Voices – Wesleyan Student Blogs

First, I made you guys a PLAYLIST for you to listen to while you’re reading this. Whoa. Now that’s the full blog experience. The cool thing about this playlist is that if my friends heard it, they’d say (sarcastically) “Wow! These songs? Cade put these songs on a playlist? Surprising!” But, since you guys don’t know me, hopefully instead you’ll be like “Wow! These songs are so cool! Thanks, new friend!” Actually, my friends like my music taste, they just see through my “I listen to everything” facade and realize that I really only listen to like the same 200 songs over and over. And put them on mix CDs for people.

Click to play here.

Anyway, over break, I’ve done a ton of things.  To summarize:

• went HOME. HOME is fantastic. HOME has such glorious things as: my parents (I love my parents a lot), a kitchen full of ingredients, my brothers (also lovable people), my guinea pig (totally lovable), and wi-fi for when I feel like ignoring all those other things.
• baked a lot of things. Among these things: cheesecake, chocolate loaf cake, chocolate cream pie.
• went to DC for Christmas with my mom’s side of the family and my grandma’s birthday party.
• went to Seattle to see my boyfriend.
• returned HOME. Developed some serious insomnia. Blogged a lot on my personal blog.
• and went to New York for two days!

It is that last bullet point that I’m going to seriously expand on. You ready? Yeah. You are. Read it after the cut!

Yesterday, January 20th

1:15AM: realize that I am leaving for New York in 6 hours which means I have to wake up in 5 hours. Continue looking through cookbook as though nothing is wrong

3AM-5AM: pack frantically. Text/IM with boyfriend (who valiantly stayed up with me) as he begs me to please, please, pleeeease pack. Take occasional breaks to watch videos on youtube. Oops.

5:03AM: go to sleep

6:15AM: wake up. Haha. Hit the snooze button on my phone.

6:34AM: actually wake up! Finish packing, eat lovely breakfast that my mom made for me (omg) (homecooked meals = something to miss at college).

7:12AM: realize that my keys and WesID are NOT in the tote bag that I had ignorantly assumed they were. Frantically rip apart entire room.

7:38AM: find keys in backpack. LOL @ self.

7:39AM: leave Gettysburg (Ghettosburg) PA behind. Roadtrip with Dad commences.

11:40AM: arrive in NYC! Unload lots of things (including a printer) into hotel room. Perhaps moving back to Wes via NYC was not such a great idea after all? Perhaps I shouldn’t pack so much stuff?

12:00PM: leave hotel to meet up with my friend Parker, who goes to Grinnell. We met in high school in Barcelona (Spain) and have remained friends ever since (awww). Am super excited to see him. He says to meet at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park

12:28PM: arrive at aforementioned location. Have previously assumed that Shake Shack is an indoor location since, ya know, it’s January. Walk around Madison Square Park for a while, looking for Shake Shack sign. None is evident. Look into Madison Square Park and realize that the Shake Shack is in fact an outdoor location.

12:34PM: sit down at table near Shake Shack, waiting for Parker.

12:54PM: escape into nearby Starbucks. It’s frickin cold, yo.

12:56PM: Parker texts me, saying to meet him at Shake Shack.

12:57PM: Parker realizes the Shake Shack is an outdoor location.

1:06PM: Parker and I take our Shake Shack bags and return to Starbucks. Ha.

1:07PM-3:28PM: Parker and I sit in Starbucks (obnoxiously taking up a table) and talking about friends from Spain and our “new lives” at college. For a while, we talk about Barca. If you’re not a Barca fan, and it’s because you don’t know what that is, that’s okay. Click here. We can still be friends. If you’re not a Barca fan and it’s because you’re a Madrid fan, that’s just not okay. You need to rethink your life. Anyway, it is great to see Parker I have missed him a lot!

3:29PM: I realize I’m going to be exceptionally late to meet my friend Matt and his girlfriend Talia because I need to go back to my hotel yet. Mad scramble back to hotel (getting lost along the way) and then to meet Matt and Talia on the lower east side (New Yorkers: am I supposed to capitalize names of neighborhoods? Love, a country girl who doesn’t know better). Get super lost again.

5:00PM: FINALLY arrive at tea place where I am meeting Matt and Talia. Matt goes to Wesleyan and is in VD with me, his girlfriend Talia goes to a different school but is still a wonderful person. Half kidding.

5:00PM-6:25PM: hang out with Matt and Talia in tea place, discussing elephants/people/VD/our winter breaks/lots of other things. This is a very fun and chill time. Annoyingly, the tea place thinks it is a club (they also serve drinks that are not tea) and is playing hip-hop-y music and using colorful strobe lights. We are very confused by this, as we are the only three people there.

yes, I did just google “happy elephant.” SOPA, whatchu gonna do about it? Talia’s favorite animal is the lovely elephant.

6:26PM: we walk to a really cool vegetarian Thai place that Talia found. And eat dinner there (it’s dinner time, duh) which is great. For any foodies out there: we got a noodle roll filled with radishes (very good, despite all three of us saying we were “not radish people.”), fried dumpling-y things filled with spinach, and then I had Pad See-Ew with veggies and egg.

