And then I ate his antennae. They were crunchy.

I am doing laundry again. Although this time it is no longer my building. I had some money left on my laundry card and I wanted to use it up, so I snuck back in. Which wasn’t at all difficult, seeing as how I;ve only been gone a week and I transported  my dirty laundry in my suitcase, so it just looks like I’ve been on vacation. And who’s gonna suspect a confident-looking white girl anyways? In this respect, at least, my skin color works in my favor.

Yes, I’m in my new apartment now. I haven’t blogged in many many weeks, mostly because I haven’t had any free time until very recently. I’m no longer in classes. They ended Friday a week ago. Since then, I’ve just been working and trying to set up my new one-bedroom apartment, which is no easy task seeing as how I have no means of transporting furniture, if I were to buy some. This is probably why the only furniture I currently own is an inflatable bed from Target and a couple of cheap end tables from IKEA, which is all would fit in my friend Johnny’s car. I saw an inspiring group of photos online of a complete houseful of furniture some guy made out of Fed-Ex boxes. I believe these boxes are free for the taking, so worse comes to worse, I may be breaking out the box cutters and industrial rolls of tape.

It has been easier to set up my kitchen, seeing as how all the big heavy stuff was already in place when I moved in. Brand new stove, refrigerator, cabinets, and sink in all their shiny glory, just waiting for me to dirty ‘em up. I have cooked a few things this week, though I still have a lot of experimenting to do. I do have one slight problem, though. The stove doesn’t have one of those nifty steam-sucking hoods over it, so every time I cook something, the smoke alarm goes off. It has gotten to the point where I don’t even put the broom back in the closet anymore, so it will be constantly nearby in case I need to whack the devil out of the alarm at any given moment. The thing even goes off when I turn on the heat of the apartment. And I haven’t seen a single wisp of smoke! First thing I’m gonna do when I get me some proper furniture is climb up on it and disconnect that ridiculous alarm. I sleep right next to the fire escape, so I’ll be fine. And my sanity will stay intact. Possibly, I will be even safer without the fire alarm, because if the darn thing keeps going off at all hours for no reason, my neighbors just might kill me.

As many of you know, I have recently attained a waitressing position at a large restaurant establishment on Times Square. I’ll admit, I’m not loving working there. I waited enough tables in my life to know that serving is good money, and at this restaurant in particular, it’s better than most. But for some reason, I just don’t feel good there. I am thankful to have a job, don’t get me wrong. And the other people who work there are really great. But I guess I’ll just have to look at it as a huge incentive for making my success in the movie business.

I am quite steadily heading in that direction as best I can. I got my headshots last week, and this morning, I took my favorite ones to the retouchers to have them unblemishified and perfected, and then I’ll go print up some copies so I can start going to auditions. This is a very exciting thought. I can’t wait to start doing something that I look forward to, not something I dread.

In our last Acting for Film class, Miguel, the teacher, gave us individual consultations and advice for our careers. He told me I should continue taking classes, such as improv, stand-up, or clowning classes, because I have a strong comedic instinct. I've always been more comfortable with comedy anyways. Miguel says I need to lose my fear of being incredibly silly. That's ironic, because I am absolutely one of the silliest people I know, and I have been supressing my silliness because I wanted my teachers and classmates to think I take acting seriously. Because I do. And I've been working on my subtlety as well, because the actors who are subtle always blow me away. Guess I should head in the other direction for awhile. Too bad I left my red clown nose at home...

It has been a tough last week. The vast majority of my friends from class have gone back to their respective homes all over the world, and what few are left won’t be around much longer themselves. I have been a tad bit depressed these past couple of days, feeling weird about my job and not having anyone to hang out with afterward. Plus, class was FUN! So I have made a list of goals for myself to accomplish in the coming year, including: make five good friends in New York City, enroll in another acting class, and most importantly, be financially successful enough in my film career to be able to stop waiting tables. Hell, I’d be a thousand times happier fetching coffee for a director than fetching coffee for some obnoxious tourist couple from Europe who wants their meals with everything “on the side.” This “on the side” business makes me crazy! I want to remind them that it’s all gonna end up in the same place anyway! The garbage! People waste SO MUCH food! It takes all my willpower not to secret away the barely-touched burritos and plates of pasta into a to-go box, and eventually into my mouth. I know that seems gross, the prospect of eating after strangers. But I'm always just two shakes away from homeless, and pickiness is not a survival-friendly trait. And I like to think of myself as a survivor, and a thriver. Yep, come a nuclear holocaust, and it'll just be me and the cockroaches. Hmm...I wonder how THEY taste...

