The End...of a chapter

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Drag Show

In general I found Boise to be quite a conservative city, with concepts such as sex before marriage and homosexuality somewhat frowned upon. It’s a place where general Christian values are upheld; it probably helps that there are a lot of Mormons living here. Yet for any of you that know me I do live very in-the-minute and will not always take into account my surroundings and context. This is one of those times:

I was invited to a drag show. Now while London is known for being quite an open, multicultural, understanding place I have never really been intrigued by the drag community or going to gay bars or any such ‘gay’ activities. It’s just not what my friends and I do, or the kind of parties or contexts we roll in.

Bosoms, Blue Fields and Banter... Oh and Food

There were three American eateries I wanted to go to once I heard of them: Hooters, Denny’s and IHOP - all places we don’t have in the UK.

IHOP

This was the first place I got to as it was en-route to work. When some ladies from work asked me where I wanted to go to lunch, I mentioned IHOP and they happily came with me. This is an amazing place to eat, especially for me since I have a very sweet tooth. I got pancakes with chocolate and strawberries, and caramel syrup on the side. These were not like crepes but big fat American pancakes. Man, this sugar high was awesome. The other normal food my colleagues ate seemed fine, but what I did notice was that the place was full of OAPs. It was weird because apparently once the evening/night hit it was full of drunken people like take-aways in England.

My sugar high resulted in me flirting with the waitress. She plays it all cool and not appreciating all my advances, so I said, ‘You are such a lesbian.’ Her face lights up and asked with honest curiosity, ‘How can you tell?’ Rather than explaining this was my standard response to anyone who annoyed/confused me, I responded, ‘Because I want to hook up and you are being all weird.’ At this point the conversation changed and she became friendly and we had some banter. As I was leaving she gave me her number at which point I made it clear: ‘I don’t care if you are a lesbian, I am totally going to flirt with you’ to which

she responded,  ‘Well im not a 100% lesbian!’ ‘Bam! My favourite type of lesbian!’ I jokingly replied. We agreed to meet up later, and she would show me around Boise and we could party it up with her friends. Sounded like fun, and the stories got around the office like wildfire: ‘Abs chatted up a lesbian’. Oh great, 2^nd day. I hope people at work don’t judge me.

Hooters

It wasn’t until the second week of my trip that I was able to get to Hooters. This was a location most people did not want to go, but once I had my colleague with me from England and 2 of the really fun inappropriate girls from work we went. Firstly the food is not too shabby. I thought the food would be  atrocious but it was alright – a definite 6. But it was nowhere clearer than here that sex sells. Sex can even sell OK food.

Karate, Jedi Powers, and the 5 point finger death move!

One of the days I was in America I mentioned to someone that when I went back to England, I wanted to take up Mixed Martial Arts. Due to the awesomely nice nature of Americans and fate this resulted in me being offered a free Karate class.

When I got to the class, I watched a groups of kids varying between the ages of 4 -16 doing fun things. One of the exercises looked like a drunken guy trying to pull a girl at 4 am outside of some night club. Imagine the girl, sober, aware and a guy just about to pounce, (insert cool super duper karate move) the guy goes spinning and continues to fall flat on the ground. However the highlight of the watching part was witnessing a 10 year old girl lift a black belt - 15-16 stone, 6’1” - catapult him over her back and spinning over for him to hit the mat… hard! I later tried this on the same person and managed to do it ¼ times, with a little difficulty.

Once the kids were done it was my time. There was an orange belt, a black belt, and 4th Dan Master Sensei (who looked like Jet Li). To put into perspective how good he was, 5-6 years ago he beat the #1 Karate person in the whole of Japan, and we all know them peeps know their Karate!

Am I famous?

You may have read some of the blog posts recently and thought, This guy is a
douche, or, Wow this guy should have his own reality show. Well, whilst I do flip
between these thoughts myself, and even though I am sure others may not feel
these are disparate concepts, I think they are, and it’s my blog, so there!

A colleague from England joined me in Boise, and I told her the stories you have
read so far as well as some others. While she was genuinely amazed I felt like she
didn’t believe them all 100%. The reason I think she didn’t believe me 100% was
because when I would tell her the things I was doing, her responses were things
like:
•   No way!!
•   Are u pulling my leg??
•   No, I don’t believe you did that . . . really??
•   Is this 100% the truth? (you can see where I thought she might not believe
them 100%)

And while I have been known to exaggerate a story or two in my time (try not to
be too shocked), all the stories I told her were (yes, most definitely, entirely) 100%
true.

American House Party - Wow in my pants

Watching Hollywood movies with house party scenes I thought that house parties were awesome, but once I began going to house parties at Uni and in my early 20’s I came to the realisation that English house parties were just lame, and I believe I now understand the two main cultural reasons for this.

Then I met my friend Zaira and finally experienced fun house parties, and at the time I thought these were 'The best a house party could get'… 

Until, I came to live the American Dream! These people know how to throw house parties! When I got told I was invited to a house party, I wasn’t excited, due to the years of being socially accustomed to house parties being kinda average. Yet this party was certifiably on par with the Hollywood scenes, and I was metaphorically 'Wow'd in my pants'

Power of the Spoken Word

As I have already mentioned I am but a 100 m away from the mall, hence I have frequented the mall more so than I usually ever would in the UK. Thus I have a had a fair few random encounters, these stories are the amalgamation of just some (There are more, if you know me feel free to ask about the Skittles story and the Go-Go Dancer) of the events that have transpired there.

I have already mentioned that Americans have been super friendly to me. I noticed as scary of some of them look, after 10 minutes of conversation they totally open up to me and are super friendly and act like I have known them for weeks. Check out the below before and after photos, it seems my accent is like some super crazy social lubrication. I feel like I have magic powers:

Dinner with Mormons

I had been invited to dinner at a really cool colleague who happens to be a Mormon. Mormons are like a real hardcore Christian Faith sect with some extra’s. Suffice to say one of the first conversations we had was about  the South Park episode, but this is when I realised how cool and my type of people he was, it wasn’t long until we were joking about this and Muslim terrorist stereotyping.

Mall Fun

As I am in America on my own I have most weekday evenings to fly solo and spend my own time doing things. I want to have adventures, so after 2 days of nothing much happening (in the evenings) I go out to the Mall to look for adventure and souvenirs/presents for people.

After spending way too much time in Victoria Secret’s, (for a present obviously :P) I continue to look around the Mall which is a stone throw from my hotel. I walk around a food court, and the American’s are known for their ‘laaarge’ food portions, and yes the large had to be extended, just because of how much these Americans can serve and eat... Impressive amounts, even small people,  from the below pictures you will see, even these women could eat as much, if not more than me.

3 days, 8 virginites! Boom!

I get to Boise after a really interesting conversation with a nice guy I met on the plane. Further showing me I was sooo wrong about Americans, they are actually awesome!!

As I get to the hotel, I have a lot of banter with the receptionist who seems really cool and pregnant; and she let me touch it: