Which means I got up at 8. Not like it matters cuz I hardly slept at all since Wed! The new semester started so it was the first day for this course and I was really thinkin about not goin if I didn’t wake up in time. I did get there late (the tradition lives on!) but only about 5 mins, since they moved the class to another room and some other ppl were comin in late too. I think there’s only about 3 undergrads in this class!

Anyway...New York! It was some good times. I need to get sleep tho, my hrs have been so fucked up the past 4 days. Thurs night when I was still packin, I didn’t even sleep at all...so I was awake 48 hrs!! I’m surprised I didn’t go insane. Puttin my shit together took longer than I thought and there really was no point in gettin ready for bed when I’d just hafta get up in half an hr :P It was gettin around to 3:30 and I figured I’d at least get to lie on the floor and nap for an hr but I lost track of time and off I had to go! G picked us up to have us all get to her house for L’s dad to drive us to the airport. May I also mention how she locked us out of the house after she told us to go OUT of the garage and around to the front instead of just goin in thru house. No keys, no garage door opener. Don’t ask. She had to wake up Heather on her cell to come open the front door...this whole thing includes not wakin up her parents and settin off the burglar alarm. Yes.

Haven’t even gotten out of the neighbourhood yet and crap happens :P At least the line-ups weren’t that horrible cuz we had e-tickets and security was actually drama-free. OK so me and flyin...it’s not so much that I’m scared, it’s more like anxiety at some points. I just don’t enjoy turbulence. Those bumps and dips feel like a roller coaster and that feeling is all good and fun when you’re on an actual roller coaster but NOT when you’re thousands of feet in the air on a hundred ton thing of metal and fuel and goin god knows what speed. That ‘weeeee!’ feeling when you dip is not cool on a plane...cuz you know it’s not necessarily a bad thing but it’s damn sure not a GOOD thing. Anyway, I’d like to think I was fine except for takeoff and those friggin dips of course. The trip was supposed to be about an hr and a half but it took like 50 mins. So the little time plus the flyin anxieties didn’t let me get any sleep. So from Wed night, from the car ride to the airport, to the plane ride to NY, I got maybe 20 mins...to rest my eyes, not even to actually nap. Our hotel was in Flushing and it was kinda close to Laguardia, not too bad. We called the hotel and got a shuttle to pick us up. Our driver was a cool guy, told us how to get into Manhattan and stuff.

Our flight got in at 10 somethin but hotel check-in wasn’t til 3 so we had a whole lotta time to waste. We stored our bags at the hotel and went to find somethin to do. We went to Macy’s, ate at Taco Bell, and walked around the streets. We went back to the hotel to see if we get into our room yet but they still weren’t ready for early check-in. We chilled in the lounge in the lobby (my god there is NOTHING on tv during the holidays...damn Monk marathon!). We all pretty much napped and then they wanted to go walk around and shop some more or whatever. I got the least sleep out of all of us so I was enjoyin the down time. They’re like, are you cool bein here alone? I’m like, yeah I’ll be dozin. So I slept sittin in a leather sofa chair. I couldn’t believe an hr had passed when they came back. Next thing I knew they were there wakin me up :P

At least our room was ready. We pretty much chilled for the rest of the day, walked around the hotel. For New Yr’s eve we were goin to Times Square so we stopped by a BK for dinner and a bathroom stop cuz we weren’t gonna be sittin, eatin, or peein for the rest of the night.

Lemme just say that NYC has some confusing ass subway system! We took the 7 into the city and that’s easy but the rest, I don’t even wanna think about, just lookin at the map is complicated. And they do a Metropass thing, which is pretty cool if you think about it. We should have that here...tho it does have it’s problems, since Shy got stuck at the turnstile almost every time she went to swipe, haha.

Times Square was CRAZY. I don’t even know how to say it. That was somethin to remember, believe that. All chaos, hilarious chaos. Cops, horses, mobs of ppl, crowd rushers, drunkys, apartment flashers, locals, Britons, Aussies, HKers,...insane. We watched the ball drop and all that. After the whole thing was over, there was SO MUCH CRAP all over the place. I’ve never seen so much garbage in the streets. And everybody left at the same time, so it was wave after wave of wall-to-wall ppl movin thru the city all over again. Blah blah blah, there was the karaoke place/bar, the 4 am takeout restaurants, the bar in the hotel lounge...the night was all a blur. We all lost our minds, haha.

So that was Fri night. I don’t even know what time we went to sleep. And even tho we were on vacation and you don’t really have any reason to get up early, I still got no proper sleep. L and G wanted to go shoppin in the morning cuz they’re fucked up like that and Shy went with cuz she was up already and tagged along. So I didn’t really get to sleep in at all, I was just lyin in bed still when they left but I got up and took a shower right after. They were goin into Manhattan so I figured they’d be a while. Got myself presentable, called home, called Brian til my phone card time ran out, went out and walked around the streets to see what the lil stores had. Got a pack of disposable razors at the dollar store, score haha (Gillette...from Russia!)...gotta be silky smooth for the night. I went into Macy’s for a sec, this n’ that stores, Duane Reade, some liquor store.

