The Adventures of SuperJono

My flight back to the US was a lot more trouble free than my flight from the US to Guatemala. Actually, there were no problems at all. Better yet, I got a seat in an exit row, with all three seats to myself. That's literally the best possible seating arrangement you can have in economy class. I had the most room of anyone on the entire plane.

It was nice to get back to Los Angeles. The fact that this was the third time I'd been there, plus the USA being a LOT more like Australia than Guatemala, meant that I actually felt really at home. Oh, and being in country where hot showers are standard, and you're allowed to flush the toilet paper down the toilet was a big plus. Seriously, in Guatemala you're not supposed to flush the toilet paper. There's a little bin next to the toilet where you put the used paper. That means that every time you walk in to the bathroom it smells like, well, you can guess. I don't really know why either. If the plumbing can take everything else you put down a toilet, why can't it handle toilet paper, which basically tears apart as soon as it's in the water anyway?

Ok, that's enough talking about toilet paper.

As I said, I was excited to get back to Los Angeles, to a country a lot like home, with food that my stomach was actually used to. And boy was I hungry. I went out in search of something to eat.

Oh, hey, I know you.

Malibu Chicken and Steak? YES PLEASE THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

The next day I retraced my steps from one of my first days in LA - back up to the Sacred Heart Hospital. I know I'd already seen this, but all I did was go up and take a few photos from the street. I just assumed that was as close as you could get, since TV/movie sets are usually super off limits. I found out later they actually let fans come inside, which I'd never thought of asking about, so I had to see if I could get in.
Unfortunately, because of the writers strike, there's another group using the building at the moment, so I wasn't able to go in after all. I at least got to go inside the fence a little this time, and the security guard took a photo for me. And even better, I saw Neil Flynn, the guy that plays the janitor! He'd just come in to pick up his paycheck, so that was kind of cool. Made the trip sort of worth it.

On the way back to Hollywood, I stopped outside Warner Bros studios to get a photo of those damn striking writers that stopped me getting inside the Scrubs Hospital.

After I got back to Hollywood, I got myself some In n Out burger, went to see Cloverfield at Mann's Chinese Theatre, then headed back home to Santa Monica.

The next day I got up early, got myself some free breakfast at the hostel, and set out for Venice Beach, a couple of km south of Santa Monica.

Went past the original Muscle Beach on the way there.

I walked out onto the pier at Venice Beach and took this photo looking back in towards LA. You can actually see snow on the mountains in the background! I was just thinking how similar Southern California is to SE QLD, that even on a winter day the beach is still sunny, and it's only mildly cold, but then we don't have snow covered mountains that you can see from the beach!

And of course, I had to get myself some In n Out burger one last time.

This time I tried something different though. At In n Out, you can ask for any burger to be made "Protein Style," which means that instead of using a bun they make it inside two lettuce leaves. And it actually tastes really, really good. Instead of being dry and spongy, the lettuce makes the burger really crisp and fresh and tasty. I wish we had In n Out in Australia.

Next stop, Japan.

After I finished that first house I helped with, I had the day off on Wednesday before starting a new house, with an all new group of volunteers (from the UK, USA and Germany) on Thursday. On Friday, Ross (one of the guys from the UK) asked if I wanted to come with him and a big group of other travellers he'd met to Montericco for the weekend. Montericco is a beach about 2 hours out of Antigua. A beach? Sounds good to me.

Saturday morning we caught the shuttle out to Montericco, found a place to stay, and had one of the best weekends ever. The weather was perfect (so warm and sunny) and the water was great (lots of waves, and the temperature was just right, you could jump straight in). The beach is lined with palm trees, and covered in black volcanic sand. There were 9 of us along on the trip, and we were all saying we couldn't believe there was a beach this good in Guatemala. After everything else we'd seen, we weren't really expecting to find such a nice beach.

We pretty much spent the whole weekend laying in the beach. Awesome.

Montericco is a breeding spot for turtles, so after they lay the eggs, researchers move them to a hatchery, then once they hatch they release them in to the ocean at sunset for everyone to see. For 10 Quetzals you can hold one and release it yourself.

Only problem is, they keep the turtles in a bucket for the day, which tires them out, so by the time they're actually released they don't have enough energy to do the 36 hour swim they need to, so they're all destined to die (or so we were told). Great.

Though I'm guessing they release plenty of other turtles a bit more naturally, and so the 10Q they make from all the tourists helps fund the whole project. I don't really know. Just don't tell the RSPCA.

The whole last week has been a blur - I've been trying to at least mention all the big stuff I do here in the blog, but I really can't remember what happened when and whether I've blogged about it or not. However, I know I HAVEN'T blogged about NYE yet.

We left the hostel at about 3pm. I was all caped up and ready to go. Come on, you didn't really expect me not to wear my cape on New Years Eve did you?

We caught the 1 train down to Times Square and got there about 3:20. It took us a while to figure out where we were supposed to be, the whole thing was a bit of a mess with the organisation. There was already tons of people there...

Even a lot of the police really had no idea what was supposed to be happening. We finally found a spot where we knew we could stay and... waited.

And waited some more, at 6pm they raised the ball.

Then we waited some more. They did a countdown every hour and on the screen they showed "Happy New Year" and the name of a city it had just been midnight in, like "Happy New Year Paris, France". Probably so we could get warmed up before midnight in NY. And so that we wouldn't die of boredom.

Luckily, because there were 11 of us, we were able to stay entertained pretty well. We stood around chatting, and every once in a while sat down and played cards.

