Stop the World, I Want to Get On

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Oh those first few days in New York City

I promised quite a few people that I would keep them updated throughout this New York adventure so people better be reading this! First of all, today was my birthday, so Chase made me breakfast, and I left for the day with the other girls that go to my internship. For purposes of not getting into any trouble, I won't mention any specifics about my internship just in case.

Anyway, I take the 1 train to the shuttle, and then walk to my internship. It takes about 40 minutes to get there, but it really isn't too bad. The Metro pass was so worth every 104 dollars. Even as painful as it was to fork out that money.

So far every day we've gotten lunch at some awesome places. On our first day we went to the Shake Shack of course. I was a first timer and extremely pleased with the outcome. The second day we went to Chipotle since it is pretty much right across the street. We have that in Utah so that's nothing exciting but that might become a weekly standard. Today we went to this somewhat obscure health food place, which conveniently didn't put prices on the wall menus. Twelve dollars later I had a Rosemary turkey, brown rice, quinoa, spinach and guacamole bowl. Gosh this place is expensive.

Now it's time to tell you all about our first dangerous NY experience. It was, conveniently, Chase's first time ever on the subway. We were with a fairly big group of interns when a loud black man walked on the train and shouted that he was handicap and needed to sit down. A kind girl stood up to let him sit, which he did in a way that did not look handicap at all, so the girls sitting across from him, a girls softball team, decided to comment on it. He then declared that he would give $5 to whoever gave him his seat, to which the girl said it wasn't necessary. That should be the end of the story, right? But this guy was apparently "on" something because he could not leave it at that. One of the girls on the softball team then took off her hood under which was her natural hair. He then started commenting on how he loved her hair and how pretty she was, and not exactly in a respectful manner. This girl, to put it nicely, had lots of personality and spunk. (She was the one commenting on him not being handicapped.) She replied that she was a lesbian and that she didn't like men, and he responded by calling her a very rude name. Then her friend started to stick up for her and it turned into a loud and heated argument. It was seriously amazing how quickly everyone that was near them moved to the other side of the train. It was like they had seen this situation before.... I was getting super nervous but we were far enough away that we didn't really need to move any further, and I started squeezing Chase's hand pretty hard. Two guys were sitting near this, and both of them had metal softball bats. Later we found out that they were the coaches for the girls' softball team. One of them, a skinny white guy with stringy hair got up and tried to calm down the black guy and stand in front of the softball team. I'm not sure what was said, but the black guy did not like it. He actually started yelling and shoving the white guy, who was just trying to protect his team. As the black guy started swinging at the white guy, the white guy was just taking it, not reacting or hitting him back, which is saying something since he was holding a metal bat. The tension in the train car was so intense.

After what seemed like forever, everyone was yelling at the black guy to get off the train, and finally it stopped and the doors opened so he walked out, still yelling back and forth with the black girl, who was unintentionally egging him on the entire time. He passed by the door that was closer to us and and started turning around to keep yelling. Chase didn't want him to get back on the train and there was only women standing by that door so he got up to make sure he didn't get back on. The black guy then started yelling at everyone who was blocking him and spit at Chase, but missed and hit some lady next to him. During all this time the conductor kept the doors open and didn't move the train! Duh! Close the doors! I was terrified that he was going to go after Chase but luckily he didn't and the train finally moved. I was shaken up after all of this. Chase made everyone laugh by commenting that this was the first time he'd ever ridden on the subway. Thankfully what could've been a dangerous situation become something we could all laugh about. Ok, nervously laugh about.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Autumn-ness

Kell's cabin might be the most beautiful place to see the best of Autumn.

It was the perfect time to see all the Fall colors and to run

around pretending that we're still kids.

After all, friends don't let friends do silly things....

alone, that is.

I think you'll agree that Kell's autumn sweater is truly epic.

She's so great at celebrating all the seasons, no wonder she's going

to be the best teacher ever.

