May 2016 Recap | NYC & NJ – 10 miles behind me

This year is really creeping up on me. I can’t believe I’m already 31.083 years old. A quiz on Facebook yesterday told me my heart is age 20, my soul is 92, and my body is 18, so there appears to be even more confusion about my age than I thought. But when hanging out with lifelong friends as I had the pleasure of doing many times this month, it doesn’t even matter how old I am.

Posts I Wrote This Month:

Because I somehow didn’t get enough of them at the best wedding of the year (so far) the weekend before, I spent the first weekend with Mike, George, and Jenna. We hung out at Jenna’s lovely apartment with her lovely roommates and their friends who made me feel ancient (I guess, 92) when they started talking about how old they feel, at age 25. Luckily, whenever I hang out with Mike and George, I still feel like I could be in college, getting in trouble for playing beer pong in the dorms and listening to lots of 50 Cent and Kanye.

10milesbehindme_may16_1 — This picture is somehow from NINE years ago.

The next week, I caught up with my favorite Switzerland travel buddy Kater at an Italian place in the West Village and my favorite former coworker Carrie at an Italian place near Grand Central. That weekend, I went to my sister’s new house to hang out with her, my parents, and the greatest dog of this generation, Darcy. We made time to visit with my grandmother and my mom’s aunt as well, and I was able to share a birthday cake and song with my dad, which was really yummy even though it accidentally had orange frosting.

I started the next week off with some of my favorite travel biddies (Karissa, Marie, and Katie) eating some Polish food in Greenpoint (the newest Global Bites without the Flights!), which you can read about here. Later that week I saw my two oldest friends for the first time together in ages as Jess was in from Philly and Aubrey lives a subway ride away. We got beers at the Modern and sat on the patio facing the courtyard of the MoMA. Jess and I then grabbed dinner and a lot of wine at Quality Italian.

When Saturday came, I headed into Jersey City to see Caitlin, Tyler, Jackson (their puppy!), and other friends who were in town visiting. Caitlin made me a cheese plate because she (and her food blog) are wonderful and we enjoyed margaritas at a hot spot nearby. I then came back into the city to meet up with some frousins – Christie, Jake, Emily, and a bunch of Em’s friends. The next day I went to Prospect Park to play with Christie and Jake again in the amazing weather. I learned a new lawn game, Bru Bag, which I was not great at, but which I could see getting into more with some practice and patience.

Last Monday, I went to a Visit.org happy hour, a group I’ve been a part of since February but I’d only previously met a few people on the team. Visit.org is an organization that connects travelers with non-profits to have unique, meaningful experiences that give back to the local communities. If you’re interested, check out the link below:

Houston Hall is always a good time and chatting about future travel possibilities made it even more fun. A few days later, I had the sincere joy of meeting my college roommate’s new baby boy. He’s basically the best and part of me wishes he’d lived with us in 403 Lane and Gilbert D, but that probably would have changed our college experience a little – we would have listened to less 50 Cent and Kanye and more Raffi. The next day, Katie, Karissa, and I went to a happy hour with Team Sweden and then wandered over to Gotham West to eat tacos and Ample Hill ice cream, which I’d first tried in January.

For Memorial Day Weekend, I headed home to the Jersey Shore and spent a very relaxing three days with my sister and parents. I started working on a brand-new project and got a TON of puppy snuggles in. We also had two decent days at the beach. It’s been a while since we’ve had sunny, warm days on Memorial Day weekend so we soaked it in.

June will have even more sunny days to soak in and I am going to try and take advantage of them all. I’ll be traveling to Miami mid-month and back to the Dominican Republic with Fathom, which I am so excited about since I was the happiest ever in March when I was there. I’m bringing my sister this time and can’t wait to see how she enjoys the experience.

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