This post might peg me as a bad person, a gold-digger, or someone that uses people, but I just want you to know, before you read this and judge me, the following events just kind of happened and we rolled with it. Any mal-humored joke is just a part of my sarcasm and a way of laughing at what happened. Here we go...
Studying abroad is an awesome experience, but it costs. I'm paying full time tuition at home, my apartment here, the plain ticket and all the living expenses and I have no money coming in at the moment. I brought enough spending money so that I would feel comfortable, but towards the end, you realize how much you've spent and you've decided that PB&J is the best lunch ever. Or is it? Is there a possible way of getting food for free? Welcome to "Using your Looks in Conjunction with your Brain 101," a necessary class to complete the last few weeks of any study abroad experience.
I LOVE FOOD. A lot. Ask me or my sisters about any type of food and we've probably tried it or heard about it. We are always trying everything and eating at new places, but this gets pricy. Here, Jenn and I will start talking about food and drive ourselves crazy. We say that we're "hangrey" (hungry and angry that we don't have access to the food). "Hanger" occurs when you are bored and imaginative about the food you could possibly eat, and we usually solve this problem by eating lots of chocolate and eventually falling asleep. This weekend, though, we decided we were going to set goals for each night we went out, without spending our own money.
Lesson 1: if they want to buy you a drink, say you can't on an empty stomach. Thursday night, we went out to the clubs down the street from our apartment. Thursday is Friday in regards to university life, so the whole avenue was packed with people spilling out of little restaurants and clubs. By the way, here, not just night clubs are night clubs. Regular everyday restaurants, like this small Chinese place, put on music and open up to sell drinks so people can hang out, which is really comical. So we go into this club and we go upstairs just to hang out, and soon, some friends we met the other night there found us. My one friend told me that the annoying thing about Puerto Rico is that it's so small that once you meet someone, you'll see them all the time, which is true, because I saw so many people that night we were friends with. Another friend of mine says he doesn't even go with a group to la avenida universitaria because when he arrives by himself, there's already a handful of people he knows in whichever part of the street. So we greet our friends, and the first thing they do is offer us a drink, so we begin our schemes. I just say "no thanks, I haven't eaten much today" and automatically they ask if you would like something to eat. Jenn and I ended up splitting 2 orders of spicy wings and only drinking water the rest of the night with built in body guards to escort us wherever we wanted to go. We were content.
Friday we had been talking about fried cheesecake all day. We had eaten it with our teacher in a really expensive restaurant during our first weekend in Puerto Rico, but weren't quite sure how to get back there. That day, we set a goal that we were going to get fried cheesecake that night without paying for it. Well, last weekend, my teacher had to kayak with a guy, Todd, that was here on a business trip, and she encouraged us to take him out to show him around and we ended up exchanging numbers. Now that his work week was over, he wanted to go out. He told us where he was having dinner and was going to treat us, but we couldn't make it in time because of the short notice and how long the bus systems take. On our way to meet him at the restaurant, these 2 guys approach us to ask if they can go with us where we're going and buy us a drink. I'm just going to go off on a tangent by the way and talk about the guy that started talking to us. He was here working as crew on a Yacht. He's from South Africa so he had like a British accent and he just starts rambling like Russell Crow so that he could go with us. The guy he was with was from Washington DC, and I didn't really get the connection. Later, upon talking to the Washington guy, I find out that he was sitting in a bar alone and South Africa convinced him to hang out and go out. Then, on their hanging out, SA decides to pick us up as well. So basically, this guy just goes around making random friends wherever the place may be. Anyways, his drink offer reverts back to lesson 1 where you refuse the drink and redirect the focus towards food. We agreed to let them tag along and met Todd at Marmalade, the most expensive and best reviewed restaurant in Old San Juan. He was eating dessert so we kind of missed the boat on that one, which brings us to Lesson 2: bring up a really good restaurant/food that you've tried nearby and convince them that they must try it before they leave. Jenn and I started raving about the fried cheesecake at Vaca Brava and telling them how they had to try it. Before we knew it, I was leading the way to the restaurant and we were seated at a table for 5. The waiter greeted us and the guys we were with started asking him about this fried cheesecake they had heard all about. Now us waiters have this tactic of "up-selling" which means that you're going to try to sell as much food at the highest price because a bigger bill gets a bigger tip, especially when you're in a tourist zone. So our waiter started up-selling, which is the proper response when a table of 5 comes in and asks for 1 dessert. This works a lot of the time when I do it, so I decided that I was more hungry that 1 dessert and that I would comply with his suggestions, which is Lesson 3: agree with any and all suggestions a waiter gives and convince the rest of your table it's a good idea by awing over how good everything sounds. While we're at it, let's not forget Lesson 4: where you ask more about the business trip your new friend is on and keep bringing up how nice it is that everything he does is paid for on the company's dime with the company credit card. Anyways, we ended up spending $180 on who knows what and then using my hoarse voice (which I've been losing since Wednesday) as an excuse that I was sick and needed to go home. It was late by then, and the bus system is done running around 10, so we had to start discussing how we were going to get home, to which Todd offered to split a cab. This brings us to lesson 5: where you use your foreign language to make the non-foreign language speaking party pay the full price. We talked to the cab driver in Spanish to explain to him that upon dropping Todd off, he would charge him the full price. Successful Friday night.
Well last night, Saturday night, we were actually with our good friends we met down here, so we weren't really trying to pull anything. They're just nice anyways so anytime we were hungry, which is all the time, they made sure we were well fed. This is part of lesson 6, which brings a sincere closing to this satirical post: surround yourself with people that aren't buying you things because they have other motives, but take care of you because you're friends and you just want to spend time with each other.
I hope this post doesn't offend anybody, I'm just joking about all the manipulation, but that's kind of how it happened and Jenn and I have been laughing about it all weekend. We really just went out with the intentions of hanging out, although fried cheesecake was a real goal that night, but I just have a hard time refusing food once it jumps up in conversation. However, if you really have it in you though, feel free to take these lessons to heart and use them at your convenience.
you are awful! lol
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