Party and Bullshit: The story of finals week

Alas, my time at the fine institution known as SUNY New Paltz has come to an end. Tear.

The last week at SUNY had a somewhat bizarre vibe to it. Everyone was halfway between studying, mourning the impending goodbyes, and wanting to party with everyone / drink their feelings. I did my first ever reading for the semester during finals week, I'm sure father is proud. Despite being out and about 2 nights before each final (I had the discipline to stay in and study on the actual night before each exam) I somehow came away from the semester with two 85s and a 90 (B's & a B+) - Which should be taken as irrefutable proof that: Fun > Study and Study ≠ Good Grades.

I've learnt a few things about America in the last few months. Here they are: Glorious New York pizza entirely explains the obesity problem. George W. Bush is the proximate cause of all of America's other social and economic shortcomings. The worldy ignorance that pervades this land is probably linked to the fact that in 1990, only 3% of Americans had a passport. American's (who I should say are not all ignorant, let's not be racist) are generally very very very friendly, for all of 3mins. After the initial exchange of pleasantries there really isn't a lot more love coming your way. Unless you really work for it, this might be the reason that 90% of the friends I have made over in the US have been from overseas.

On that note, I've been very lucky to make some amazing friends over here. And many of them have made me realize that I'm actually reasonably pleased with my progress as a human being, I've been called kind-hearted, generous, humble, a good man, a potentially good father? I've received marriage proposals via mothers, possibly without the consent of their daughters. One night in a bar I spied a cute turkish girl, so I smiled at her and winked (Seemed like the appropriate thing to do at the time) Nek minnit, I had a beautiful turkish girl dancing with me. I <3 NY. All of that goes to say that i'm really looking forward to coming back to reality in NZ and being reminded of who I am, and where I'm from... and that I'm not actually a superstar, that was just my accent, which isn't even interesting in New Zealand.

Last night in New Paltz was epic. It started whilst packing, Josh and I combined forces to pack and drink simultaneously, time, after all, was of the essence! We then proceeded down to the locals one last time. One of the Spanish lads was doing a DJ set at Cabaloosa's, so we partook in that for an hour, then we moved along to the ever crowded P & Gs for what I'm reasonably certain was some very sweaty dancing. I then disbanded from the group and eloped to Murphy's to have a few Quick Fucks with the turks (for those who don't know that's a drink.) The turkish boys then had to leave as they had early planes the next day, so I had to stay with my beautiful turkish girls and proceed to drink, tell stories, dance, and generally have a jolly good time. 3 Turks under each wing, I walked back to P & Gs, to join everyone for a final few songs and dances. All of which culminated in Fun's "We Are Young" - a song I hadn't really had much time for prior to that night, but since it was our last song, and being there singing it with all of my new friends made me realize that I was actually leaving some of these wonderful people, for quite a long time, possibly forever! Tear again.

On the way home (5am after many good-byes), Josh, Ben (french not NZ) and I decided it would be appropriate to leave in our path a trail of destruction. Beginning with various road signs, progressing to me "hulking out" and upending a very very very heavy stone bench, ripping plants and small trees from the ground and attempting to caber-toss them over the English girls / onto the roofs of very tall buildings, and culminating in Josh and I finding a crane (that may or may not have been open when we got there) climbing inside, pressing every button imaginable trying to make it start, and eventually climbing on top. (Ask me about this when I get home, there's another little piece to this story that probably shouldn't make its way into cyberspace)

2 Hours sleep later, still severely inebriated, I 'awoke' (using a very liberal interpretation of the word awake) proceeded to pack the last of my things (using a very liberal interpretation of the word 'pack' - most of them ended up wrapped in a bedsheet, slung over my shoulder Winnie the Pooh styles, again, it seemed like the only reasonable solution at the time), checked out of the room, and then skateboarded over to the main quad Obama poster, and snowboard in hand, bag + sheet on my back, which also seemed like a good idea at the time. From there we got lazy, so took a cab to the bus stop (Mainly cause everyone was still either too drunk / hungover to walk all that way (10mins or so)) and took a one way trip from New Paltz to New York City. Many Tears.

A separate post is coming shortly to describe in what I'm hoping will be excruciating detail, my final week in NYC.