I ain't never stole nuthin, cep internet. And that don't count, do it?

The second to last toe on my left foot is dying. I know it’s not broken because I can wiggle it, but it’s still headed downhill quickly. I do abuse my toes on a regular basis by stuffing them into shoes (oh, to have been born a hobbit!) but I walked them too much last night in too-high heels, and I guess that was the last straw. I wanted to take them dancing. They really like that. I had plans and everything. But after eight hours of roaming around New York City, ricocheting from rude bouncer to rude bouncer, searching fruitlessly for something fun to do, this is what I get. A red, swollen, blistered, festering toe. And a hoarse voice from karaoke and Black and Milds (a weak stab at saving the night). That’s the way it goes sometimes, though. Better not to plan anything at all and just let destiny unfold. That’s what I’m learning. That’s what my twenties are teaching me. I can’t wait to see what my thirties throw at me. Hopefully a furnished apartment and an exhilarating career. Oh, and also a steel drum. Cause I’ve always wanted one of those.

I have been wearing out my library card these past few weeks. Today’s libraries are kinda like free video stores, and I’ve been checking out loads of DVDs to watch in my spare time. I’ve also been reading screenplays. It’s lovely that watching movies is no longer wasting time for me, but is valuable research for my future film career. I’ve been studying the greats: Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Christopher Guest (ok, so, maybe This Is Spinal Tap is more of a cult classic, but it still counts). Next up we have Denzel, Bogart, and a little Ethan Hawke (yummy) just for kicks. And I achieved a great success this week. I found one tiny zone in the living room of my apartment where I can pick up a fast enough unprotected wireless connection to stream video, as long as I don’t move from the edge of the couch. Oh, my darling Netflix, how I have missed you so! Lord, bless those who don’t bother with password-protecting their connections. Anyone remember the unprotected Big Dick network that only worked on top of the pillow on my bed in the Warrior house? A comedic goldmine if there ever was one. Protection is overrated anyway.


This weekend marks the halfway-point in my 8-week program. We bid farewell to the 4-weekers yesterday. They were Keren (la cubana), Burak (the Turk), and Dean (the ___________- you can fill in the blank yourself). Our class is down to 11 people now. We lost the Brazilian girl, Marilia, to thyroid surgery two weeks ago, so that’s four gone. (She didn’t die or anything. She just went back to Brazil.) Our guy to girl ratio has worsened, leaving three guys to eight girls. I think that’s one reason that me and Clare (the Aussie) decided to do a scene from Fight Club together for Scene Study class. And also because we wanted to fake-wail on each other.  There is a serious dearth of good meaty roles for women.  Google “scenes for two women” and all you’ll get is Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate about You, or Romy and Michelle. Geez Louise (and Thelma).  The scene from Fight Club is for two men, namely Edward Norton and Brad Pitt (double yummy) but we have tweaked it a bit so that two girls can play it. Sometimes you have to grab something you kind of like and then manipulate it into what you want it to be. That’s how romantic relationships work too, right? Yep, I thought so. Main reason I don’t have one right now.


