Birthday & New York.

July 11th was my sisters sweet 16th birthday 🙂 The night before we watched Soul Surfer, which is a movie based on a true story. It’s about the life of Bethany Hamilton, a surfer whom at the age of 13 lost her arm to a shark attack. It was an absolute incredible movie, despite me being scared to the point where I had to leave the room because of my phobia of sharks. (Especially because right before the shark bit her arm off, you could see her and her friend from below the water and before I even knew what the movie was about I exclaimed to my siblings that “God, I hate when they show us people from this angle because it always reminds me of sharks and it really creeps me out!” Literally 5 seconds later her arm was eaten. )
However, the movie had such a good view upon life and Bethany Hamilton is such an inspiration, not only because she survived, but because she survived and grew so much stronger because of it. I can definitely recommend this movie. 🙂

We celebrated Mette’s birthday by first having a large breakfast at the hotel, where dad and I had previously gone and bought balloons, flowers and a cute cake (which was originally neon green… unfortunately dad dropped it, so the hotel had to fix the icing so it was merely a boring brown colour) and presents.

Later we went to an adventure park. I am sure it would have been a great experience, had we not gone to Universal Studios previously because that really set our standards way up high.
After that we went shopping (Oh lord, my wallet hates me!). Once again, I was a great customer in “Forever 21”, where I bought multiple dresses, countless jewelry, shirts and skirts.
I am confident that if we had “Forever 21” in Denmark, both H&M and Pieces would become meh-places compared. Especially because it’s.so.incredibly.cheap and really gorgeous!

Later we went to a restaurant, where the others had sushi. Again. Christ! The deserts completely made up for that though! Thomas ordered a cake that was humongous… and for the first time ever, he didn’t finish his plate. Both Mette and I had the most delicious Crème brûlée, which were beyond imagination. They.were.so.good!

Next day, we didn’t really do anything but shopping (If I mentioned that my wallet hated me previously, it despises me with great intensity now!) and checked into a hotel closer to the airport…
There was an intense storm last night and I have never in my life seen that many lightnings! Whenever you would blink, you would miss something. It was incredible and beautiful. The whole sky would be lit up constantly and at points the sky even seemed green. I am not sure why this happened (if anyone happens to know it, please enlighten me :-)) but it was most definitely beautiful! My dad and I took a few photos and actually managed to capture some of the lightnings;

Today we flew to New York!
And… sadly, I wish I could write “I love this city – I am never going to leave!” Unfortunately this is not how I feel currently. Everything that could go wrong…. didn’t go wrong…  but it definitely didn’t take the turns we had all hoped for.
First, we check in to our 5-star hotel (!) and as we are at the front desk, we ask simple questions and this is pretty much how it goes:
Receptionist: “We have two king size beds ready for you”
Us: .. but we’re 5 people and we specifically asked for queen beds? (As none of us are too keen about sharing beds and blankets – which is what they do here)
Receptionist: We don’t have queen beds!
(This they didn’t even mention this to us despite having asked about this prior to booking)
Us: Okay… well, can we have a roll-away bed then?
Receptionist: That will be 65 dollars per night. (Which has been free at all our previous hotels!)
Us: ……… Okay …. Is there internet here?
Receptionist: That will be 17 dollars per room, per item. (Here it is to be mentioned that we have 7 items… )
Us: … Okay … What about the view?
Receptionist: Uhm… yes…

… ??
So we go to our rooms, trying to keep our spirits high… As we enter the rooms are TINY… We are talking about a 5-STAR HOTEL and we can’t even see where the roll-way bed will fit because there is no space. The view is somewhat like this:

… quite astonishing wouldn’t you say? 😉

So we are all a bit disappointed at this point, because the hotel has been really expensive and it does feel a bit like “wasted money” compared to some of the other hotels we have stayed at, that despite having less stars were much better. We decide to go for dinner and explore a bit more of the famous New York City.
We find an Italian restaurant as we are all starving, but quickly the restaurant fills up with people and hence noise, children screaming, waiters being rude, even adults running back and forth and a constant “jungle drumming” which I believe was meant to be music. Not soothing for any of our moods.

However, the worst happens as we leave the restaurant and heads for Broadway.
We have previously been warned about afro-americans standing with their music trying to make you listen to it and as soon as you do it they will literally force the money out of you. So when we see one approaching us, Mette and I quickly try to look invisible. He starts talking to my dad saying “Buy this my brother from another mother“, my dad kindly declines and proceeds forward as we are trying to reach the booth where they sell drinks.
The man therefore mutters some not so kind words and starts asking my mum instead… My mum answers: “No I don’t want it and stop harassing us” .. which according to my opinion was not the right thing to say.  Both my sister and I are of the opinion that you just smile, shake your head and continue walking. So the man gets REALLY aggressive and starts calling my mum for white trash which is OF COURSE completely uncalled for. Then we all flee to my dad, but he follows us and continues with his harsh words. So my dad turns around and says “F… off“, which I will agree, may also not have been the smartest thing to say.
However, the man goes crazy. He shouts at my dad; “Is it because I’m black? You f… racist, you f… white trash”  etc.
I believe we could all have shrugged off the “white trash”, but the fact that he called my dad a racist is so.far.from.the.truth.
My dad is my role model when it comes to that, because I can swear on my life that he would NEVER treat a person differently because of color/race. NEVER.
The man continues and we try to walk away, because we really do not want to make a scene, but he followed us with comments such as “Oh yeah, you better run you f.. racists”.
Luckily an afro-american woman joined in and started defending us and helping us out. Later she said that they do that, even to people who live here.
Which didn’t help my nerves. My hands were shaking and I was in such a shock that people would say such things. Especially, because it’s complete and utter bullshit! (Pardon my language!)
After that episode the temperature literally dropped 20 degrees (celcius) and we didn’t utter a word for a few very long minutes. Mette and I exchanged a few “What the f.. just happened?”-looks, because it seemed so surreal.

We continued our walk towards Broadway, but it wasn’t the same anymore. Dad, Thomas and I quickly began our walk home after having seen times square and went to the lobby where the internet is complimentary 😉

So all in all New York has not impressed me – yet.
If I could flee to Los Angeles right now, I would do it without a moment of doubt. I really am in love with Los Angeles and would love to study there later. (Webster University has a campus there!)

However, I will try to keep my mind open and be positive the next few days and hopefully New York will show me a different side.
This day was a bummer, but one must have such days to be able to differ from the good days.

Hope you all had a much better day than us!

Much love,
Anna xx