Alain's Adventure - Da Brotherhood

The beginning of the day was like the previous days : wake up at 7:30am, breakfast, work. A little exception this morning when I had the time to speak with my parents on Skype and wish them a Happy New Year ! They miss me a lot and I also miss them a lot ...

We stopped working sooner than usual today since we had to go to Comcast to open an Internet connexion in our apartment ; eventhough our neighbor non-protected wifi is quite fast ^^. We first went to an agency where a friend of us also went to open his connexion. Unfortunately, this agency couldn't do anything for us since we don't live in the area they cover.

Nevertheless, she gave us the address of the agency in which we had to go. Since we had time left before the closing time, we decided to give it a try. After a 20 minutes drive, we arrived at the agency located at Trenton. It is amazing how this town looks like the one you see in the movie, the kind of town where you see gangs and guns ... I think we will go there only when we will need to go.

We subscribed to an internet plan up to 16 Mbits per second downstream and 2 Mbits per second upstream with 30 tv-chanels. The offer is kind of weird since we would have paid more if we only chose the internet plan. Finally, the technician who will open our line will come to our apartment on Monday morning between 7am and 9am. The installation will cost us $100 and the internet + tv, $68 per month. I really miss our French "triple-play" plan where we can have tv, telephone and internet up to 20 Mbits per second for only 30€ per month ...

Until then, we will have to use our poor neighbor bandwidth :).

As yesterday, I woke up around 7:30am this morning and prepare myself for work : breakfast, teeth brushin, face washing ...

We learnt in detail what we will have to do during our internship and the topic seems more and more interesting, but as much as hard ... Unfortunately, I can't talk about it.

Since our move-in, I tried to eat less and less fat and for lunch, we went to a food court where I had a "Japanese" meal (surely made by Chinese people) : chicken teriyaki with some California rolls. Even though it wasn't the best Japanese meal I ever had, it was good enough for the price I paid (around $6) and big enough to feed my stomach.

There was a meeting at SCR during the day during when the people participating had the opportunity to have a lot of thing to eat : sandwiches, salad, pasta salad, cookies etc ... But there were so much food that there were left-over for us ; this is basically what I had for dinner :) !

This day was also the day when our Ikea stuff would be delivered. Since we had to work, Benoît's girlfriend Alexandra was kind enough to come to our apartment to wait for the truck. I still had to thank her a lot since she came at the apartment around 8:30am and the stuff arrived around 6pm ... So when we came back at the apartment, our packed beds were waiting for us.

Couldn't wait anymore, the three of us decided to mount those tonight. Having only one screw-driver, we had to mount one at a time. It took us almost 2 hours and a half to finish the three beds but the result is good !

Just missing a desk and a chair and my bedroom will be completed.

Waking up today was quite easy thanks to my love Céline who called me when she arrived at her house. I was really happy to hear her voice and to know that she was alright.

After spending a lot of time (but not enough) talking with her on Skype, I took my first breakfast while she was going to my grandmother's to have diner with my family. I never thought that sweeter Frosties cereal can be that good ; the taste is a lot better than in France.

While the laundry was running, Alexis and I took the trashes to the closest container. But after discussing with some friends, it seems that those weren't the good ones ... But our apartment looks a lot nicer now :) !

For lunch, we had some pasta with turkey breast and ham. It was not the best meal I ever had, but eating something different from the several fast food we had during the last weeks was wonderful. And it was nice to be able to cook something ourselves.

When Céline went back to her house, I spent some time with her again. But as this morning, it wasn't enough at all ... We had to go to the supermarket to buy some food like butter, olive oil, beef and pasta. The 500gr boxes of Barrila were on sale and cost only $0.63, that is why we decided to buy as a much as possible.

Back at the apartment, I only had the time to say goodnight to Céline before going to Christophe's apartment (an EPITA 2007) to watch the Superbowl.