As always happens when you force a mixed group of very different individuals to spend lots of time together in an enclosed space, our class has formed small groups of friends that hang out together outside of class as well. To be fair, we all intermingle well (is that redundant? How do you intramingle?) and there are a few loners, but outside of class, we are pretty segregated. My group is made up of five girls (sound familiar, Jane, Kate, Rach, and Ash?). It’s me, Clare, Keren, Heshi, and Siting. When we have days off from class, some combination of the five of us tends to gravitate together and go off and do fun New Yorky stuff. Add a random guy from class every now and then if you want. Two weeks ago we rode the ferry over to Staten Island, passing the Statue of Liberty, and walked around the Botanical Gardens there. Last Sunday, I met Siting and Heshi in Upper Manhattan to attend a free Medieval festival. It was a fateful day for Siting, because she tried her first turkey leg and also fell in love. With a knight on horseback. Named Bubba. She’s been relentlessly searching for him on Facebook ever since. Thursday of this week, we all five met in Central Park and had a picnic in the grass. We were joined by Jay this time too, though I’m honestly not sure how much fun he had being surrounded by all these screeching girls (some more screeching than others). He brought cheesecake to the picnic though, so he was warmly welcomed into the fold. And last night, as I have mentioned before, we injured ourselves walking all over Manhattan, trying to find some jumping 18+ nightlife. It was supposed to be a big group from class, but people kept dropping out at the last minute (and it’s a good thing they did or they too would have had to endure the suckfest) so it became just the six of us from the picnic. I am looking forward to the next four weeks when hopefully I will get the chance to branch out and get to know other people from class better as well as some of the filmmakers (if I ever get a call back from the open audition). I still don’t know many people in New York, so any connections I can make (to exploit) are very welcome.


I have enough money saved up to last me till December, if I can stay out of frickin H&M. However, I am getting antsy to start generating some income again. I saw a young woman on the street today, about my age, holding a sign that said “Homeless but not hopeless; Broke but not broken” and it chilled me to the bone. Although you would have to cut off a few of my body parts and probably lobotomize me before I would ever succumb to homelessness, seeing her there crouching on the sidewalk in the Lower West Side with her little cup of pennies really gave me a sense of urgency about getting on the ball and starting to make some money. Food would be easy to steal around here, since there's so much of it. But you can't really steal an apartment. Well, actually, I think you can. It's called squatting. We'll just keep that as a last resort. But seriously, I really need my own place. The apartment I live in now is fine for the short term, but living with other people is weird and stressful, at least for me, and I am feeling the need for some solitude. Especially since this apartment just took on another renter in addition to me, and now it’s five people fighting for the one bathroom. Yup, it’s time to move on. I’ll probably wind up in a $1,200 a month closet, but at least I will have my own bathroom. My very own tiny, cramped bathroom. To me, that’s real luxury.

Acting classes are like kindergarten, only much more expensive.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 12 days since I last blogged. These 8 weeks are flying by so quickly, and I have kept very busy with all my schooling, researching, and touristing. Right now I am writing this in the laundry room on the 2^nd floor of my building. I just put in two loads to wash, and, scared shitless of someone stealing the few clothes I own if I leave, I have set up camp down here to wait out my cycles. I am actually writing this on a real notepad with a real pen, and shamefully, five sentences in, my hand already hurts. I would bring my laptop down here and type as I go like usual, but I’m also scared of getting mugged. Not that it’s likely to happen, but you never know about laundry rooms.

I believe I’ve already introduced you to Dean. As I said before, I was paired with him in my Scene Study class and we were given a scene from Good Will Hunting to perform. It went decently well. I just told myself that this was my first big acting challenge: smile and flirt with someone who totally repulsed me in reality, and make it believable. I wonder if that’s what it feels like to be a hooker. Anyway, we ran through the scene several times until we knew the lines by memory. It wasn’t hard. It’s a short scene. But after we laid our scripts to the side, Dean’s pronunciation of certain words got weirder and weirder. One particular word, “arbitrary”, somehow eventually morphed into “obituary.” As in: “Eating caramels is just as obituary as drinking coffee.” I kid you not. Since I am working on curbing my know-it-all-ness, I resolutely bit my tongue and didn’t correct him. Mercifully, someone else in the class noticed and corrected him for me. And then I was finally able to let out all the pent-up laughter that had built up during the last week along with the roars of the rest of the class. The last time we did the scene, the teacher made us yell the whole thing at each other like we were truly in a crowded, noisy bar. It was ridiculous, especially since the actual room we were in was pretty quiet, but afterwards, everyone said the yelling version was much better than before. We have Scene Study class again on Friday, so I’m gonna pack some throat drops just in case he makes us rehearse it that way again.

