[...It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark...]

trick or treats !

lisez moi en français !!

we've been expecting it for a while -a whole month with pumpkins EVERYWHERE from house porches to cookie boxes, and even clothes and linen-, and finally Halloween's here !!
yipeee !

since we didn't want to waste a single minute of it, we the AuPair started celebrating Halloween a week ahead, by going out to a costume party in New York City last saturday...

first, let me say that an event written "frite nite" makes me want to take my eyeballs out of their sockets with my own nails
could american people learn how to spell the english language, please ?

i know that it kind of looks like the guy would chose to spell "through" t-h-r-o-u-g-h was trying to cheat at scrabble, shortening is for texting, it is not ok in official context, for christ's sake !

anyway, we got dressed up for the "frite night" party
and i had decided to go as Elphaba, the "wicked witch" from the Wizard of  Oz, but in its Broadway version, Wicked

for those of you who don't see who that is, she is a misunderstood witch with green skin

acted here by the ever so marvellous Indina Menzel

so i got a black dress, ankle boots, a hat, and green make-up
expect it was really hard to put on, and the shade of green wasn't right, so it didn't look the way it was supposed to

i look like a alien from Mars

we went to NYC, lauralie and i ; ate our dunkin' donut grilled cheese (not good, i wouldn't advise it) at the red tables and chairs on Times Square
it was really cool to be in the middle of all that noise and lights, and billboards, and being there, sitting with our sandwitches like "yeah, whatever, times square doesn't impress me anymore, been there done that"

the sell clerks from Hersheys -they give free samples so i go religiously to the store each time i walk through Time Square- started talking to us, they were so nice and funny, one of them even came to me holding a glass of water threatening "beware, i have water and i'm not afraid to use it, you're gonna melt !"

then we walked all the way to Webster Hall, in the Village, to meet Tina, Liseann and i-don't-remember-what-she's-called, for our halloween partyyyy !

i think the dj was vaguely famous, that's the only explanation to charging 25 dollars to get inside.
but the decorations were cool : "blood" on the walls, spider webs on the ceiling, jack-o-lanterns...
also now i can say "oh yeah, when i used to go to nightclubs in New York...."

we had to leave quite early, since the last train to New Jersey is 1AM, but i wanted to take my heels off so bad that i really didn't care

anyway, it was a cool party :)


for the whole week, leena asked me how many days were left before halloween....so we made pumpkin, ghosts, and bats-shaped origamis, drawing monstres, made paper bags for treats, played to being monsters, read books about monstrers, watched the wizard of oz, and then re-enacted the story with wizard of oz plastic toys in the bath
...quite a halloween-themed week !

i am weirdly proud of my trick or treat bag

And finally, it was thursday !! leena had hesitated a lot, she wanted to be a princess, and then a vampire princess, then a witch, before changing again the night before for princess-fairy...

we had put on a bunch of decorations something like a month before, and i had carved my little pumpkin, so we were ready

and i went trick-or-treating with leena, two other kids, and their mothers

leena's stash

then i met my aupair friends at  Friendly's, a diner. we wanted to go out afterwards, but not everyone is 21, so we just went to lea's place to spend the evening chatting together, and it was really nice

[...Oh this is the night, it's a beautiful night, and we call it bella notte...]

version française

what's up bitches ?

do you know what is the fastest way to go from china to italy ?

 crossing the street between Chinatown and Little Italy !!






last sunday, i went to NYC to explore Chinatown & co, a niche of cultural diversity in the middle of the big apple. it's a really weird phenomenon : you walk in the street, everything is written in english, shops sell you american stuff...and then bam ! chinese letters and shops full of fresh fruits and fish.

am i still in New York ?

a big part of the district live on tourism : shop after shop full of cheap souvenirs
you can't take a step without someone asking if you want to buy bags, perfume or watches
i personally got a bag that i paid 13 instead of 30 dollars. yeah yeah

i just wandered around chinatown, turning whenever i saw a place that looked nice
of course i ended up getting lost, but it was actually nice, 'cause i ended up in non-touristic streets, where people actually live
i kind of stood out with my skinny jeans, the rayban glasses on my nose, and my huge camera. or my white skin.

it was quite funny to think i was still in New York, in the same city where you find Times Square, with all the lights and the billboards





i wanted to taste china, so i bought a "bubble tea", milk tea (coconut for me), with tapioca bubbles in it

it was....special. tea was good. bubbles, not a fan.

for lunch, i followed the advices from my guidebook and stayed away from tourist restaurants, and went to a tiny shop in a tiny street : a dumpling shop. 5 dumplings for a dollar, and 4 pork buns for another dollar, can't beat that deal !

i also went to the bouddhist temple

and walked around chinatown

the entrance to Manhatttan Bridge

chinese music in the park

 ...then i crossed the street, and went to Little Italy.
whereas Chinatown is genuinely chinese, little italy is mostly here for tourists. italiens don't really live here (mostly they live in brooklyn). there was a time when htey did, and mafia was ruling the whole neighbourhood, but nowadays little italy got eaten by chinatown, and is now a single street, which is mostly an excuse to charge 25 bucks for a plate of spagettis and sell cannelonis.

still, it's nice to see
also, i got called "bella" a couple times. never hurts.



i wanted to stay in the area so i could come back to see it by night, so i walked around lower manhattan

i know, i doesn't look huge on the map, mais it is. to give you an idea : the big loop in central park is around 10k 

i walked the little italy street, until the "italian" shops became scarcer, and i found myself in greenwich village, then NoHo (north of houston street). i went to Washington Square, there were a lot of people enjoying the sun, street musicians, a photographer doing a photoshoot in the middle of the square with four models,...

then i went back to SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston (Street)"),
which was the first district to get one of those anagram-names, launching a new trend for many more neighbourhoods : TriBeCa "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street", NoHo ("NOrth of HOuston Street"), DUMBO ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass"), Nolita ("NOrth of Little ITAly"), NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square")...

on ne le dit pas assez, l'architecture à new york est sublime

once upon a time, SoHo was the artistic district, with its cheap lofts.
nowadays, lofts are trendy, and SoHo too, which means the district is gentrified. you can still find art galleries, but mostly fashion stores.

i kept walking down manhattan, and crossed Tribeca,

then arrived in the Financial District, aka the south of manhattan, around where the twin towers were.
i came across New York City Hall.

city hall

chrysler tower and one trade center

entrance to brooklyn bridge

city hall

ensuite je suis remontée vers chinatown and little italy.
chinatown by night is nothing special

but little italy is quite nice (especially, i guess, if you're sited outside a restaurant with a nice plate of pasta)

and then, since i'm kind of crazy, i thought "hey, it's a beautiful night, let's walk back to the station"

which was going to give me a giganormous blister under my right heel

in other news, i also bought my halloween costume, and i'll be Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West...but that will be the subject of the next article...


tchao !