The Super Post Extravaganza - UN Day, Halloween and "A Thurber Carnival"

    Autumn has finally arrived in New York City. The leaves are turning yellow, I have to put on a long coat and boots when I go outside and pumpkin spiced lattes actually feel appropriate now. Well, with the leaves falling, I have also fallen into a huge rabbit hole of schoolwork and that is why my posts have not been very frequent - sawwry.

    No matter, as I am confident that I can make what I'm going to call a "Super Post Extravaganza" and speed through the significant events during the fall time up to now. You ready? This is going to be some rapid-fire descriptions of things coming your way, get pumped! Maybe do some eye exercises? Stretch it out. Ok, 3...2...1 - GO!

• 24th of October - UN Day

    The 24th of October the girl who lives quite near the UN, goes to the UN School, celebrates UN day. It is supposed to mark the anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations, but for me it shall forever be known as ''THE DAY OF EPIC FOOD". One of the many traditions that my school has developed by celebrating UN Day, is that they have an annual UN day lunch where all the moms and dads of students show off their amazing skill of cooking their cultural dishes. (My parents brought store-brought fruit...The life of a diplomat is busy, OK?:) I ate and ate and when my food baby was the size of an actual baby, I let out my jeans and thanked the gods of cuisine (Nigella Lawson, Gordon Ramsay(?) that the UN was ever established. 

Amin and Tiff(wearing my hat btw) posing so eloquently...And Nikola munching away back there. Who can blame him really?

    After the food-fest, we learnt about the UN and watched the Cultural Talent Show (One of the more stand-out-ish acts was: A guy came on stage playing a tune on two little kid's toy pianos, which made cat sounds. And apparently he reads my blog sometimes, so Hey Joe! You did a good job - A wonderfully written piece which perfectly captured the feline culture of the 21st Century :)

   As my Mom works in the consulate over here, we scored some tickets to the actual UN-day concert happening at the UN. And let me just say - holy hell! Lang Lang the pianist performed, along with Sting and Alec Baldwin as our host for the night. Ughm, what? How? Did I just actually put those three names together in a sentence and truthfully say I bore witness to that? 

• 31st of October - Halloween

I have been excited for Halloween ever since I arrived in America. Many of my costume ideas were plotted out weeks in advance...But of course, since I am me, I left everything to the last minute. I ended up going as a mash-up of two very popular Halloween costumes - a nerd and a vampire. I went around saying things like: "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to suck your blood! If I don't my dad will take away my calculator."

Thumbs up for the random lady that stopped us, when taking this picture and wanted to pose with us!

      I went to school as a regular nerd (complete with braces and suspenders) and in the cover of night turned into a vampire.

    After school me, Emma, Lina, Tiff and Enkuush headed off to Tiff's for trick-or-treating. I was very excited for this for two reasons - a) I'd never been trick-or-treating for Halloween before and b) CANDY!

The awesomely decorated hallway at Tiff's and our loot

   The trick-or-treating itself was exactly like it is in the movies - You knock on the door, they answer, you say: "Trick or treat!" and they give you candy. Granted, some did respond with a: "Aren't you girls too mature to be trick-or-treating? We don't have beer for you guys, only Skittles." Eeh, I can't really blame them as we were the oldest trick-or-treaters I saw.
PS! I also spotted about 5-6 Elsa costumes from Frozen, which is really embarrassing because Elsa was one of my costume choices. But in the end I just had to LET IT GO...(Oh wow, I'll let myself out.)

A close-up shot of my vampire-nerdiness

• 1st of November - Epic Skype-a-thon with lovely friends from Estonia

I consider this an important event because my friends ARE super important to me and that Saturday, the entire day was spent talking to them, which I completely loved. 

Karl (and Kaspar), Kristel and Cassandra - LOVE YOU :)

• 8th and 9th of November - Rehearsal for Drama Club Workshop from 10AM to 5PM on both days...

...And I loved every second of it. Partly because theatre is somewhere, where I feel like myself, even though I am portraying a whole different character and partly because the people I get to work with are just plain cool.  I'm definitely going to write more about the play, but here's the gist of it: We're performing "A Thurber Carnival", which is a collection of short sketches taking place in the 1960s. 

The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does." 
-David Rubenstein, Chairman of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts

Sneak Peek of the sketch: "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" 

Ok, that is everything. (Well, if you take out a few Math tests, history essays, existential crises etc.)

Thank you SO much for reading. Next time I'll write about "A Thurber Carnival" and some other cool projects I've got going on. Have a lovely day!