Speaking of the Scene Study teacher, his class is a constant exercise in restraining my mad bursts of giggles. He reminds us to figure out the character’s innate need, or what drives the character to do what he or she does. Which would be all well and good, except he accompanies this reminder with a hand gesture that is a sort of pounding on the lower part of his stomach with the side of his fist. He walks around the classroom making this gesture, and I’m very sorry, but my sordid mind goes immediately to a very wrong place, and I have to turn away. Go ahead and make the gesture yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

Now, a little about Improv class and Voice/Movement class. These two are similar in that they usually have us bellowing strange sounds, acting absurd, and trying to generate as much silliness as possible. Luckly, silliness is kinda my forte. Seriously, this stuff would not be out of place in an elementary school. Ok, I take that back. Some things happen in class that are definitely not child-appropriate. However, I quite often find myself getting excited when I hear the words "play" and "game," grinning like the cheshire cat while crawling around on the floor like a large land mammal, and wiggling around in my chair when I have to pee. Am I reverting back to an earlier stage of maturity? If this is what acting classes do to you, why didn't I sign up sooner?

In Improv, we play a lot of games like Slow-Motion Tag, the so-called Torture Puppets (where two people are puppets and their movements are controlled by their puppeteers), Therapy (where the “psychiatrist” has to figure out what’s wrong with the “patients”) and other similar games that remind me of a really bad episode of Who’s Line Is It Anyway?  We are beginners, after all. If you throw me a giant invisible cucumber, it may take me a minute to figure out what to do with it.

There’s one game we play a lot, and it’s called, like, “Space Freeze” or something. Everyone gets in a circle, and one person goes to the center and starts acting out some mini-scene with a lot of physical movement. As soon as you get inspired by some motion they made, you yell “FREEZE!” and then take their physical position in the circle and start your own mini-scene, based on the position you froze them in. Sometimes a person’s mini-scene will go on too long, and you can see them getting impatient for someone to freeze them. This happened today, and I froze someone out of pity. As I took her place, stretched out on the floor, I realized I had no idea of what to do. Then, inspiration struck, and I stuck out my leg and started saying things like, “Oh yes, that feels good. A little more to the left. Thank you, I’m going to sleep now.” Too late, I realized what that sounded like, and then someone murmured something like, “Oh, it’s sex.” Um…no. Actually, it was a foot massage. After that, I kept my red-faced self silent for the rest of the game. There are few things worse than badly mimed sex in mixed company. Even if it is supposed to be a foot massage.

In Voice/ Movement class, we usually do some yoga poses to get limbered up, and then the rest of the class is filled with strange voice exercises- Zooooom. Fuh! Pewwwwwww! Bodega Topeka Bodega Topeka- and synchronization games that involve lots of focus and almost no talking. For example, one of these games has us all strolling silently around the room, paying attention to one another, and then we all have to jump up in the air at the exact same time without anyone leading or saying anything. You just have to feel when everyone is going to jump, and then you jump. It sounds a lot more impossible than it really is. It gets less impossible with practice.

In today’s class, we did something really interesting. The teacher told us to all go outside to the street for 20 minutes and observe the way people walk. Then we had to pick someone and learn to imitate their walk, ideally without them noticing what we were doing. Some of us were less stealthy than others. The boy from Turkey, Burak, got yelled at by a guy for following him for three blocks and aping his swagger. Siting, from China, even went so far as to follow her quarry into his office building, though she wisely decided not to get in the elevator with him. My favorite part of the assignment was watching as my classmates walked by, always in a noticeably unusual way. If I looked ahead of them a few feet, it was easy to figure out who they were mimicking. Then we all went back to the classroom and demonstrated our walks for each other. The object of the game was to try and guess what the person was like who the student followed, based solely on the way they walked. Some of them, we nailed. Others were surprising. There were at least two walks we thought belonged to women, but that turned out to belong to men. Pure comedy, baby.

One other class we have is called Monologues. So far, this class has been similar to Improv and Voice/Movement. We’ve done a lot of strange things, like passing a sound around the circle, walking across the room with imagined physical impairments, ranting in gibberish, and even staring at someone in the eyes for five whole minutes without looking away. I try to look at it like this: the more foolish I feel in class, the less foolish I will feel out in the real world. We are going to start working on our first monologue this Friday. I have chosen three that I like out of a book I bought at the Drama Bookshop, an literary oasis of everything theatre and film. My favorite one so far features a girl conversing with her cat, telling him how much she hates him. I can definitely relate to that.

