Madame social Butterfly

Greetings earthlings

I am currently floating on a cloud of non-specified joy...it's been a good week! And it hasn't even been a week yet...I can't believe it.

I had a lovely day yesterday. It started v. slowly...after Friday night noone got up before midday. But once I had, Kait took me to Tiny Cup, a small cafe about 5 minutes' walk away, where they serve officially the best waffles EVER. Enjoyed a terribly civilised (2pm) breakfast, coffee, juice, talking about this and that...just lovely! Then Kait went off to meet her friend to see Fuerza Bruta, to my extreeeme jealousy http://www.fuerzabrutanyc.com/ When she came in later she showed me pictures and waxed lyrical about how insane it was, so now I will be spending some time queueing for cheap last minute tickets!

In the afty I took advantage of our empty room to get out the resistance band and the pointe shoes and do some exercises, which felt great if a little spatially challenging. Pointe shoes need to be worn in again though, it has been a while.

Then me Tuan and Camilla went to Times Square to see a film called 'The Mechanic'. It's pretty much a hard core action film - there is a plot, but mostly there's shooting and strangling. Against all my expectations though, I really liked it aside from the brutal violence which I am not and will never be able to stomach. (I think this is a good thing.) My favourite thing about going to the movies, no don't worry I'm not going to come back speaking American* but gotta go with the lingo, is the snacks. There's a whole new world of junk food here - Dibs, Sour Patch Kidz, Reese's Pieces, Cookie Dough Bites, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Raisinets...what ARE all these mystical new tooth-decayers? I must know! (I got some Dibs...little bitesize balls of ice cream covered in chocolate and nuts. Nom nom!)


Returning home I was greeted by a 3rd floor gathering. Renata's final final night, so she was in a pretty melancholy state. She and Wave had been to see Chicago. When I walked in everybody went 'ooohhhhh, you missed dinner!' Which is a shame as it sounded like fun - Velvet made lasagna for everyone. Hopefully she will do it again v.soon. And there were leftovers so I got fed. Hahahaaa so much for being independent. We got moved downstairs by Agustina (staff) and ended up in a very weird conversation about Brazilian carnival, slang terms for some things I couldn't possibly repeat here, and gold-paved streets.
I learned something new and vair amusing from Camilla. In Italy, if you want to say someone is stupid, you mime splodging an ice cream cone onto your forehead and say 'gelatooo!' I don't know why. But I think it's wicked! It's sort of the equivalent to when we want to call someone stupid and we do exagerrated slow applause and say 'speciaaaaaaal'.

Anyway. The nub and gist is that the experience of being around people all the time (but not in an annoying way as everyone's respectful of 'own space') is really really good for me. Young people with whom I have things in common. There's a lot of shared humour.

Off to Tiny Cup for $4 oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar, yes yes yes!

P y Lxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

*If I come back speaking with any kind of accent, it is more likely to be Portuguese than American!