While at Kell's cabin, we had to try on her

Grandpa's fedora.

We took a walk down to the little lake.

And did some golf cart riding and talked about deep subjects.

That always happens when we get together.

Alyssa is now known as Sister Longmore.

She is now serving a mission in Manchester, England.

This was kind of our last hurrah before she left.

We seriously spent hours taking pictures for a highly anticipated

stop-motion video. I didn't realize how much work stop-motion videos

really are so that will be posted later when I can find hours to devote to it. Yay!!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Cruisin'

A cruise to Mexico is just what we needed to end the summer! Even though we both missed a week of school, it was well worth it. It was ten times more fun because we had some awesome friends to hang out with - couples from the summer.

Here's some pics:

Going to dinner fancy-style

One of my favorite parts of the cruise was that we

got to try all sorts of different foods - lamb, alligator, shark, escargot, etc.

Sun Bathing

If you know me well you know that food makes me very happy.

So of course I was ecstatic to find out that all the room-service was free. mmmmm.

As always our signiture silly faces.

In Cabo San Lucas:

Beat it ese.....

Authentic Mexican cokes & Claire of course. Where there's a coke, there's a Claire.

The girls showing off our tans

This was hilarious. Our guide told us this is called Lover's Cave. You go

in as two, and come out as three! We steered clear of this place..

The water was so clear, we did some fun snorkeling with little boxes of cereal,

the fish would come swarming around us, it was so cool!

Lucky for us, we had a few Spanish speakers in our group who

got us good deals for hang gliding. It was terrifying at first, but then it was just like

hanging out in the sky. Awesome.

We couldn't leave Mexico without trying some authentic fish tacos...

They turned out a lot smaller than we were used to, but that's Americans for you right?

Chase and his love for big sombreros.

Puerto Vallarta!!!

We only had one day here, so we did some quick shopping.

And then went on the Extreme Canopy Excursion! It was one of the

funnest things we've ever done together! First we took a boat ride

to a small island, this is what it looked like:

Then we took one of those open-sided army jeeps up to the

excursion site. It was the bumpiest crazy ride I've had in my entire life,

and yet somehow Chase managed to fall asleep. Seriously?

We went on a ropes course that involved a ton of zip lines that were

hundreds of feet above the jungle and repelling down waterfalls. I almost peed my pants

on the first zip line, it was so high up! But after that, it was pure adrenaline and fun.

I surprised myself at how brave I am!

On the boat ride back to the cruise ship, our boat driver took us through a bunch of cool caves.

These awesome couples made our vacation so much fun - Our whole group was amazing, but somehow I didn't snap any pictures of everyone all together!

Brandon & Claudia

Russell & Claire Bear

Friday, July 22, 2011

California Update

A few exciting things have happened/ will happen. Get ready for it...

1. I got my first speeding ticket, no less than 15 minutes away from our apartment in Santa Maria. We were on our way back from Mesa, AZ, and apparently I got a little too excited to get home. There goes my perfect record.

2. I am giving a talk in church on Sunday. OK so this list really isn't that exciting.

3. Tomorrow we go to the Mid-State Fair. It's a big deal. I don't think I've ever been to a real fair before (not so sure that Draper Days counts?) Mostly I'm just excited for something to do with Chase that is out of the ordinary.

4. Chase and I finally sat down and made our California Bucket List. There are over 20 activities on the list, and about a month to do all of them... Hey at least we're trying :)

5. My family is driving out here to visit this week! Our plans include Hearst Castle, Solvang, the beach, and visiting family in Lemoore (about 3 1/2 hours away from here.)

6. I'M COMING BACK TO UTAH! I'm driving back to Utah to hang out for a week and a half. It's going to be fun! I've missed my friends, my family, my house, my clothes..... let's just say I'm pretty excited to be coming back for a while.

7. I took some pictures of my friend Tana. She's a newly wed. Taking pictures is like something to do when our men are off working all day.