I really want to talk about the awesome friends I have made so far, but that will have to wait for next time. I have to get in bed because class starts early in the morning, and I have to be well-rested so I can slap Bailey good and hard in the face and yell a bad word at him in a lovely scene from When Harry Met Sally that we will be doing in Audition Technique class. Apparently, I am Sally, because I keep winding up with scenes from that movie. Oh well. I'm perfectly happy to follow in Meg Ryan's romantically comedic footsteps. Does this mean I should start working on a remake of Joe vs. the Volcano? You know it’s my favorite movie of all time. I already know all the lines by heart. Or maybe I’ll write Joe: the Sequel in which Joe and Patricia wind up floating to Australia where they meet Crocodile Dundee, and learn to live in peace with nature under his wise tutelage. Because I love Paul Hogan too. You see? I told you so. I positively frolic in silliness.

A Confession

Ok, I am going to fess up. I haven't been completely honest with many of you. Yes, I am in New York, and yes, I am taking classes at the New York Film Academy. However, they aren't filmmaking classes like I told everyone. They are...please try not to laugh...acting classes. I was too embarassed to tell the truth because a 27 year-old leaving a perfectly good job to run off to New York and be an actor is quite laughable. And also, kind of against my personality. Not the running off to places part, obviously. But as a person with very few emotions to begin with, acting should never have even been on the radar. It's possible a reader who doesn't know me all that well might be thinking, 'What is this lack of emotions stuff all about?' It's true. I am mostly dead inside. It has become a long-running joke among those closest to me. In my first two days of class, it has been vocalized more than once that suppressing emotions is a defense mechanism. What I am defending against, I have no idea. But apparently, I have been screwed up from the very beginning. Mom told me that when I was a kid, I used to laugh when other kids got hurt. It mortified her. I'm sure she thought I was a tiny sociopath. I'll bet me cutting my own hair again wasn't the only reason she hid the scissors. And even today, when I am around someone who is openly crying, I feel a horrifying giggle bubbling up inside and I have to turn away so they won't see me grinning. Yes, I am sick. And I am here in New York to get better. And also to make lots of gay friends.

Two days of classes and I have already learned so much. Each day gets three classes. Yesterday my group, section C of the 8-week Acting for Film program, had Audition Technique in the morning, Acting for Film 1 in the afternoon, and Improvisation in the early evening. Today, we had two classes of Acting for Film 1, and then Scene Study. The teachers are mostly very cool, supportive, friendly, and very encouraging. We had one guy today though, the Scene Study teacher, who kept making inappropriate sexual innuendos and gave us all a scene about eating pie to read that definitely wasn’t about eating pie.

I have made a few friends in my classes so far. Section C has all the same classes together and we stay in a cluster the whole day. There are 15 of us, 5 of which are American. The others come from all over: 2 from China, 2 from Brazil, 1 from Australia, 1 from Cuba, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Russia, 1 from Switzerland, and 1 from Turkey. I talk mostly with the Australian girl, Clare, though everyone else is also very nice and interesting. The Chinese girls are- you guessed it- extremely quiet. The Brazilians and Cuban are bubbly. The Europeans are reserved. The Turkish guy didn't show up for class today, so we'll see about him.

The Americans are a varied group. Besides myself, there's a red-headed guy from Texas, Bailey, who's loud and friendly, but is the kind of person who feels the need to fill any silences with banter. The girl from Connecticut is...well...think Bella Swan from the Twilight movie. Actually, her name is Isabelle. She, too, is vampire-obsessed, though please don't compare her to Kristen Stewart, because she "f***ing hates that b***h." In addition, there’s Jay, who claims he's half Jersey/ half PA (which I guess means Pennsylvania) and is all tatted up, with a long black ponytail. And then there's Dean.