This year game was showing the New York Giants against the New England Patriots. Even though it would have been better to be among American people, I enjoyed watching the game with them. The sport is nice to watch, but the Superbowl is especially known for its several advertisements. During each team change, time break ... we have to watch some ads.

There were not a lot of goals during this game, only four touchdowns and a fieldgoal, but the last seconds were really AWESOME ! The Giants were losing 10 to 14 but they had the ball. After gaining several yards, there were only 50 seconds left on the watch. This is when Manning threw the ball to one of his team-mate who scored a touchdown ! Final score : 17 to 14 for the Giants.

As thursday, I am too tired and especially not in the mood to write something at the moment. I will describe my day tomorrow morning.

Just a little word for my love who is in the plane at the moment : I love you so much !

As promised, this is what we did yesterday.

Woken up around 8:15am, Céline and I took our time to prepare ourselves since we didn't want to take our breakfast, the previous day diner still aching our stomaches. We were ready around 9:30am and went to the bank for our friends.

In the mean time, I called the post office to have some information about our mailbox keys and they told me that I could come and get them. And this is what we did :). Since we were near Avalon, we went to the leasing offce to ask them some question about holes in the wall.

This done, we called Benoît and meet them at the Hotel to go to New York City.

This is now that the day really began. As usual, we took the PATH up to the 33rd street (Madison Square) and went to the Empire State Building. We bought our tickets and went to the 86th floor : the view is really amazing ! Even though it was really cold up there, we took the time to shoot a lot of photos of New York City. Seeing Central Park from there was awesome !

It was really nice to see the city from so high and we felt really really small up there. It was just so sad that we couldn't see the World Trade Center ... But the view was still amazing with the 5th Avenue !

After spending around 30 minutes up there, we went down and took the road direction Time Square (again ?). The three peoples with us who never came to NYC were really impressed by the city. Since it was almost 2pm, we decided to stop somewhere and it something. This was were we tried the McDonald's ... I can't understand why this fast food is okay in other countires like France, China, Australia ... but really digusting here ! Even the Fanta is not good ...

Nevertheless, this didn't stop us on our "journey". We then went to the M&M's store and even though this was my second time there, I was also amazed by what I saw ! It is impressive how much things they have made around this product and we could see how popular this chocolate candy is !

After that, we headed to the Apple Store (again ?) by the 5th Avenue. Our Apple Fanboy Fabien was in his world there ! This place is quite beautiful and is openend 24 hours a day ! No wonder there is so much people going there just to use a mac.

As scheduled, we finally went to Central Park ! We only visited a little portion of the south area of this big park and what we saw was beautiful.

We took our time to walk around and discovered the famous Ice Rink :

This is a place we will sure visit again and we can't wait to see some leaves on these trees ! We were told that the USA were full of squirrels, but we haven't seen any of these little creature since our arrival here. But Central Park were the place where we could finally see those. There were so much of them even though we had only seen a small part of the park. Their way of moving was funny and it seemed like they were posing in front of our cameras.

Since it was starting to get dark, we decided to go home and get some rest. This day at New York City was quite tirering but worth it :) !

Around 9pm, we started to get hungry, so we took the car to find somewhere nice to eat. This is when we saw a Diner restaurant on the road and decided to try it. The menu was full of different sandwiches, burgers and more elaborate meal but we decided to take the cheapest. Three of us took some Chickent "special" sandwiches and the fourth one took a Cheese Steak Wrap. It cost us around $10 for each but it was really big and was like a battle for us to finish what we ordered !

This is a restaurant we will often visit :) !

Our mattresses were coming this morning between 8am and 12am, so we woke up around 7am this morning. Since we were planning on buying some donuts at the Dunkin Donuts store near our apartment, we didn't take our breakfast at the hotel.

At 7:45am, we took the road direction Avalon and stopped by the Dunkin Donuts to buy 4 donuts, two coffees and some Hash Browns. The donuts and Hash Browns were good, but the coffee awfull ... The delivery guys came around 9:30am so that we only waited 1 hour. During this time, we had time to have an idea of what to buy first to be able to survive during the first days.