Keep it real
xx
Andy

Spring Break + Subsequent Shenanigans

I'm tired. Who knew that lying on a beach in Mexico, next to the Caribbean could be so damn exhausting! 

But then again, Spring Break 2012 did bring about an unprecedented personal partying streak, one that I'm sure my homie Caithlin Jones will be proud of. 

It begins, the week before Spring Break starts proper...

Night 1: Student Night. On an unassuming tuesday night, we headed to the local watering-hole, P & G's for a few refreshing ales. Nek minnit, it's 5am, nobody is entirely sure what has gone on, but the pizza tastes great. 

Night 2: Turkish night. After being coerced into going out again (will power lacking) I find myself, with a few other non-turks, in Murphy's bar, having drink after drink purchased for me, despite my very vocal, if insincere objections. 4:30am rolls around, much dancing, clapping and drinking, turkish style has occurred, a jovial time was had by all. 

Night 3: Tower Hour. Tower hour, as I may have already explained, is where you get 100oz of beer for $6.Don't ask me to convert to L, I can't. Measurement units aside, it's a lethal combination. This time I actually didn't want to go out, so I managed to slink away for an early night... at 3:30am

Night 4: Ben's Bday. Ben Bruno turned 25, which means he has officially stopped growing, which means that I'm taller than him, therefore he now has to bake me a cake. Yum. A few pre-drinks + some beer pong at Ben's apartment, then we headed out to Blind Barber (a speak-easy hidden in the back of a Barber Shop) - Ben had reserved a table, which our very kind, and very hot waitress upgraded to the VIP, no doubt because of the gratuitous use of the Kiwi Charm (read accent) by Yours Truly, and maybe Ben... 

Ben and I spun the most wonderful yarn in Maori. 2 fetching young lasses from Little Rock, Arkansaw didn't know a whole lot about NZ, and asked what language we spoke there. Such foolishness and ignorance meant that Ben and I felt no shame in bullshitting the poor young things. We of course told them Maori was the predominant language of Aotearoa, and only a few people spoke English, we then proceeded, at their request, to showcase a little of our language. The conversation essentially went as follows (apologies for spelling any Maori speakers reading this):

Ben: Kia ora, Tena quoe

Andrew: Ka mate, ka mate

Ben: Ka ora, Whangarei?

Andrew: Ahhh, Wairarapa, Pokarekare Ana, Whakapapa.

Ben: Kakariki kowhai, kereru kopapa.

Andrew: Te tirita o Waitangi, Kawanatanga, Te tiro rangatiratanga. 

Ben: Ka pai

Andrew: Kia ora. 

Naturally, their curiosity was only furthered by the this impressive display of our bi-linguity (*might not be a word) So they asked for an explanation of what was said. Ben proceeded to inform them that we were discussing the politics of Iwi, and whether or not I thought he was going to be made or next chief. Tu meke.

Night 4: Cancun. We (Sam, my aussie roomie and I) arrived at our hotel around 9pm, and were greeted by our 4 Spanish friends and their 6 bottles of Rum. Hilarity ensued. We stayed out in the night clubs till around 6:30am, before meandering (read stumbling) our way home along the beach. This is where we ran into trouble. You see, we had never seen our hotel in daylight before, nor from the beachside, alas, we could not find it. What we could find, was some very comfortable, suspended beds, which looked like too much fun to pass up. So we lay down for a quick nap and a swing (not advisable, it invoked a sense of sea-sickness). 2 hours later, I awoke to find nobody except Felix and I remaining, so after some persuasion (read kicking and yelling) Felix got up, and we headed out in search of our hotel. Funny story, turns out we were about 50m from the hotel, so sleeping on the beach was wholly unnecessary...

Night 5: Our spanish friends negotiated entry, + open bar at a club called congo for $20. Bargain. Two parts of the night will stick in my mind. The first being a 'display' of everything by some Prossi up in a dancing box, twas reasonably disgusting, but made hilarious by the fact that all of our international girls were made to be her back up dancers while she 'shook what her mama gave her'. Felix was charged with recording the events, the end result of this being that we now have a 3 and a half minute of the russian dancer's arse. Lololol. The second was being up in the dancing box (not sure how I got there) when Empire State of Mind came on. I naturally rapped it, like a boss, for the people below me in the club, I think Jay-Z's spirit was controlling me.