Dean is a conundrum. He's full-on Jersey Shore, for one thing. And his last name is Italian, so he is an actual guido. He has this aloof, too-cool-for-school vibe going on. He actually fell asleep in Improv class yesterday. And, bless his heart, he's dumb as a brick. Example: During one game in Improv, we had to give the person next to us the name of an animal that they were going to imitate. I give Dean, who is next to me, the word caribou. He looks at me blankly and says, "What's that?" Ok, so maybe he grew up between four walls in Jersey, sheltered from all influences of wildlife, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. I say, "It's like a big deer," but his face still doesn't change, so I say, "Never mind," and give him rooster instead. Everyone knows what a rooster is, right? So, in the improv scene, Dean has to portray his animal in a bar. A rooster in a bar. Absurdity is key to successful improv, you know. When the improv coach (who totally reminds me of a shorter Idina Menzel) asks him what a rooster's motive might be for going to a bar, he thinks real hard about it and finally proclaims to the whole class that he's at the bar to pick up lady roosters.

---I'll give you a second to think about that---

But in Dean's defense, the kid reads beautifully. Every time someone hands him a scene to read, it comes out like he's said those words a million times over, and won an Oscar for them already. He totally confounds me. He's my partner in the Scene Study class, and we were given a scene from Good Will Hunting, the one where Will and Skylar first meet in the college bar (how 'bout them apples?). It's a good scene, and it's gonna be really hard for me to not do it in a British accent, a la Minnie Driver. But with Dean, it should be ok. As long as he can be bothered to learn his lines.

Acting for Film 1 is my favorite class so far. Today, Bailey and I were picked to be the class guinea pigs (ok, I enthusiastically volunteered) and we spent two and a half hours up in front of the class doing a scene from Pulp Fiction in various ways, as the teacher showed us how to make decisions about our characters, how to move in front of the camera, and how to show the real meaning of the scene with our movements and emotions, rather than through the lines of dialogue. The scene is from the end of the movie, when Mia and Vincent are saying goodbye and Mia finally tells her tomato joke. Being up there and on camera for so long was both exhilarating and exhausting. Bailey and I were made to seduce each other with our eyes, flirt, hold hands, say the lines, and try to keep it from looking silly. I’m certainly no Uma Thurman, and I would have felt more comfortable holding hands with Tinky Winky the Teletubby at first. But as we went through it over and over again, it became easier and looser until finally, I think we kinda got it. I do feel a little bad that nobody else but us two got to act in that class. But I guess the teacher wanted everyone to watch us as we progressed from extremely uncomfortable to slightly less uncomfortable onscreen. I certainly think it was a successful day. Except now, every time Bailey looks at me, he keeps trying to seduce me with his eyes.

I am trying so hard to not be a volunteer hog. Every time a teacher asks for volunteers (and they do it a lot) my legs want to shoot me out of my desk to the front of the room and grab all the practice for myself. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that hardly anyone else ever wants to volunteer. The seconds tick by agonizingly as the teacher looks around the room, asking "Anybody at all?" It's that same feeling I used to get when a new Beanie Baby came out and I was worried my best friend Jami would get it first. I'm just afraid that if I push it too far, the teacher might wind up saying, "Ginny, sit back down. You've had three turns already."

The biggest project I have coming up is a scene for the Acting for Film 1 class, which will be filmed, edited, and then added to our class reel of finished work. This time my partner is Jay, the ponytailed tattoo canvas, and we will be performing a scene from When Harry Met Sally. As soon as the teacher mentioned our scene was gonna come from that movie, I started having a moment of whimpering wooziness. I’m sure you can guess why. What is the one scene that jumps into your head when you think of that movie? Well, thank the gods of fledgling actors, the teacher didn’t give us that scene. Hell, I had trouble making googly eyes at Bailey. There’s no way I’m ready to jump that far in yet. Instead, he gave us a scene about days-of-the-week underpants, which is slightly less impossible. And if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t have a clue about the infamous scene which threw me into a conniption fit, well, first of all, shame on you. Second of all, get thyself to YouTube speedy quick and type in “I’ll have what she’s having.” Just tuck the kiddos in bed first.

Oh, New York! What have you done to me already?

