New York

My red eye flight to New York wasn't pretty. Turns out a child can cry continuously (continuously!) for roughly 5 hours. You'd think they would literally dehydrate and die. You'd HOPE they would dehydrate and die. In any case I arrived at JFK at about 5:30am in the morning and groggily made my way to Brooklyn to my friend Kenny's place. As a comedian/model Kenny works odd hours so the timing wasn't too terrible. He had passed out the night before so it took some work to wake him. ha.

I've been to New York before when I studied in Miami so I didn't really feel any particular need to see the sights again - instead preferring to catch up with old friends. Having said that, this time I was living in Brooklyn (a suburb just outside of Manhattan) so in a way what I was experiencing in terms of surroundings WAS new. I know in my first blog I said I wasn't going to harp on about people you guys don't know but my main goal in NYC was to mostly see people. I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

I met up with :

Kenny (The nice guy who let me stay at his place in Brooklyn. We had a lot of brunch and ... other stuff)
Dereck (Flew from Chicago to come see me! Spent 24 hours in NYC then flew home)
Grace (Up in NYC working and visiting her boyfriend)
Goob (Just moved to NYC and is currently funemployed. We drank.)
Stef (Originally from New York working for Pandora. Best new relationship story ever)
Rose (Also originally from New York. Recently met Bob Loblaw.)

(This took too long to make)   

Super fun.

Tell you what else was fun? Kenny lives really close to a whole bunch of Hasidic Jewish people. Back in Melbourne I lived in sort of the Jewish centre of town but this was next level stuff. Dereck and I thought it was some kind of holiday but a nice old man just said that it was simply Saturday. I'm trying to word how many there were without being racist or offensive. Nah you get it.

Brunch seems to a big thing in NYC and pretty much just involves people getting smashed on mimosas from about 11am. Some people say it's only brunch on the weekends but I beg to differ. Everyday was a weekend for me. On that note, I found that both my sleeping schedules and my diet did take a turn for the bizarre whilst in New York. I was eating really bad food a good majority of the time and sleeping from 2/3am to 11am or so. Case in point, on the final day Kenny and I woke up late then had fried chicken and waffles for brunch. See? Brunch is a big thing.

(Kenny modelling the meal - not that he needed to it was amazing)

Weather wise it was pretty chilly. I bought an awesome bright red jacket in Portland which kept me warm and highly visible during daylight hours. Generally though I was fine and had no problems wandering the streets which was actually a lot of fun. It was cool to see new places and equally enjoyable seeing and remembering places I had been before last time. Central Park isn't as nice when all the trees are devoid of leaves though I will say.

I was wondering to myself as I walked around the streets whether I could live in New York and I came to the conclusion that I do have the fortitude to pack up and go but ultimately I would probably have to be a teacher and teachers get paid peanuts in the states. Put that with stupidly high rent and all of a sudden it hardly seems worth it. I love Melbourne so at the moment I'll stick to that.

I'm now in Lisbon, Portugal. I realised on the plane that I had, in no way, prepared for my stay in Portugal aside from organising a hostel 2 days beforehand. Every time I want to speak another language my brain just throws Japanese at me which is possibly the LEAST useful language to be using here. I've got some awkward fumbling of words ahead of me!