Last days in Yankee territory

Long time no see!

My journey sadly had to come to an end. Right now I'm back home in Denmark, chilling at my parents' house. There are a few good things about being home though. It's really nice to see everybody again and I was kind of getting near bankruptcy :P

Anyways, after Vegas Hugo and I flew to Philly. We stayed there for one night before we took the bus to New York the next day (Friday June 4). Hugo got off in Newark, New Jersey to take the plane home to France but I still had almost a week left. I had a hostel for one night in Upper Westside, Manhattan. Saturday I met with a good friend from Bloomsburg and we took the ferry out to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The weather was nice although it was very warm and humid.

Ellis Island is where all the immigrants used to enter America but now it's been made into a museum.

It was very interesting. I learned that there's more than 800,000 people in the US with Danish descent. There was also an area with artifacts donated from families who entered the US through Ellis Island. I got really exited when I saw a display case with stuff from a Danish family. But when we got close we found out that it was empty because they were doing some cleaning and preservation. So my bad luck from Vegas continued...

However, I did find and old Danish Krone from 1918. The only thing stopping me from taking it with me was that thick glass around it ;)

After an hour or two at the island, we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.

We didn't have tickets to get into the statue because they were sold out when we booked the ferry but it was nice to go out there and walk around.


Sunday I had to take the train back to Manhattan where I had another hostel for two nights before meeting up with Lotte whom I was flying home with.

This hostel was located one block from Times Square and it was way better than the first one. The first one was hot as hell. The AC didn't work properly and therefore I didn't sleep at all the first night. But here everything was perfect and the bathrooms were nice too. So if anybody is going to NY, I would definitely recommend you to stay at the Big Apple Hostel! I had two cool roommates, one from Brazil and one from Belgium. So we hung out for a few days. And finally I got to walk through Central Park. It only took me 3 visits to do that :)

Lotte came Tuesday and we had to go home Thursday. We went to a stand up club Tuesday night which was quite alright. Wednesday we went to an outlet mall in New Jersey. Everything was so cheap so I went as crazy as I could baring in mind that my suitcases were already pretty full. In a few hours I got 8 t-shirts, 3 shirts, 3 pair of shorts, 1 pair of pants and a sweater. I got it all for $300. In Denmark that would probably have cost me more than $1,000 since most of it was Banana Republic, Levi's and Calvin Klein... Why don't we have outlets like that here? Anyways, I managed to fit everything into my suitcases and Thursday night we boarded the plane to London. From there we flew to Hamburg, Germany where Lotte's parents were waiting for us.

Here we are in Hamburg at what would be 7AM Bloomsburg time... I didn't sleep much on the planes but funnily enough I wasn't that tired.

The weather was warm and humid like NY but as soon as we crossed the border I was like "What is going on here!?"

It rained all the way home :(

As I said, I'm currently at my parents' house. I think I'll do another post once I get back to Aarhus. Maybe I'll take some pictures so my readers in the US can see how I live here in Denmark. But other than that I don't know how active I'll be on this blog anymore. I don't know what else to write about...

So make sure to tune in some time next week for what could be the last post!

Take care :)

New York again :)

Today is the day after Block Party, which was crazy btw, so this post might be a bit foggy ;)

Anyways, my timer woke me up at 4.30am. At 6 am we left Bloom. I pretty much slept all the way in the bus but I woke up a few times. One time, this was what I saw:

But I was so tired that I just fell asleep again... The next time I woke up, the view was a bit better!

Concert, TEAM USA is in the ropes, and NY!

As I wrote earlier I went to a concert with a band called Jack's Mannequin last Friday. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so I can't show you any pictures from it... I had never heard about the band before but they were actually not half bad - I just wish I had taken some time to at least get to know one of their songs! But the best thing about the concert was the guys who warmed up... They were two guys on stage, one with a guitar singing and another playing on a box. The guy who was singing is called Kevin Hammond and I will bet a lot of money that he is going to make it big one day, or at least I hope so :)


Soccer
Up until Wednesday last week, Team USA was undefeated in the indoor soccer tournament but we only managed to make a draw. So, technically we were still undefeated but tonight we lost the game 4-3 against the number one team. If we had won, we would have been number one in the league but because of the loss we are now 3rd :(


On a side note, I had another exam today in Sociology and even though I only looked over the slides yesterday, I still managed to get a perfect 100 :) So far, the exams have been pretty easy but this one was by far the easiest one! But I shall be the last one to complain about that since I'm on exchange and wanna be able to a lot besides school...


The Big Apple
I also got the plan for the NY trip on Thursday:

6:00am: Depart Bloomsburg
9:30am: Arrive United Nations
10:15am - noon: United Nations Tour and Briefing
Noon - 2:00pm: Lunch at Rockefeller Center on your own
2:00pm - 3:00pm: Travel to Battery Park and Wall Street
3:30pm - 5:30pm: Metropolitan Museum of Art
5:30pm - 7:30pm: Dinner on your own
8:00pm - 11:00pm: Broadway Musical - Memphis (anybody heard if this is good)
2:00am: Return to Bloomsburg


So, it's gonna be a long day but 50$ for the whole thing was just too good an offer! The only thing that is bothering me a little bit is that my new favorite singer, Kevin Hammond is playing at a place called Piano's in NY that night at 9pm and it's free to get in - but I guess that a Broadway show isn't too bad after all ;)

Just to finish off with something that looks good, here is another song by Mr. Hammond:

Easter dinner at Dr. G's

What I didn't tell you in my last post is that I went to an Easter dinner at Dr. Ganahl's last Sunday. He's my professor in Online Journalism and PR: Theory and Practice and he is by far the coolest professor I have ever had but it was still kind of weird to get invited to his house. Apparently, he always invites his international students for dinner on Easter. This year I'm his only one though so he told me that I could bring a friend. So, I asked Hugo and he was game.

But as I said, it still felt kind of weird because there's no tradition for doing that kind of things back home in Denmarkistan. And, if any of my other professors had asked me, I would probably have been like "Oh shoot, I already have other plans" :) But Dr. G is something else, so I figured 'what the hell'...

Dr. Ganahl is the gentleman to the right

We got there at a around 5pm. The weather was really nice so we had some healthy snacks and wine outside in the sun. Then we went inside for the dinner. It was really good actually. His wife had cooked some ham, some kind of seasoned potatoes, vegetables etc.

But it was a good time even though it was a bit awkward at times but everybody there was very interested in France and Denmark, so we always had something to talk about.

By the way

New York, New York

Hi folks!

Last weekend I went on a road trip to the city that never sleeps with 6 other international students. We were Lotte (Denmark), Päivi (Finland), Sam (England), Eduardo (Mexico), Hugo (France), Thomas (Belgium) and good old Razzle Dazzle! We left Friday at noon and were home again Sunday at 8pm.

It finally happened!

Sooner or later it was bound to happen... I have maxed out my credit card which means I have spent more than $4,000 the past 30 days - oh mama! It doesn't make it any better that I'm going to New York for the weekend! I still have money in my account, don't get me wrong :P So I just hope that my back up card still works as it is only a Visa Electron. Otherwise, I would have to use the card I have connected to my poker account - but I don't want to touch my bank roll before I absolutely have to.

So far the plans for the weekend is to go to the Empire State Building and to go to see the NY Islanders against Tampa Bay Lightning (ice hockey). I can't wait to see the game since there's a Danish guy, Frans Nielsen, playing for the Islanders. Other than that I think the must sees are Central Park and Ground Zero.