Sarah the Nomad: May 2006

Bush country Yeeehhaaaaah!

Oh my, how crass was I. I actually said Yeehah to a couple sitting next to me on the plane to San Antonio, Texas. "I've never been to Texas before, I'm so excited. Yeehah!" Lord. But let me rewind for a lil bit. I haven't really described to you my last week at Penn. I started writing a blog before this one, it was quite soppy and gushy, perhaps I'll post it later. The last few days flew by without me realising it really. I was in denial that I was leaving, that I wouldn't see most of my friends for a very very long time (perhaps forever?) and that I was leaving campus, my apartment, my roommates, my life for the past couple months. I packed the day before my flight. I just couldn't sit down to do it. I was doing anything BUT packing. Usually I'm not so sentimental - hold on, who am I kidding? Of course this is usual for me! Only now, with this damn blog, you guys get to read what I'm thinking, instead of recieving some generic email saying "Yo guys! I've finished! And i was sad! But now I'm cool! Coz I went to Texas! And now I'm on my way to LA to see my dad! Wow! All these exclamation marks! !!" Urgh. No thanks.

You get stuck with my rants and raves, so deal with it. If you can't, you can always look at the pretty pictures I post for your viewing pleasure. This time, there will be quite a few, because I was snap happy towards the end of semester, and during my week in Texas. But I'll get to Bush country later on...

So, my last week at Penn. I can't really remember what I wrote in my last entry and I can't access it because I'm writing this post while on the flight to Los Angeles and I don't think they've developed internet access from a couple thousand miles above the ground... soon though, I'm sure. On Friday night we went out to a swank restaurant called Tangerine in Old City Philadelphia - that's one thing I LOVE about Philly - the range of nice restuarants they have... shame I'm not here with my parents so that I could try them all... but that hasn't really stopped me from splurging...oops...and especially on our goodbye dinner on Friday night. I went with my fellow Aussies Amma and Maija, my roomie Rebecca, and another friend of ours Laura. While waiting for everyone to arrive, we sipped cocktails and felt very Sex and the City and took many photos of ourselves - we're so vain! When seated, the waiter informed us of the fish special, the "Barramoondi" - "Um, you mean the Barramundi?" Once the chef knew we were Australian (he loved Australia) he gave us free appetizers and desserts. The service was impeccable. It was one of the best dining experiences I've ever had. It was such a pleasure. We all had so much fun. Here are some pictures of that here.... We all look so swish!

After that we went back to campus and, where else, but Smokes... haha. What's new. But before that, we had some fun in Laura's room and going nuts with some really bad champagne and vanilla vodka...... not together though! Ew! Here are some crazy photos taken by the lovely Maija....

So here we are, at Smokes, dancing the night away. I know I have lots of photos of us going nuts at this really seedy campus bar/club/pub thingy, but that's where I hung out A LOT for the last month before school finished. It's sad, the bouncers all knew us Aussies and skimmed looking over our IDs, the dj's gave us "Shoutouts to the Aussies in the house!" and some bartenders even knew our drinks of choice..... But we weren't the only ones. There is a crowd of regulars... I once went to Smokes last week with my roomies, and it was a VERY different crowd. I didn't know anybody. Perhaps because it was in the middle of Finals Week, and perhaps there were other parties going on, I don't know, but there was definitely a different vibe in the place. Talking to the dj that night afterwards, we both agreed that this crowd wasn't as much fun as the usuals. Yay for us regulars! Anyway, why am I rambling on about this damn bar? Man.

SO! Friday night. Man. The music was getting pretty bad at about one-ish, so we decided to skip it and head over to the supermarker, 'FroGro' (Fresh Grocer in Penn lingo) and get some Ben and Jerry's icecream. Both Maija and Amma were pretty cut up about the guys they were interested in, and after leaving Smokes I recieved a couple voice messages from Rebecca venting about this stupid guy that she's involved with. (There's no reception in the bar). I invited her down to FroGro and we all shared a tub of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked (THE best flavour!) icecream in the bus shelter/public art space across the road from Smokes and other cafes on the 40th St strip. Everyone was really sad (except me for some reason?) and angry. Amma even threw her phone to the ground! Damn boys! Then we spotted the guy Maija was seeing going home with another girl. He couldn't walk straight, he was half horizontal (if that's even possible?) and this petite girl was trotting after him. Maija got really mad, coz this guy hadn't returned any of her text messages or anything. Basically, us girls decided that night that boys tend to fuck up a LOT and when they don;t know what they want, or scared of what they want, they tend to become much more withdrawn and do really selfish and stupid things. Well, those were taken from the boys talked about that Friday night. Anyway, so Rebecca decided to run after this guy, and ask him what his problem was... We all thought she was joking when she said she was going... anyway, it ended up being a very interesting night with confused petite girls, irrate drunk basketballers and a bunch of aussies (plus Rebecca) sad about leaving Penn, and all that goes with it..... mmm.