Washington Heights. Somehow I never imagined my first New York experience to look quite like this. As in brown. And Spanish-speaking. In order to save as much money as possible, I signed up for a weekly room rental that, for New York, is dirt cheap. Location really must be everything in real estate, because my neighborhood makes Harlem look fancy. Plus, it's really freakin far away from all the stuff I need, tucked up in the far north-western corner of Manhattan. The room is really nice and big, and has an incredible view from the balcony (perched in the 28th floor), however, I feel like I'm walking through Mexico City when I get out of the subway. But, as you all know, I am a little bit brown under all this whiteness, so as long as the cabrones keep their "hey mami mamis" to themselves, I feel right at home.

I do want to get my own place as soon as possible though. I have never been good at living with people. The family whose extra room I am renting is from the Dominican Republic and they keep trying to feed me, which is nice, but they fry everything! Even the cheese! Which is amazing, by the way. Why don't we fry cheese at home? Anyway, living here with them is fine for the meantime, but as soon as I find a way to start generating some income, I will be scouring Craigslist for a studio or a small one bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan. Or possibly west Brooklyn. As long as I can figure out the subway.

Speaking of the subway, Madrid's shining metro system must have really spoiled me because the New York version makes hardly any sense to me at all. I've about conquered the number 1 train line, but everything else is a mess. Some trains only stop at certain stations, some stations only operate at certain times, certain platforms are closed for maintenance so you can only go in one direction from that station...at least my MetroCard has yet to let me down. $104 per month for unlimited train and bus rides all over the city! Beats the hell out of the $500+ I was spending every month to maintain my car. I'm sure I'll figure it all out eventually. One can only accidently wind up in Yonkers so many times.

Times Square is not on my list of favorite places in New York. Too many freakin tourists. Central Park, however, is. I think I may take my little box of oil pastels with me on a park stroll tomorrow and play artist under a tree somewhere. This park is so big, there are places where you cease to see skyscrapers. Also, I like Rockefeller Center. I think it's because, at any given time, Tina Fey might be inside. And I just love that lady.

It took every ounce of willpower I had to walk out of American Girl Place empty-handed yesterday. Since I was 8 or 9 years old, I have held a strong devotion for Pleasant Company and their slew of overpriced 18 inch dolls. I actually have Felicity, "a spunky young girl growing up in colonial Williamsburg" and quite a few of her accessories. I also subscribed to American Girl magazine until I was at least 15, and spent many a summer evening punching out the paper dolls that came with each issue or making bubble wands out of household materials just like the "do it yourself" section instructed. So when I found the New York store, on the corner of 5th Avenue and 49th Street, I was almost afraid to go inside. I wanted to be a little girl again so that I wouldn't feel like such a goofball drooling over the tiny soccer cleats or doll-sized ukuleles. Yes, they make doll ukuleles. Somehow, I managed to keep the majority of saliva inside my mouth and all my money in my wallet. But all is not lost. I have applied for three open job positions at that store, and employees get a 30% discount! So don't worry, Felicity. I'm sure you'll have a closet-full of new outfits before long. One way or another.

I started my program at the New York Film Academy today. Registration was from 10 till 2, and overachiever that I am, I showed up at 10 to register, which took all of three minutes. So, I had to kill time till orientation at 3. I walked around Union Square, bought some apples, ate one, then found my way to the Strand bookstore, which, for bibliophiles like me, is a giant warehouse of ecstasy. They boast "18 miles of books," many of which are used and cheapish. I bought six, including the first book of my new favorite young adult series The Hunger Games. Seriously, those of you suffering from Harry Potter and Twilight withdrawal, this is your new crack. During orientation, in which all 150 or so of us 8-weekers (15 of which were actually not international students) had to pass around a microphone and introduce ourselves and tell which program we were in, I learned a bit about the academy and started getting real excited. Unfortunately, my classes don't start till Wednesday, and we only have classes three to four days a week, but the days we do go, we're in class from 9am till 5 or 6pm. And the director told us the other days would probably be filled up with working on student projects. I am really excited about this, and I'm gonna work harder than I ever have worked so I will be successful in the film industry. I've never really worked that hard at anything before. Things have always just come naturally to me. And if they didn't come naturally, I didn't do them. I have a feeling this is not going to come as naturally as I'm accustomed to, and I am glad. Things are more valuable if you work really hard for them, you know. I am expecting a full-on bottom kicking, and I can't wait.