Day 6: Culture -Made it out of Cancun (which essentially transforms into the 51st state for spring break) for some culture, to the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza which were beautiful, then stopped for an authentic mexican feed on our way home. yum. 

The rest of our time in Cancun (Nights 6,7,8,9,10 and Day 11) is essentially a blur of beers, beach parties, beaches and betches (see what i did there, it looks like I'm saying bitches, but that would be disrespectful, so I didn't do it...) Oasis hotel had some awesome parties with a massive sound system on the beach, and some delicious pink drink that came in a coconut with a face made out of orange slices on the front of it (name escapes me, it was that good) 

We had some interesting experiences in the night clubs of Cancun to say the least... Memorable ones include being invited up into a dancers cage and proceeding to rap the shit out of Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" for my loyal subjects below me, then I was made to leave the dancers cage because they wanted it to be just girls up there for a while. My civil rights felt violated. I was the victim of blatant sexism, and I was about to climb up on my high horse to have a go at the MC when I realized 1) He was a stocky mexican man who possibly had gang tats, and 2) the reason i was getting down was so that our international girls could be the back up dancers for a stripper/hooker who was wearing a very short skirt and nothing else. Naturally we found this amusing, so employed one of the spanish boys to film the whole thing, unfortunately what we got was a 4 minute video of this Russian girl's unique 'booty shaking' ability. Lol. 

By far the best night out in Cancun was our 2nd to last night, we found a tiny little local bar with $7 one litre, Margaritas. Lethal. Add to the mix a 40 year old Mexican dude and his wife (and their two young children who were just chillin') and it made for a night that nobody can remember with people we won't forget! Much tequila was consumed and the mexican man took great delight in telling me that my name in mexican means "the one who comes monthly" - thanks mate.

For our final day in Cancun we booked an all inclusive boat cruise that included alcohol (not that anybody really felt like drinking it), snorkeling, parasailing, swimming with a shark, food, cocaine, island markets and just general chilling and killing on the Caribbean, before anybody asks, yes I did have the themesong of Pirates of the Caribbean stuck in my head all day, but no I didn't run into Cap'n Jack. 

Since then I've been to Boston, which was beautiful, slightly more laid back city than NYC, chilled in a a roof-top bar in NYC overlooking the Hudson river (Which had an aircraft carrier moored right next to, casually sitting on the flight deck was a B2 Stealth Bomber, Space shuttle + Numerous fighter jets: Boyhood dream fulfilled) 

Other than that, just causing the same carnage in the small town of New Paltz as I usually do, it's finals week atm so theoretically i'm doing lots of study, although most of it seems to be aimed at ascertaining exactly where the limits to my awesome partying streaks are (it turns out it's 7 nights)  

1 week from now i'll be packing up and leaving the State University of New York, moving into Manhattan for a week, with a whirlwind visit to Washington DC to meet a lawyer for the World Bank scheduled. After Manhattan I fly out for London and another adventure begins while I travel Europe for 40 or so days with my aussie friend Nicola. We will cause trouble, make memories, and of course, end up with few stories to tell. 

I'm going to miss all my SUNY friends a lot, but rest assured, you haven't been replaced and i'm looking forward to being back in the motherland with y'all soon. 

Gotta testify, come up in the spot looking extra fly, before the day I die, I'm gunna touch the sky...

Peace and love

 Playing "I'm gunna find another you" - and "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" by John Mayer at an open mic night

 Boston Blossom with the 'Boston Legal' Building in the Background (how's that alliteration)

 Matching clothes with Chris at the JW Marriot in Cancun

 Beach Party at Oasis Hotel

 Chichen Itza

 Boat Cruise

 Straight Chillin/Napping on the boat

 Wizard Sticks in New Paltz

 Beekmans Bar NYC (They imported some nice sand, kind of like WCC did for O-Bay) and made a beach bar on the edge of the East River

 Max and I at Hudson Terrace Rooftop Bar

Chilling with my stealth bomber, pre 8km walk home with Ben (Drunken logic: the fact that we had an expensive dinner + drinks precludes the use of a $10 cab home)