Too much information, I know, but i'm on a roll. Besides, this is my diary of events for me too, because I'm not really keeping a diary. This blog (I think) is good enough. Oh, and pardon the cursing. Meh. I went back home with Amma and we grabbed some chocolate milk and Rice Krispy Treats and chatted till the wee hours of the morning in her room. I'm going to miss that girl. But I know, whenever I'm in the 'berra (Canberra) I'll have someone to take me out... Maybe I'll go there more often?

On Saturday we went out for brunch at White Dog and it was such a pretty day outside. White Dog is situated on Sansom St between 34th and 36th streets, and it's filled with pretty shops and cute restuarants. We sat outside and it felt like we were dining in a cafe in Europe. Here are some gorgeous photos of us around campus...

This is Penn's beautiful campus......

That night was Maija's last night at Penn, so we agreed to meet up later on and go dancing. Amma and I were hanging out at my place - I was so tired... I've found out that lack of sleep doesn't work very well for Sarah. These past couple weeks I've been getting next to nothing sleep, and going out nearly every night. I'm loving it, but I don't think my body is. It's taking its toll. Oh well. It came to an end. Now I'm priming myself up for Europe..

Amma and I wanted a snack so we headed over to Marathon Grill (one of the only nicer cheaper cafes on campus - but it's very predictable) and who did we bump into but Maija and Rania.

We all sat together and sipped some more cocktails (except for Rania, for she's Muslim.. wow, I love that girl too) and got Marathon's 'funky fries' - nachos except instead of corn chips it was fries. Anyway, the cute waiter was there again, and Maija had already been flirting with him a little. This guy was very cute - well agreed, and all of us have VERY different tastes. Take a white Wasp from Toorak, and Jewish princess from Caulfield, a Ghanan/Jamaican from Canberra, and a Muslim from New Jersey and there you go - a bunch of very different styles for every occasion :D Perhaps our ethnicities don't always influence to what we are attracted to, but both Rania and I discovered that we like our Semitic/Meditteranean/Dark features types of boys. Amma loves white boys with blonde hair and light skin. Maija like the typical Aussie hottie (which is a very rare look here in America). But we all agreed on one thing that night- this waiter was fine! So Maija (after chugging down two glasses of wine) built up the courage to ask this guy to come join us at Smokes when he finished work. (Marathon is just down the road from Smokes - nearly everything is on 40th Street). He was packing away the chairs outside and she pretended to make a phone call, even though it was only Rania encouraging her to do it from inside. It was a pretty funny sight, we were watching her and telling her what to do from inside, because we could see them both from the floor to ceiling windows that faced the street... Go maija! Anyway, he turned out to be a jerk anyway. I don't understand boys sometimes. Perhaps someone could let me in on some weird habit that I've noticed in boys around here - I don't know if it happens in Australia... boys with girlfriends flirtng and hitting on single girls... This one guy even asked for my number IN FRONT OF HIS GIRLFRIEND! She wasn't paying attention, but such chutzpah! Seriously. So this waiter dude was acting weird at Smokes, and then left Maija a couple messages on her phone later that night, he was weird. AND he had a girlfriend (we found this out from facebook... facebook.com is really a wonderful terrible addictive opiate of the college masses... i'm hooked). So that night, while starting off really really good like the previous night, turned sour.... :( Oh well... it was just bad luck, i guess....

But these are some pics of us having a ball at Smoke's....

And this is the end of our interesting night, back at Greek Lady's, with the rest of them....

Rebecca left on Saturday... I'll put that post up about that... it made me real sad. She is such a gorgeous girl, I was so lucky I had her as my roommate. I hope we remain friends for a very long time. And Jess left on Saturday to go to the Bahamas with Kenny, her boyfriend. I think we're going to have a roommate dinner when all of us are in new york. I love Jess and Kenny. They are so cute. They only started going out this semester, and their relationship developed pretty quickly and seriously, like another relationship I know... But it's Jess that wears the pants in their relationship... And kenny just takes it. Sometimes Rebecca and I overhear them fighting, and we get sad, we joke that "oh no! mummy and daddy are fighting!" because they are such a gorgeous couple. So once Jess and Rebecca left, it was me, Nadeige and her boyfriend Alan in the apartment. To be honest, I really thought Nadeige didn't like me. I told her that (cringe) over drinks on Sunday night, and we figured she was just totally stressed out this semester and going nuts. Those Wharton people.... Oh, people in Australia don't really know what Wharton is. It's a machine - it swallows business students up and spits them out, directly in manhattan financial district. It's the best business school in the country. Donald Trump went there. But I don't know if that says much. Anyway, those Wharton people, they work VERY VERY hard... it's a very stressful four years of college... And this was Nadeige's toughest so far. She's a junior, so she has one more year left.