The goal for the trip was to have as much American stuff as possible, as in stuff we don’t have at home...at least that I've seen...so I got some Blimpie for lunch. 3 things we missed food-wise: NY cheesecake, street dog, and White Castle! Damn! I took my food back to the hotel so I could eat it in the room but when I got up there the maid was in there cleanin so I had to go back down and eat it in the lounge :P I got thru half of it and went back up and she was done and doin the next room. I smiled and she said hi...she was like a real J.Lo in Maid in Manhattan, haha. Young Latin chick and everythin. I feel bad tho...cuz she was cleanin up our shit and it makes me feel like I’m rich and lazy. I know ppl who clean the hotels work hard and they don’t get paid all THAT much (am I wrong?) and it’s pretty much labour and most likely dealin with gross things like wet towels and toilets etc. Much respect to them. Props to our maid esp cuz she did a damn good job...even neatly wrapped the cords around our blow dryer and flatiron and put them on the table. And we got extra stuff :)

Finished the rest of my lunch and watched tv, listened to the radio (I’ve always been jealous NY got z100 and Hot 97), and took a short nap. The girls came back and we checked out what they got. They went insane at Victoria Secret.

I really don’t remember the sequence of what happened Sat-Mon cuz I was messed up, I dunno. We hit a club where Tony Touch was spinnin, took the subway a lot, ordered what might’ve been the biggest medium pizza we’d ever seen (“You can slap somebody out cold with it.”), went to some restaurant/bar called Bennigan’s, hit a Starbucks for an AM trip to Manhattan (as in Ass-early Morning), took the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, saw the Empire State Building, Rockfeller Center Plaza, NBC studios, MTV studio, Times Square about 3 times, Radio City Music Hall, Ground Zero (it’s so quiet around there, it’s kinda eerie), Central Park (def a summer place, not winter), Madison Square Garden, and Canal Street! Gotta love the knockoffs! L and G went bananas of course. It’s so dl gettin a fake Louis Vuitton bag, it’s hilarious. Like that woman that just came up to us, lifted her long winter coat up like she was gonna flash us and showed us a purse we could buy, hahaha. The haggling is funny. “8 dollars.” Bwahahaha. Shy can’t bargain for the life of her. Gotta do Chinatown...Canal Street is crazy cool. I was gonna get Ralph the fragrance for $25 but didn’t end up gettin it. What else...a buncha stores in Times Square, Victoria Secret again, the Manhattan Mall, had Charley’s for lunch, saw Trump Tower, went up and down 5th Ave, passed by Shea stadium. We were super thirsty some night and raided the Duane Reade down the street from our hotel comin home. I got all American stuff, hee...some Arizona energy shot drink, fruit punch vitamin water, and a caffeine-free Pepsi can for the collection, haha (it said New York on it)...and to try it too :P For souvenirs, I got a shot glass, a black NY top, and a blue C train teddy bear! Didn’t wanna spend a lot. I would’ve wanted to go to NYU, the Met, MOMA, or the Guggenheim tho but we didn’t have the time to do those. I wanted to go to NYU just to get a shirt from the store...yeah, even tho I don’t go there, haha.

I left with a split nail (not a wimpy broken nail, like a rip down into the nail bed!), a scraped mouth, and a cut finger. How I got any of these, I have no idea. Haha, wasted? NYC is some sick times! With the cut on my finger...I brushed my hair off my face and I felt somethin wet. I look down at my hand and see blood on my finger and I thought it was my face that was bleedin, like the area around my eye. I put a tissue to it and there was blood. But the whole time, it was actually my ring finger. I got it on my face cuz I touched my hand to my eyebrow area :P

Ummmm...Mon morning, we got up and had a couple hrs before we goin to the airport to head home. Checked outta the hotel and put our stuff in storage, did the shoppin thing, ate, came back and got a shuttle to the airport. Laguardia wasn’t bad either, lines were OK...but our flight was kinda late cuz the planes ahead of ours came pushed us back. We still got to Pearson in about the same time tho. The flight back was better cuz I was alright this time...got some chill-out trance mix goin on the flight radio earphones :) L’s dad picked us up. Oh yeah, while she was gone, her dad or brother took her car and nobody realized til L looked at the trunk as we loaded up our stuff, that someone fuckin stole her Honda sign! Who does that?? So ghetto. Scratched the paint too. Honestly, that’s lame.

I got home around 9. It was madness. I love NYC, def gotta go back and do it proper. I’d say it’s like T.O. but American...it’s both dirtier and more ghetto but more upscale too. I could live there. Ppl kept askin me about things as if I lived there. I'm like, cool...I seem like a New Yorker, haha.