After that, we went to the store near our apartment to see what we could buy there and for what price. Conclusion : we will buy most of our kitchen stuff at Wall*Mart where we can find interesting things like glasses, knives, forks and spoons ... For the rest, we went to Ikea in the afternoon.

At noon, we went to Wendy's to eat a fat hamburger again ... We really need to stop eating this kind of things, my stomach is starting to show me its anger ! But we were ready to go to Ikea.

All of us went there what made 3 big cars. After a long afternoon there we bought 3 beds, a coffee table, 3 stools and other usefull stuffs like plates and bathroom things. After setting the delivery process for our beds and our friend's sofas, we took the way back around 7:30pm and went to our garage to store all the newly bought packages.

Tired and hungry, we went to a steak house near Avalon named KC Prime. I had a Kobe "Bro" Burger, a hamburger with a 300gr Kobe beef steak and cheese and Céline a Sesam Crusted Tuna Salad, a salad with raw tuna and tofu. Both of our dishes were delicious !

Tomorrow schedule : NYC with Empire State Building and Central Park !

As I said yesterday, we woke up around 8am to start eating our breakfast around 8:20am ; Benoît and Alex had already finished (they woke up around 6am :p). We took the round around 9:30am and I showed Benoît where the Car Rental is.

10 minutes later, he got the keys of his car : a white Chevrolet Malibu. I teached him how to drive this kind of car and how to drive on US road. After that, we took different ways : he went back to the hotel and Céline, Alexis and I were headed to New York City.

From Madison Square, we tried to find things to buy, especially clothes ; but the stores we've seen on saturday weren't as good as we thought. Nevertheless, Céline found something at Victoria's Secret :). Then, we took the same way as Satuday : direction Time Square. We had seen a Levi's store there on Saturday, but we didn't see that it was closed. Thanksfully, we had our iPhones so that we located other Levi's store near Central Park, on the 5th avenue.

Arrived there, we tried to look for it, but the building number doesn't seem to follow any form of logic here : you have the number 10, then the 15, and later on the 3 ... But we weren't hand empty since there was a Nike store where Alexis and I bought a "Battle Suit" (Nike Pro tight top) and Céline a sport top.

We continued to the west where we found the second Levi's store found by our iPhones : it is quite big and much of the pants were on sale but we had to head back to the hotel to meet our third Bro who arrived today : Fabien. We will sure go back to this store and the Diesel store near it.

Back at the hotel, we talked with him about our visit and his trip. As he was very hungry, we went to the Burger King (again ?!) but Céline and I didn't eat much. As for today, we will try to eat as less fat as possible ; I will start training when installed at Avalon.

Tired, time for me to sleep. See ya !

Last night party was nice and we met a lot of people. Nevertheless Céline was really tired because of the jet lag so we came back at the hotel around 0:00 am.

We slept until 9:15am and took our time to get ready for breakfast. Bad luck, there weren't any bacon or pancakes today ; so sad for her ... Hope we will have more luck tomorrow, maybe some waffles :p ? Our stomach full, we took the road to New York City around 11:30am and arrived near the PATH station at Jersey City around 1pm because of the traffic.

We took the train to the 33rd street at Madison Square and decided to have lunch over there. Thanksfully, there was a food court and we went to a grill named Nathan. Céline and I had a great sandwich named Philadelphia's CheeseSteak :

That was really great but I think that I may have lost 10 years of lifetime after eating this. Worst try it !

Haven't visited the area yet, we decided not to take the subway to the 5th avenue (our goal), but to walk there. And what a surprise when we got out of the mall : the Empire State Building ! We feel very small in this town ...

This was really AWESOME !

On the way, we went to the Victoria's Secret shop. Céline was really happy since there are a lot of nice thing, and they didn't seem to be expensive. Got to be added to the List :).

