American Tourister

Job searches suck. I'm glad I'm not going through that anymore! My friend JH, a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer, come down to DC and crashed at my place for a couple days, just to be closer to two job fairs. Gotta print your resume out, get the right paper, type all those damn cover letters, wear a suit, fake smile and ask all sorts of questions, come up with interesting things to say. Blech. Buena suerte, JH! Guess I'll be doing that after grad school someday though Eh :/

JH and I met up with another college friend and his Italian wife on Friday night in Chinatown, aiming to get into the bowling alley, which is ALWAYS busy. Some stupid private event - we didn't even have a shot. We decided to take a little stroll and find a place for dessert. Call us stuck-up Europeans (or wannabes, since two of us are actually Euro) , but nothing in the surrounding area sounded good. All the ridiculously overrated bars trying to be the hippest spot of the night by only letting in the very best-dressed, or the dumb chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesday's that I typically abhor. Where are the quaint cafes with coffee and pastries? Oh wait, we're not in Europe. So we wandered off into the freezing night, stupidly, since everything downtown closes at 10pm. With time running out and our fingers almost frozen off, where did we end up?

The worst place possible. The place you can't go when you actually live in the city.

Yep. Hard Rock Cafe.

We almost pretended to be tourists, not locals. So sad. And our portion sizes in America are dumbfoundingly HUGE. I wanted a brownie sundae - couldn't get anyone to share one with me, as they opted for cheesecake. I'll just order one, I thought, how bad could it be? Turns out an entire kindergarten class could share one of those things! Awful. Awful. Awful. I mean, it tasted good, the 5% I could shovel in. But wow....