Misadventures in Boston

OKAY..THIS IS ENTRY IS WAY OVERDUE..I'M JUST SOOO LAZY...

Upon entering South Carolina, our social status drastically changed. From the Greyhound terminal, Tita Che picked us up and *vavavoom* we were on top of the food chain. I was just so happy to smell the leather seats of their Lexus. No more ugly, stinky people.

For the first time ever, I saw Tito Emi's enormous house. It smelled good too. Tita Che had to leave for work right away, so we were left there with nothing to do. Man...what could we possibly want to do in that huge house? I mean, after all the dishwashing we did in Chicago, I thought..YEAHHH!!! But no. My father wanted to organize the house. Things everywhere. Fine. First two days, we cleaned the house. We found expired stuff in the fridge and the pantry. Actually, food which were expired since 1998. Wow. I can't believe it. They had a lotta stuff there, and more than half of them were expired. I decided to clean the entertainment room. Their CD's, VHS, DVD's..everything. More than half of the CD's there weren't there..just a bunch of CD cases. There were a few duplicates actually. They probably can't find what they were looking for, so they decided to buy a new one. Sweet. Typical wasteful Americans. And I don't mean that the bad way..or maybe I do. It's just that it's really like that in the States. Here, we have left overs. We have so many things to do with left overs. They're pet food, give it to the street kids or we can eat it the next day by cooking it as something else. There, the food left will be thrown in the garbage. And just imagine the servings they have back there. They're HUGE! So huge that no one can really finish it. But my oh my. The explanation of my weight gain? I tried to finish everything. I remembered the poor people here in the Philippines with nothing to eat. Hayyy...

Friday came, and we were off to New Hampshire. Took two planes on the way there. Then Tito Emi rented a van for all of us. Road trip to Exeter. We stopped by this lobster restaurant. It was really good..and I was really full after eating. I felt like throwing up. (Oh and yeah...after eating heavy meals...I slept. I mean..I can't help it! That's what I do on roadtrips! Another explanation for my weight gain). What to say about New Hampshire? If I remember it right, it used to be called as New England. The houses there, just like the normal houses in the US, were like boxes. But there, it was different in a way that the designs were really old. Or I would assume the houses were old. Spring's just arriving so the trees weren't as green as they should be. It looked just a little gloomy with all the fog, but the flowers were starting to bloom, so I'm sure it's a pretty sight on Spring and Summer, although it was still very nice that time.

By 6pm, we reached Exeter. I was really excited to see Angelo. When I saw his school, I thought..wow. It's bigger than the whole Ateneo University. There were kids on their shorts, some didn't even have shirts playing frisbee. I thought..finally!!! It's not cold in here. But when I stepped off the car..crap. It was freezing. Then we met Angelo. *Kodak moment?! Haha.. He first hugged everyone. Zaza and I were basically strangers. I offered my hand, he had his arms open. What to do what to do?! Hand shake then hug. Haha. He was really tall and boy was he handsome. (We ALL know which side of the family that came from! But surprisingly...he looks a lot like Tita Che). He brought us to his room. His weird room mate Dylan who aspires to be a US President. Haha. Whatever suits him. Then he toured us around the campus. We went to their library, which happens to be the biggest library for HS students in the whole of the US. The architecture was amazing. It was like the one in The City of Angels (I forgot to ask him if that was their library), where when you're in the center and you look up, you'll see huge circular windows. Then we went to the Science department or something. Again, the architecture was wowowie. I've never seen anything like it. And somewhere in there was a display of a skeleton of a whale, which the students dissected. Those were frikking high school students!!! Then we went to this Music building or something. There were artsy fartsy looking kids in the lobby, as expected I guess. Each room has its own piano and board. So we went there and Angelo played us a song. I know I'm nowhere near the definition of good when it comes to playing the piano, but I know good and he was gooooodddd.

Then, off to Boston! Bonding bonding in the car..bleh bleh. Angelo warned us that there was a storm there the next day.. WTF?!

It was about 9pm when we reached Boston so we headed straight to the hotel. I can finally say, I've been to a Hilton Hotel because we stayed in Embassy Suites. It was a pretty nice hotel. Our suite had a good view of the city and I can't wait til the next morning. The adults stayed in the room with the two twin beds, Zaza and I slept in the sofabed while poor Angelo slept on the floor.

The next morning, we all woke up with a beautiful sunny weather. Not a cloud on sight. Whew! Too much for bad weather already. We enjoyed prepared for our trip and enjoyed our complimentary breakfast. On our way back to our room to get our stuff, we saw that it was raining outside. GREAT. So we had our jackets with us. At the entrance of the hotel as we were waiting for our car, strong winds were blowing that just blew off the style and effort that I put into my hair. So we do bring bad weather wherever we go. I thought we were gonna stay in the car the whole time, which would mean I'd probably fall asleep...but no. See, pictures are really important when you're travelling. For a person to brag about something, you need proof..and the camcorder is the best. Amidst the strong winds and the rain, we went down Boston Common, a park. A very beautiful park actually, even more beautiful I bet when it's dry. Though my hands froze and my hair's all messed up...gotta take those pictures! Second stop was Harvard. Can't let that opportunity pass by man..who knows?! I may never be able to step into the grounds of Harvard again (oohhh...sounds like I wanna take up something in Harvard..say..law?! Hahaha! Who knows?!). My camcorder ran out of battery and tape so good thing there was a shop nearby..then went to the Harvard bookstore, of course. I wanted to get something...I forgot the frikking title!!! (It's about a man who lost all his memory and with him are just pictures, letters, books he used to have and it's up to him to put it all together and figure out who he is..cool..)..but it was expensive.. $30..hmm..I thought..I could buy more with $30 than a book..turns out I really wanted that book..too bad. There were all sorts of book in there.. it was amazing. There's a section for gay/lesbian books, how to masturbate...pretty cool stuff. My mom of course was sort of scandalized.."Ayyy..ano ba yan?! Tinuturo pa ba yan?!" Haha..