8:03PM: we leave the Thai place and walk to a metro stop while discussing “friend break-ups.” These, says Matt, are a “girl thing.” Do guys not break up with their friends? Sometimes it needs to be done… Mysterious.

8:12PM: I say bye to Matt and Talia ( ) and then possibly go buy a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery and eat it by myself. But this is just speculation.

FAST-FORWARD THROUGH A LOT OF INSOMNIA AND THEN SOME SLEEP

Today, January 21st

12:20PM: leave hotel with Dad, in search of some sushi. The plan is to walk to Grand Central (since I’m meeting Solomon and Elizabeth there) and hopefully find sushi on the way. No such luck, we end up eating sushi in the basement of the station. Which is actually really good sushi, try it if you’re ever there!

12:46PM: [conversation while walking through Grand Central]

Me: Dad, do you want to meet my friends?

Dad: Um, no.

Me: Oh. Well. There’s Solomon! HIIIIII SOLOMON! Dad, this is Solomon!

[they shake hands]

Solomon: Nice to meet you!

Dad: Okay! Well! Have fun! Bye!

[Dad escapes before Elizabeth gets there]

Solomon: Was that your Dad?

12:56PM: Elizabeth arrives! Hooray! We set out in search of ramen.

1:15PM: we find ramen. And eat it. It’s good. This is to be expected, since it’s ramen. Solomon spends some time talking to the empty space in the booth next to me which normally would be occupied by my BFF-sky (not a term I actually use) Michael, who is currently in Japan.

2:30PM: we leave ramen place and walk back to Grand Central. On the way, Elizabeth casually mentions that we will be passing Crumbs (a bakery) if Solomon wants to “get coffee.”

2:40PM: we “get coffee” at Crumbs. By get coffee, I mean that Solomon gets an iced coffee and chats with the store-employee-person while Elizabeth and I contemplate (for a very long time) the baked goods. We finally decide on a chocolate-peanut butter cupcake. And also get coffee.

2:50PM: the cinnamon shaker explodes into my coffee, making it approximately 23% cinnamon. Hmm. We sit down at a table, and begin to eat the cupcake. When Solomon takes a bite and says “What is in this??” I reply “Are you allergic to peanuts?!?” and Elizabeth says “No, it means he reeaaaallly likes it!” Awww, #relationships.

3:12PM: Solomon points out that we should really head back to the train station if we want to have time to go to a museum. This is true.

3:28PM: we get off the train at 28th street. I know that it is 3:28PM because Solomon asks if it is a coincidence that we are getting off at 28th street at 3:28. Elizabeth says, definitively, “No.”

3:35PM: we arrive at the Museum of Sex. The gift shop is full of all kinds of things, and Solomon says it is “the dirtiest place he has ever been.” Elizabeth replies that hygiene-wise, it is actually quite clean.

3:40PM: we get inside the actual museum, at which point things become much less dirty! The museum itself is surprisingly… hmm. How to describe it? At some points it seems almost clinical. It is definitely very informative, and very well-researched. The exhibits are all intriguing, and when we get to the top floor it is an unexpected biology lesson! I didn’t get a chance to take the Biology of Sex course at Wesleyan, but the top floor exhibit on animal sexual behaviors at least gives us an overview of the subject. Super cool museum!

5:44PM: we leave the museum, at which point Solomon says he would like to go to his house and work on sketches for VD. Thus, we do that.

6PM-8PM: we don’t actually work on sketches for VD (sorry Kenny!) (our director) (and friend) (so it’s probably okay). Instead, we talk a lot and watch youtube videos and an episode of Parks and Rec.

8:01PM: Elizabeth suggests going to dinner at Subway, because she has a gift card to there. We do that.

8:08PM: We experience the creepiest, annoyingest, putting-olives-on-Elizabeth’s-sandwich-when-she-didn’t-ask-for-them-est Subway employees that we have ever seen. This is unfortunate.

8:44PM: Elizabeth and I leave Solomon behind (in his own neighborhood) to head downtown (me to my hotel and her to her house). We take the train together and talk about annoying people who do annoying things and mean things we would like to do to them in return. Proof that we are not very mean: most of these “mean things we’d like to do to them in return” are basically just defriending them on facebook.

9:00-9:45PM: I get really lost by myself and walk back to my hotel alone. In the dark/cold. Oh well. I possibly stop at Magnolia Bakery and get dessert by myself again. Purely speculation.

10:01PM: I realize this is what I’m going to write my next Voices blog post about. META.

ALSO, if you haven’t, you really need to read Solomon’s post below mine on the list of posts (must be actual term for this…). His music taste is fabulous. I mainly say this because it’s very similar to mine. Also, the post is about his favorite albums. Which is why I mention his music taste. Click here to see it!

Tags: adventures, awesome people, baking, barca, barcelona, cupcakes, family, friends, music, new york city, playlist, sketchy people, spain, subway, thai food