Everyone just pretend to be normal, okay?

Well it's the end of another week in the Big Apple, and in some respects I've got very little to report, largely because I've spent the last few days being sociable; while it's very enjoyable, isn't much to write home about. Thursday was my second day of classes, which generally went well - other than being forced to fork out huge amounts of money for various text books - and I'm particularly excited about my New York Writers class although I have vast amounts of reading. Thursday night the MTV Video Music Awards hit the city, and through some ridiculous bit of luck a group of us managed to get our names on a guestlist for one of the after parties happening across the city. Unfortunately when we got there it turned out to be $30 guestlist or otherwise, so off we trooped in search of adventure - or specifically a bar in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, misnavigation of the subway and rubbish timing meant we spent the next two hours traveling without getting anywhere, so eventually in time honoured tradition we bought a crate of beers and took them back to the dorms to get drunk. As Monday is Labour Day here, we get a bank holiday, and as I don't have classes on either Tuesday or Friday, I was celebrating the start of a five day weekend, and the drinking went well passed the wee small hours of the morning until the rather larger hours of pre-lunch time.

Friday followed a similar theme, with a considerable lie in after the previous night's exertions. I met Mehreen in Union Square for dinner, and then headed on a ill fate hike across town to a jazz bar which we had to abandon when they insisted on carding everyone. Eventually we ended up in a fairly nice bar, after trekking through the pounding rain for twenty minutes - apparently we're catching the rather nasty tail end of hurricane Ernesto. Eventually the bar was abandoned and we headed back to the dorms for a few more drinks and random semi-political debate into the middle of the next morning. Saturday was mostly occupied with stealing other people's music, and sleeping off the previous evening, and a trip out into the storm to eat blueberry pie in a diner at 11pm - such an American thing to do, and such a New York time to be doing it. Despite a total lack of alcohol, I stayed up till the morning again talking to Kirsten, one of the exchange students from Idaho. After grabbing a hot chocolate at 7am we called it a night, and I woke up later on Sunday to discover it had at last stopped raining - which I celebrated by sitting in a cold, dark room with Mehreen - we saw Little Miss Sunshine the Union Square cinema.


I can't emphasise how good this films is. It's undoubtedly a feel good film, and it isn't the most thematically challenging, but it's genuinely very funny and heart warming without being nauseating or too obvious. Its definitely worth watching, if only for the scenes of the family pushing their bizarre yellow VW van into gear. Definitely my favourite completely dysfunctional family. After the film, I met some NSE students at our local non IDing bar for a drinks, and we were introduced to some male friends of one the girls. I have to say, apart from the very occasional iffy comment, no one has said anything here that's bothered me until this evening - when the worst I heard was one of the guys announcing that America essentially equated to the whole world. Some political conversations did start up, and I had to be careful not to go straight into Bush abuse mode. A comment that was repeated several time was that regardless of whether people liked him or not, Americans should support Bush as he is their president for better or worse, an idea that I personally think is a load of nonsense. Just because every 4 years you have a slight hope of influencing the presidential selection doesn't mean you shouldn't question them all of the rest of the time. Or in Bush's case, resent them bitterly. This was also the first time in a very long time that I came across any pro-war sentiment, and several people have either friends or family in the military, which made my usual glib comments about people joining the army being idiots rather inappropriate. It's the first time in a while I've felt a bit awkward about voicing my views because I didn't really want to get anyone too worked up, and the range of opinions does seem a lot more dramatic than at home. Things became a lot more interesting once we left the bar - and the rather immature group of boys (I was later informed that despite looking much older they were all only 18 so perhaps they're excused slightly) and the four other girls and I continued our debate about ethnic minorities. A lot of interesting things were said, and it does feel like the situation here is very different to home - the history of slavery seems bizarrely prominent in everyone's mind here, which just seems a rather strange way to look at things. In any case, I've managed for the fourth day in a row to watch the sun go down and come back up again - being nocturnal is all very well until classes start again, so I'm going to try and get some sleep before the day begins in earnest.