I'm inserting random pics on this post, so here's some of our last marathon grill brunch - sitting in the sunshine:

It's a shame that only on my last night I really bonded with Nadeige - we had so much fun. We went out for drinks at Mad 4 Mex and had Big Azz Margeritas (I only wanted a little one, but there was a drink special, and so Nadeige bought me the HUGE one - the one with SIX tequila shots... I definitely did not need that...) and we had such a good time. It was really interesting listening to both Nadeige and Amma speak about how their skin colour affects different aspects in their lives, and how tey both deal with being a 'white' black. Amma was once called a coconut here by African Americans - brown on the outside and white on the inside...Listening to her experience with racism just broke my heart. She recieved the harshest criticism and racism from her own race. And Nadeige too. I felt kinda out of place since being a prissy white Jewish girl, but it was so special listening to them speak so openly and passionately. After Mad 4 we headed over to Smokes to say goodbye to the djs and the bouncers... I can;t really call them bouncers, they go to school with us, and they just check IDs to see if we're all 21. So we danced and danced - and then we met Rania! Woo! Rania isn't 21 yet and had a long story concerning her fake ID, and even though she doesn't drink, she still couldn't get into Smokes. Luckily that night she hung out with Penn's star basketballer, who has instant access into this dodgy pub, and he guaranteed her being let in. Rania loves dancing too. And so the four of us were dancing until the end of the night.

That night I didn't get so much sleep because not only had I gone to bed MUCH later than I had anticipated, but I had to get up early to resume packing. Trust me to leave it to the last minute. I managed to get it all done though, but I didn't leave myself any time to say goodbye to some friends that I won't see again because they don't live in the tri-state area (New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey). Nevertheless, Amma, Nadeige, Rania and I went out for my 'last' lunch at Penn. I put that in quotation marks because I'm coming back to Philadelphia, and probably even back to Penn's campus (as all my stuff is at Krystal's apartment still - I reeeeally have to start sending stuff home - I won't be able to travel with more than 25 kilos for the rest of the trip... I don't know how I'm going to do it...I've overpacked my luggage since the early days of Bnei Akiva camp in grade four....Arghh!). Anyway, for my last lunch, I decided I felt like eating at 'Greek Lady', a greek restuarant that we usually frequent in the early hours of the morning during the weekend after a big night at Smokes (it's three doors down..how convenient). The parties on Friday and Saturday nights usually continue at Greek Lady after Smokes and other pubs/clubs close down at two (that's the curfew in Philadelphia... weird drinking laws I tell you..). But, on Monday, that's what I wanted to eat for my last lunch.....I seriously don't know why I'm telling you this, the really minor details (and irrelevant? Obscure? Boring?) but this is the end....

And so, I packed my bags, said goodbye to my friends and my apartment, refrained from being teary, and went to the airport to catch my flight to Bush country - aka San Antonio, Texas.... Yeehah!

I've finished! WOO HOO! I'm done! Kaput! Finito! Say goodbye to being an undergraduate! Yay! It's over.

By the way, my final assessment today was a real let down. Come on, its my last assessment, my first exam ever (in my uni career) and I finished it in fifteen minutes! It was a three page short answer test! Seriously.

So, here I am, procrastinating again, I should be packing... actually I really should be packing... I'm going to do that it just a sec, but I wanted to share the love I have for Penn with you. I know you want it ;)

These last few weeks have flown by, and here I am getting all sentimental and teary (well, I haven't cried yet, but it will come...) for a place that I have called home for the past five months. It has been an inredible experience - I highly recommend to any student who loves travelling, meeting new people and having one of the best experiences of their lives. Exchange is one of the best ways to immerse yourself in a culture completely different to the one you're familiar with. Yeah, we all say that Australia is becoming America's 51st state (or 52nd, of you count Puerto Rico) but that is so far from the truth. Perhaps our foreign policy might echo that of the United States, but I feel that's where the similarities end. We are smaller, younger country still trying to find our position in the world - coz living here has made me realise that Australia really is at the end of the world - perhaps the world's ass hole? Isolated and far away from the rest of the world's mess... whether we like it or not. But I don't have time right now to muse on about the differences and similarities between Australia and America, nor to reflect on my time here...

I'll just show you some photos that I took during this past week. Enjoy.

These are taken at Smokes, which I went to on Friday night, Saturday night, Monday night, Tuesday night and Wednesday night!

Arghhhh! Talk about becoming a regular!(Photos are: Maija (aussie) Kate (brit)& I, Me & Kate, Nadeige (roommate) and Robyn (Nadeige's friend from Miami),
James (friend that spent 2 years in Iraq as a US soldier on active duty.. phwoar!) and Amma, Me James & Amma... and that's us at smokes!

These pics are taken at the Penn relays, one of the biggest (and oldest) track meets in the world - track athletes come from all over the world to compete at the Franklin Field at Penn - high school students, college kids and Olympic level athletes. Pretty cool, no? This is was the 112th event. We went on Saturday, the day where olympic athletes compete in a tournament "USA versus THE WORLD" Go world! Unfortunately, some Americans think that "Hey, we are the world." Pfft!