Made it to Madrid!  In one piece.  But I want to use this post to finish my NY photodump.

Lia and I went to visit Neo at Wesleyan the weekend before I left NY.  I forgot how strange and isolated college communities feel -- like little humanoid ecospheres. 

Neo was working on a film shoot from 4pm to 6am on Saturday, so Lia and I spent the first half of the night intoxicatedly watching Elvis videos alone in his room. 

Around 10:00pm Neo texted us: "Did you guys buy an Elvis movie on my amazon account?"

Us: "We couldn't remember our passwords and you were logged in.  We'll pay you back in cash -- is that OK?"

Neo: "It's fine.  I was just surprised when I got an email for it."

Us: "We wanted you to know."

Neo: "Apparently not because it came from amazon.com."

We were caught red-handed!  Reminded me of the time I accidentally left a cup from Joe with my name on it in Veronica's dorm room.  V: "R, were you hanging out in my room again?" Me: "No."   V: "There's a cup in here that says, 'Chai, Renata.'"

After the Elvis movies, we spent the rest of the night with Neo's friend Yongsun and his identical twin Yongjin.

Sun and Yongjin in front of the grilled cheese truck.
(Note to V: Did you know that the term "melted cheese" is a mom-ism??)

We were watching Louis CK skits in Sun's room when we heard a prolonged shattering noise. It sounded like plates were being thrown at a wall for 10 seconds continually.  Lia rushed to the door and saw this scrawny hipster boy get up off the floor bleeding.  Turns out he fell through the skylight that opens into the hallway right outside Sun's room.

The boy kept saying he was OK, but of course someone called public safety.  Lia and I overheard the PSafe woman interrogating the boy, perplexed --"You were jumping? On the skylight??"

The broken skylight.

Lia assisting Sun under the "no parking" caution tape.

The funniest part was that all the people who lived in Neo's frat, Eclectic house, were completely unforgiving of the guy ("what an asshole" etc.) even though they had ALL jumped on the skylight before, including Neo.  Also: it turned out that the kid who fell through the roof didn't go to Wesleyan, so, as Lia pointed out, it seems doubtful he had the idea to jump on the skylight all by himself.  Someone from Eclectic House definitely told him it was a good thing to do.

Public Safety took forever to come.  When they finally arrived, the PSafe guy brilliantly attached some caution tape to Neo's doorhandle.  Then he shouted "clear the hallway!" -- which we thought meant "get out of the hallway," but apparently meant "remove the glass from the hallway" because when no one started picking up glass, he began kicking it aside with his giant combat boots.  Sun's door was wide open and we were standing right at the edge of it,  in the trajectory of the flying glass, but the guy didn't care.  When the he had successfully cleared  a hairline path down the hall with slightly less broken glass in it than everywhere else, he finally led the injured student out to the ambulance.

Towards the end of our visit Lia and I found some construction paper and zip ties in the basement of Eclectic House and made these makeshift Tibetan flags for Neo.

Left: Neo drinking Korean tea.  Right: Neo's favorite flag.

Neo admiring the flags.

My second to last night in NY I went out for drinks with Lia, Zaid, and Taku.  I wrote down some funny bits of conversation in my iPhone.  It's strange how the iPhone is causing me to keep tabs on my experiences in a way I never had before.

We were talking about the stigmas surrounding obesity and the politics of fat-shaming.  Somehow it came up that Taku once had a crush on his overweight barber.

Taku: I think I would do her, if she was willing to do me too.

Zaid: Oh that's nice Taku.  That's nice.  You wouldn't rape her.

At one point I ripped off the bottom edges of the styrofoam cups our beers came in and made a face, which happened to have slanted eyes and be facing Taku.  Taku gave me shit for being racist, then rearranged the pieces to make it non-asian, and came up with this:

Me: Well now it's Indian.

Taku: See!  That was racist!  I was waiting for someone to say it.

Zaid: You were waiting for someone to say it?? That's racist too.

Taku: I set a trap.  I set a trap, and she fell into it.

Zaid:  Why are you setting traps Taku?? You shouldn't be setting traps.

Update!  Just got this in from Lia: