So much to feel good about

NYC:  

Tuesday was the first time for me to sing in a while, and did it with a live band. Went to Brother Jimmy's with Gabby to have a southern dinner and discover some cool cocktails. Swamp water - a cocktail that comes in a fish-bowl, and has crocodiles in it. Wilson (Usa) was playing guitar in the live band, and we sang some Green Day with the girls, and later some Bon Jovi with Fernando. After the gig went to Brooklyn with Gaby and Wilson, played pool for quite some time and ended the night at his place, with Modelo Especial and his delicious home cooked pasta!

Before leaving to Morgantown for another long weekend, had to say goodbye to Jihye as she is going back to South-Korea today, I'm gonna miss her so much, should start planning a reunion NOW!

MORGANTOWN: 

During 4,5 days in Morgantown were tripping around so much, that to watch back the pictures now, seems like it was a month. There just is something magical about Morgantown.

Last two weeks of NYC-life. Can't believe it is gonna be over so soon. Jessica is returning from England and I am going home to Estonia in mid-April.

We were training almost all the time, luckily we found that we could have some practices in Harlem as well, so the early morning trainings were little less painful. But we finished our choreography, had 4 performances and I believe did a great job. Also, finished the choreo for my kids, they surprised me when performing, so much energy, so much attitude. They were amazing! It was the hardest to remind them I'm leaving. To say good bye to my friends wasn't as terrible as I imagined, as to most of them I said bye after an amazing party, when we were all in a good mood and I know for sure, I am gonna be back there soon enough and going to see them all again!

Couchsurfing thursday weekly meetups in Central Bar are as good as ever. International people, interesting conversations, last time as well some latin american dancing and limbo. Zev (usa) gave me a tour in Brooklyn's soho-like part, visited couple of really interesting bars that I would have never found myself, also Todd's birthday in Fat Cat bar/lounge was excellent. Bowling, pool and bing-pong alleys for free when you buy drinks. Ping-pong with Alex and Liam was hilarious, the ball ended up in places where you would not expect it to.

11th of March was a celebration of HOLI, an indian festival of colors. I managed to sleep in and the trip to Jamaica was so long, but the weather was warm, met up with Rick and Dave first, got quick intro about the background of the festival and we headed to the park. It was a chaos in the best way possible. Hundreds of people, running around, throwing colorful powder and paint into air and on other people, yes to random people, to everybody, I lost my guys somewhere, and hung out with Juan, Kristina and some cool CS people, in the end we were so covered with paint, that after a nice indian lunch in Queens, strangers wanted to take photos of and with us in the train.

Last week also finally visited the legendary 5pointz in Queens. The most amazing graffiti area you could possibly imagine, there were so many paintings, huge houses were all covered with street art, and yes literally art, not just tags or writings. Amazing paintings, also tributes to Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston. 

Same night attended a Knicks basketball game that Liam got tickets to in Madison Square Garden. It was their big comeback night. After about 6 losses they won big, it was a good game. The huge hall was crowded, and I just love the team spirit in U.S. Although I have to say college games are much crazier than the professional league ones. Still was an experience to see NBA game in live.

Finally St. Patricks weekend. Ofer invited us to a Gansevoort Park rooftop party again. As Roxi, Krasimir and Stefan were in town we did some pub-crawl in east village before heading to the fancy rooftop party. Saturday was the actual St. Paddies. Pancakes for breakfast, slipping some beer into Starbucks cups, meet up with others and chill on a hill in Central Park and enjoy the parade. All-day after-party at Nicky's place was a lot of fun. 

PS! Morgantown partied the hardest as always.

MORGANTOWN: 

On sunday, extra-early wake up and drive back to Morgantown. It's a heat-wave!! In mid-march!! 30 degrees!

Great to catch up with people, take some long walks, do some last minute planning for spring break, go out later at night, some pool, a Texas party and a chillout on a balcony in Bent, and of course, not to go to sleep when getting back 2.30am. Better watch videos and talk for hours with Chris. Went to see "Project X" to get us into spring-break mood. Until half way of the movie, we were like, phaahh, it's how you party in Motown, until a pretty dramatic twist.. tjaaa. What's crazy, is, it's based on true events. A guy from Australia actually organized a party like this, couple of years ago, and was very proud of himself.

FLORIDA: 

For the last week of march - off to Panama City Beach! SPRING BREAK MODE ON! 

The weather is amazing, our apartment is incredible. Can't believe that for that money we get a pretty much luxury apartment on the 13th floor with a view of the ocean. The city seems cool, not that big, a lot of places to go, beaches, beautiful people, heaps of spring breakers.

Our road trip here can be summed up in one word: EPIC. (and maybe a little dangerous). Started early in the morning, when Hugo threw his rubber snake, our mascot.. on Chris who thought it was real for a second, he ran after him, and they both almost got hit by a car. With a small delay we got going, 14 people in two packed cars. There were so many hours to go. Oh my, the conversations we had.. I guess, 7 people with too vivid imagination in one car leads to that. For example, at some point, we started talking about lesbians and relations, then about killing people, then about drinking and eating all kinds of disgusting things, about the best way to commit suicide, about prostitutes, about.. everything.

In one eating stop later on, we almost killed Emnet, as Chris started driving backwards really fast, and she suddenly appeared behind the car, as she dropped sth. At some point we almost also killed Amir, he was sitting in the back, sleeping, suddenly we hear sth, that sounds like his voice,and trying to say sth.. we ask back.. no answer.. then I get the text, is the a/c on? I ask back if he is cold.. no answer.. Okay I text the same question. And then we hear a scream.. OXYGEN!! We literally died.. all of us... Windows open, and his life was saved. At night, the conversations got even more random as the stupidity of exhaustion hit us. I also have to mention, Hugo is keeping a very detailed diary about the whole trip. 6am we had breakfast in IHOP in Florida. Inside I guess people thought we came straight from some party, we were so loud, so stupid and pretty much laughing like we were all high. Drive on, and made a gas and coffee stop In Tallahassee, the capital of the state of Florida, looking like some village. And then.. a flat tire happened. After some phone calls and driving around, as fast as we could, as the air from the tire was about to go out, we managed to get it fixed, being awake for 20+ hours. After an hour waiting under the sun in a completely isolated and creepy car repairment shop we hit the road again. A new car - a lot to discover. We were able to talk to our SUV, it was like a siri for iphone but dumber, I was choking of laughter. After couple more hours finally made it to Panama. Last 30 minutes around 11am were the most painful. Got our keys and contract and went to eat in a lovely Chinese place after what hit the beach!

I guess all of you have seen the madness of spring break in the movies.. guess what.. it is at least that insane.. I could get used to life like this: at the daytime, go to the beach, play volleyball, swim, jet ski, chill with awesome people, at night go out in several amazing beach clubs. Bought panamaniac party-cards for the week, this gives us good specials. Many live-bands in the clubs, for example - Triggerproof. Or, DJ Khaled playing in Club LaVela. How awesome is that. LaVela is the fanciest club in here. It has a pool inside. It is officially the biggest club in the Unites States.. Can fit 6000 people. Well yes, it is a maze in there!

Everywhere in the states it is not allowed to drink outside.. in public places.. In here it is perfectly legal.. Or at least the police has not seen anything about hundreds and hundreds of people drinking on the beach, in the ocean, going swimming at the same time, shouting as loud as possible. We live about a 30 minute walk on the beach away from the craziest area: Summit. We have interesting ways of getting all our coolers and stuff there, and the walks back, when everyone is a lil tipsy, are hilarious. Right now WVU definitely owns this place. there are so so many people from our university, besides us around 4-5 other universities. How insane people go, is just so funny. There is a piece of lower part of sand after a little swimming..which due to huge waves, and open beers in everybody's hand, is not the easiest place to get to, but there are always hordes of people.. playing drinking games, shouting "Eat shit pitt", "assholes", "let's goooo, mountaineers" or whatsoever similar.. girls showing their tits, or getting boooo'd off. Our other friends stay at Summit as well, so we usually go there, meet up with them, and just have a good time. Altho, accidents happen, Krasimir is on crutches, I kind of twisted my ankle again, Hendrik (Estonian :)) dislocated his shoulder, couple of people lost their bags. I guess, this is the price you pay for having a crazy spring break, until now everything is still kind of under control. The jet ski ride the other day was amazing, We drove them as fast as they went and were racing each other. The guy who rented them, gave us at least an extra half an hour. Also another night, after leaving a club, we ended up in the amusement park, and did the craziest rides: Slingshot and Volmatron!

The spring break is great for local businesses, Walmart at least makes a fortune. The way people go shopping, buy beers, party stuff and groceries - is crazy. We have cooked inside the house a lot of times.. altho it's all american fast food. Try cooking sth proper to 14 people. Have to say, our burgers, pizza, hot dogs and pasta or breakfast for dinner, taste great.

One night decided to stay in. Were watching "Paranormal activity 3" - which is by far the creepiest and coolest of them 3. After that we were already freaked out, so why not watch another one. Some of the people had nod seen "Insidious" which once freaked us all out. It was still scary, but, the ones who had seen it, including me, fell asleep half way.

The last days of spring break were as amazing as the first. On Champagne's (Nigeria) birthday there was a foam party with so much foam, that it was possible to drown! I'm not even exaggerating, people push you in and several times I couldn't see, breathe and didn't find a way out. Got out panting and the moment new foam came, all was forgotten and in you jump again. The last night was a glow party, from water guns colorful glow-in-the-dark spray was shot on everybody. In the end it was mainly wvu people in the club, so the last song of the night and of our spring break was “Country roads”. Felt amazing to run around, be stupid, scream and sing along.

Time flies.. that week went by way too fast! The ride back after first 8 or so hours was hard. Had an amazing dinner at Red Lobster and then exhaustion hit us. Everybody kept falling asleep.. A lot of stops, energy drinks and coffee wasn't enough. At some point round 6 in the morning Chris was literally driving from one side of the road to another, when I told him I see 2 cars instead of one, and he was like, oh I see 3, I knew we needed to stop. Emnet was more than happy about it as Kane was driving like a mad man..We stopped in some gas station and rested for an hour.