Day Three

Day Three

I think I've mentioned the 5 'magic phrases' before. These were basically phrases that we used so repetitively that we had to impose sanctions against using them, for the good of mankind.

1.) 'You sunk my battleship'. It is important that this is said in the voice of that old guy from the Simpsons, who always says this. Alexej coined this in the airport, and it was largely me and him who were the pioneers of this genius phrase, which would never be relevant, just purely said because me and him would find it hilarious.

2.) 'Man up'. After Alexej's serious lack of manliness due to falling prey to illness, this phrase became poignant. We would even say it to the girls, but generally this was a phrase used whenever somebody wasn't conforming to our supremely high level of masculinity.

3.) 'MAAATTT DAMMONNN'. Now, funnily enough this phrase would have taken off even had we not lied to Alexej about seeing Matt Damon, it was just a brilliant phrase. It must be said in the voice off of Team America, and this was the main perpetrating phrase when we decided that we weren't allowed to say any of these phrases for the goodness of mankind.

4.) 'That's what she said'. We basically just did this whenever something vaguely related to innuendo came up. In my case it didn't even have to be vaguely related, I'd do something which didn't even make sense just to see their confused, 'trying to figure it out', expressions. My personal favourite was when we went to the Washington Monument (Which is the huge Pencil that is seen in many movies) and our tour guide asked "Now, who wants to touch it?". Naturally I said it loudly and was delighted when some of the Year 13s turned round laughing. There were funnier ones than this, but I think me having the sheer balls to say it loud enough so that our teachers could hear was the defining factor.

5.) 'In a parallel universe....' we just sat for hours on end discussing random scenarios, such as 'In a parallel universe, Alexej wasn't ill when we saw Matt Damon'. Eventually these became more and more obscure and strange, until we ended up saying stuff like 'In a parallel universe me and Alexej are siamese twins who murdered the rest of you for drugs money'.

Anyway. In Day Three we went to the UN building, and then Grand Central Station for lunch. Grand Central Station is seriously packed at all times, and it's a real mission to try and find seats. After lunch, we needed to get back to the meeting point, but Alexej needed to go to the toilet. Me and Joe kindly waited for him, but naturally we decided that it was only fair to lie about seeing Macaulay Culkin walking down the escalator. After this, we went to central park, which was truly brilliant. It was snowing quite strongly at this point, and bearing in mind that New York had seen it's heaviest snow in about 100 years only the week before we came, it was unbelievably picturesque. We had a snowball fight whilst walking through Central Park, which was great, and then we went to 5th Avenue.

5th Avenue is notoriously well known for shopping, and has an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to go in here, as the queues were fucking massive, just to get into the store. I bought some Jeans from H&M, however, just to make sure I can officially say how I bought something from 5th avenue. I was also desperate to go into the Toy Store round the corner, which is massive and has the Piano that you play with your feet from 'Big' with Tom Hanks, which is a great movie, by the way. I would have taken a picture of it, but I was worried that the parents there would think that I was taking pictures of their children, and inevitably chase me out the store, so I didn't.

We got to chill back at the Hotel for a bit after this, but luckily our Hotel was basically right in the Centre of Manhattan and only a few blocks away from The Empire State Building, and right next to Macy's Department Store (The biggest in the world). Most people had a view of the Empire State Building from their room, in fact. Except us, who had a view of a strip club instead. So we went there, and basically failed at shopping. Bearing in mind there are 17 floors, we went past the men's stuff on the first floor, thinking there wasn't much there, and preceded to go up the escalator on every floor saying 'there's no men's stuff'. Apparently it was all in that same corner all the way up the floors, which we didn't notice (FML). After that we had a McDonalds, which was kind of what I lived off for a week, as they didn't appear to sell fruit anywhere.

In the evening we went to Times Square again. It was still snowing heavily, which made it inescapably pretty, and once more I was just in plain awe. We spent about two hours shopping for everything we needed, such as hideously cheap, 6 for $10 'I heart NY' shirts, and then realised we only had 20 minutes left to get George's headphones. Now, let me tell you the story of these headphones. George had had no headphones up to this point, as he had broken them before the trip and had planned on buying these $135 ones, which we couldn't find anywhere. But we were directed to 'Best Buy', which is about two (very long) blocks off of Times Square.

It took us 15 minutes to walk there. But everyone else left early, because they were worried about being late (man up). It was just me, George and Alexej left. We had 5 minutes to get back across two blocks, and from one end of Times Square to the other. We did the most epic sprint to make it in time. J-Walking across every red light possible, passing all the strangely dishevelled tourists, it was awesome. The snow was still falling, and we even ran too far in the end, and had to track back slightly. But we still made it early. Genuinely epic, I tell you. You appreciate these little things more than the big ones once you eventually look back in hindsight, which I'm given the benefit of doing now, but it was hilarious, picturesque like you would not believe and one of the best times I have had in my life.

(George and Alexej after our epic run)