Then finally, after what seemed like forever, midnight finally came. The countdown was surreal ("Holy crap! 2007 is about to end!"), and when it hit 0 as the ball made it to the bottom of the pole, was awesome. Everyone went crazy, and confetti got launched from EVERYWHERE. They'd stuck the confetti up on about every building in Times Square, and because it was fairly windy, it all just stayed up in the air, blowing around for ages (there was even some still blowing around when we went back the next afternoon!).

We were standing near the NBC stage, where they were doing their live broadcast from. Shortly before midnight, Carson Daily (a US TV personality who I'd heard of, but didn't actually know what he looked like) was on the stage hosting the broadcast. He had a headset on, so that he couldn't hear the crowd, and so the camera could only hear him. That didn't stop this stupid girl behind us from CONSTANTLY yelling out. "CARSON DALY! CARSON!" "I LOVE YOU CARSON". This went on for a while, and obviously, Carson was oblivious. But still, she yelled "CARSON DALY! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME CARSON! I LOVE YOU!!!". I've got to admit though, Carson seemed like a major tool. The way he walked around up on the platform, he hardly even glanced down at the crowd below all waving. He seemed to have this real sense of "I'm better than all these people, because I'm on television." He just came across as really arrogant. And we couldn't help but wonder, since all he does is read off a teleprompter uh... What exactly is his talent? I'm pretty sure most people above the age of 7 have a pretty good grasp on reading.

After midnight everyone started leaving quickly, and considering we hadn't really eaten, had anything to drink or gone to the toilet for 9 hours (and been standing for almost all of the time) we were quite keen to do the same. I pointed out to everyone that, despite only being 15 minutes in, 2008 was pretty awesome. Ever since then we've been constantly reminding each other that 2008 is STILL awesome (and getting awesomer).

We have a Japanese friend (Michi) from the hostel who was supposed to meet us at Times Square in the afternoon, but because of the crowd he wasn't able to get near us, so we gave up on that. Though as we started leaving, who did we pass as we started walking down the street? Of the million people (literally) that were at Times Square, we just so happened to pass Michi (good spotting on Maykel's part).

We all caught the 1 train back to the hostel, ran for the bathrooms, and then went out to find some food. There's a 24hr McDonalds around the corner, and we'd all talked about how we were going to go and get supersize meals, only to get there and find they closed at 7pm due to New Years >_< Luckily we found a pizza joint across the street (ok, that wasn't really that lucky - there's pizza joints ALL OVER Manhattan, though we were lucky it was still open). Two slices of pizza later, we walked up the road to a bar one of the Dutch guys had heard about, hung out there for a bit and then headed back to the hostel, where hung out until about 5:30am.

All in all, a fantastic night.

Oh, and 2008 is still awesome.

The day after Christmas I met up with Alfonso - an Ecuadorean guy I met in Chicago - to go see the Museum of Natural History. The Museum is huge - if you actually looked at everything properly (as opposed to just strolling past it all) you'd probably have to be there right from opening to closing just to see it all. You'd probably need even more time if you went to all the special exhibits as well. So yeah, there's tonnes of stuff to see...

LIKE DINOSAURS! Dinosaurs, like the San Diego Zoo, totally brought out my inner child. I got so stupidly excited for some reason.

And creepy stuff, like a giant Japanese spider crab.

The day after I met up with Dee for some sightseeing through Manhattan. We went to the Rockefeller Centre again, and saw this...

The guy in this photo goes to work every day and rakes in about a million dollars. Literally. That's over a million dollars of pennies and small change (raised by New York school children, but added to by the general public walking by now). It's over 8 inches deep.

We also went down the check out the WTC site. It's amazing trying picture that there used to be giant buildings there. There isn't really much to see to be honest - it's really just a giant construction site. You just have to visit it for the history though. Really, I'm just 5 years to early. Give it some time, and there'll be new buildings and a proper memorial there.

After that we decided to head for "Big Daddy's Diner" - a restaurant on Park Avenue that Sierra (Dee's friend) had told us about (when you order a burger, you get a choice of fries or tater tots as a side!). Except... we got lost. But actually really enjoyed it. We were just wandering through Manhattan, which was a really great way to see a lot of it. We saw the JFK bridge, Chinatown, and tons more. And we did eventually make it to the diner, which was awesome.

The next day I met up with Dee and Alfonso and we all tried to do a bit more sightseeing. It was a bit of a wasted day really - we just spent it wandering around in circles (though again, it was a great way to see the city) decided what exactly we wanted to see or do). I got a cool photo of the Apple Fifth Avenue store...

And then we went through Central Park (not too far in though. That's not a great idea at nighttime).

So I went home from sightseeing fairly early, back to the hostel. Which is when I met the Dutch. But that's a story for next post.

So I flew in to NY today. I had a window seat on the plane, so I got an amazing view of Manhattan flying in to the airport - we flew right past the city, fairly low, so I could see al the buildings, the Statue of Liberty and Central Park from the air.

I went out this evening checking out the Apple 5th Avenue store, FAO Schwartz, and the Rockefeller Centre (with the Christmas tree).

As you can imagine, Christmas Eve in downtown Manhattan was super busy - there were people everywhere. It was great to go out and see it though. I already like New York.

Oh, and I didn't have McDonald's for dinner. I had pizza and pasta for dinner. And McDonald's for dessert

I think I'll have an early night tonight. I'm pretty tired, plus I have to be asleep for Santa to come!