Time Square was on the road so we took our time to visit some of the shops we had first seen last time. And our first stop was at the Toys'R Us :

This store is amazing, I have never seen a store so dedicated to toys ! You have to see it in real, no photos can describe it. It is unbelievable ! No wonder we spent so much time in it. Céline almost got eaten by a T-Rex !

There were so much different toys. You can even buy Legos piece by piece, a kid dream ! There is also a candy space where there are a lot of m&m's different colors :

This place is really great and bringing a children here must be quite wonderful.

Next, we met some friends on the road and headed near Central Park to show Céline the Apple Store. But I didn't take any picture so you will have to wait until another post. The design of this store is really great and I prefer not to spoil anything and to show you some photos later.

Just after that, we went to another Toy Store where there was a giant piano like the one in the movie "Big". A friend of us tried to play but there were too much kids ... should kill'em all :p ! This place was nice too, but not as great as the Toys'R Us even if I had the opportunity to have a Light Saber duel with "Ugly" man :

Don't worry, I didn't do a real fight but just took a picture with one of my Bro. After looking at the picture, we have seen that the word "Ugly" was written just above his head :).

We went to the Abercrombie & Fitch store which is design as a night club. A friend of us took a picture with one of a male model (Derek Zoolander ?) who is working at the store. Céline and I bought two really nice T-shirts :

Starting to get tired, we hit the road back to the hotel. On the way, we had dinner at a Wendy's restaurant which is a fast food (again ?!). Céline and I just had a Single Quarterpounder Cheeseburger. The sandwich was great but not as good as the Whopper. The fresh never-frosted meat was good though.

Some laundry to do and bed time ! Tomorrow : NYC again ?

Today was a lazy day again. As yesterday, wake up at 9 am to start eating our breakfast at 9:30. A small difference though, we were three at the table instead of five (lazy guys ...). I also tried to change my menu by eating more fruit and less salty things.

The other two still sleeping, we decided to take my car to visit the shops near the hotel so that we could know what they sell. Conclusion, they sell almost the same things : everything :). Even though they were in the same shopping area, the Best Buy shop, Target shop and another one sell almost the same things : electronics with some specialties : food and clothes for the Target shop and paper-related things for the other one. I also had a naked small hot dog there with a strawberry-banana flavored Icee. Funny thing, the hot dog alone costs $1.99 and the hot dog with a regular drink (which is bigger than my head) cost $2.00.

After that, we went back to the hotel and plaid with our iPhone to learn the different features of this phone. The map feature is really usefull since we can find what we want where we want : want a Pizza ? Just point to your location and search the keyword "Pizza" : several pins will fall down on the map indicating where the Pizzas restaurants are.

In the afternoon, I had a long and nice video conversation with my love who is coming tomorrow :D. I am so happy ! Just one day to go.

The two lazy guys went off to buy some bagels and cream cheese to eat them with the smoked salmons we bought yesterday. I had one and it is really AWESOME ! No wonder this is so popular other here !

After spending the afternoon at the hotel, we moved to Princeton to go to the Starbucks Coffee where I had a Vanilla Cafe. One of us wanted to go to an Italian restaurant for dinner so we drew out our iPhones and scan the neighborhood. Thanksfully, there were two.

The one we went at were so nice that we had to wait 20 minutes to be seated. The hostess was nice and seemed to speak french even though I only heard a quick "bon appétit" without any accents. I had some Lasagna and it was really nice to eat something different from a fast food.

We've finished eating around 10pm and decided to try a bowling. Our iPhones were again usefull to help us find the road. The place was nice with 64 bowling lanes. However, the only ones playing were ... us :). There was a group a young people (students ?) when we came in but bad luck, they were leaving. We played two parties and I won the first one ! Beginner luck ;p ! I finished second at the second one though. I thing we will come back to this place, but maybe another week day or at another time, to try to make some local friends.

Finally back to the hotel, I am gonna head to the bed. Tomorrow program : pick up my love at the ariport !