Lunch time came, and since Angelo said he hasn't eaten real food in months, it was his choice. He wanted siomai...so we went to China Town. I've never really been inside Ongpin so I really didn't know what to expect. It was raining so there weren't a lot of people walking. The Chinese restaurant Tito Emi was looking for was closed since there's a road construction in front of it so we had to walk another mile. We were starving. Then finally, we reached the place. And wow. Once I entered the restaurant, I was like...in CHINA. I've never seen so many Chinese people in one roof! And it was noisy and chaotic. That was a good sign...it means that the food is great. Endless dimsum, siomai, siopao it was. I love siomai, everyone knows that, so I had 4 of them. Zaza also had 4. But Angelo..ohmygod..he had 8 of them. And the siomai didn't come until we had the pork, the beef, the hakaw, the soup... It was crazy. Tito Emi was hilarious. Since the servers didn't really speak English, he spoke to them in Tagalog and they understood each other. Haha!

Then Tita Che wanted to watch broadway. They've all seen The Phantom of the Opera, except us, the young people..so they wanted to watch The Vagina Monologues. Turns out, the show times were different, so we decided to watch The Phantom of the Opera. So to the Boston Operhouse, THE original operahouse, we go. One block away, you could see the line already for the show. There were a lot of people. We lined up, without any tickets. Ooohhh the excitement. When we entered the operahouse, WOW. My eyes dropped...the ceiling, the walls...it had gold in it..and the chandelier was gorgeous. It was just really beautiful. Tito Emi managed to get tickets for all of us. We didn't get the best seats given that it was a last minute decision but the play was amazing (my vocabulary isn't really big, huh..all I could say is amazing..because it really was!). I mean, except that some people were late and that they had to go to their seats when the Phantom got out of the mirror...so we weren't able to see that magic happen.. And although it was an opera and we didn't really understand what they were saying because of their chilly voices...I love it! I'm still actually in the process of listening to the album over and over again, pretending I could be Christine. Haha.

After that, we didn't know what else to do. There was a heated pool in the hotel so we decided to go for a swim. We didn't have any swimwear, so we went shopping in Target. After that, we had coffee in Starbucks and we grilled Angelo for a bit. Guess what?! It's about a giiiiiirrrrllll. Haha..It's always about a girl. So he says, since he's in Exeter, he's pretty much locked up...it's already given that the girls are smart, pretty and rich. Hmm...I told him to look for a girl with the 4 B's: Beauty, Brains, Bucks and Breeding. That's something for him to remember. He's actually a pretty mature boy. He's very intelligent and from the looks of it, he's sweet...I mean..he's very sweet to his mum.

Upon entering the hotel, we went to the pool and checked it out. We saw big butts of old and fat women with their kids...it was crowded. So we decided to go for a swim later that evening. Went up to our room, and Angelo played the computer in the hotel, while the adults had their "adult talk"...wait.. I'm an adult! That doesn't sound right! So anyway, Angelo has played almost all the Mario games in there, then we figured out that whatever it was they were talking about made them forget about going swimming. Angelo pulled out his Uno cards he bought from the bookstore and we played. I didn't win.. I almost won..but for that entire night, I didn't win. Haha. We turned on the TV and saw The Last Samurai was airing so we stopped with Uno and watched the movie. It was already late so while watching I fell asleep. A few minutes later, Angelo woke me up and asked me if I was gonna watch it still. I saw that it was the battle scene already so I said I'll watch it. he went to sleep and I fell asleep. Then I heard a beeping sound. I thought it was the TV so I turned it off and went back to bed. But it didn't stop..then I heard a voice ordering us to go to the nearest fire exit. Holy crap there's a fire!!! I reached in for Angelo's head and shook it, tapped Zaza and we were all awake, listening for the instructions. We waited for the old people to come out of their room..seconds later Dad stormed out of their room with his hair all messed up telling us to get our stuff. I just grabbed the camcorder, wore my shoes and got my jacket. Angelo just grabbed his shoes, and I have no idea, what else my mom and dad wanted to take..it was a fire, for crying out loud. We walked to the exit, people with carrying their kids were there. Zaza, Angelo and I were just giggling. His coins dropped to the floor but since it was an emergency, no time to pick it up! "No worries" he says. Hehe..then we started to talk about Uno. When we reached the second floor, a man told us that some guy just lit his cigarette in the elevator. Arghhhh!!!! We went down 9 storeys for that?! So when the people knew it was just that...some got mad, some were irritated. But the firemen instructed that everyone should go out of the building, so we did. It was cold!!! And the wind was blowing. Angelo didn't have a jacket to cover himself up. Haha. We saw firetrucks there and we went srtaight to the lobby. Then it just occurred to me that I was holding my camcorder the whole time...so I turned it on and started to film. Haha! It was just hilarious, but of course at the same time really irritating. I feel sorry for the parents of the kids who carried them all the down for nothing. We came back to our room and.. Zzzz....

The next morning, we drove all the way back to Exeter to drop Angelo off. Our time was cut short. It was sad. I wanted to have more time with him. But! Oh well.. We had a great time and we'll all remember Boston. He gave us his Uno and we bid him good bye. We'll see him when he goes back here in June.

Then we were off to NEW YORK CITY!!!!