Our Finals Days in The Big Apple (Day Six & Seven)

Alright, so I'm sorry that I was late in posting this final blog. It really should be two blogs because of the last two days were pretty intense...but for the sake of time I'll just put them together in this final blog about our trip to New York and back. So let's begin...

I don't know if you remember the end of our fifth day in New York, but the night never really ended. We pretty much stayed up all night, talking, hanging out, doing homework, etc. But we were all wide awake (even though some of us took some naps). I think we were all excited to wait in line and see Late Night with Conan...So when it was six in the morning, we began to get ready to leave and we were so exhausted and tired...This is a picture of us around 6:30 a.m. going down Edgar's elevator...
To top it off it was raining...None of us spoke to each other, we just marched of in the rain to the NBC studios at Rockefellar Center...
I could happily report that we were first in line. Which is a good thing because only about 10 of the stand-bys in line were allowed to actually see the show, the rest were cut. Edgar was a stand-by last year and he was cut. So he was happy to finally see the show and of course, I am one of Conan's biggest fan so I was stoked!
But we were in line about 6:45 to 7:00 a.m. and right after we stood there in line a family was came behind us. I thought they were kinda annoying, but whatever, we were seeing Conan. We had to wait in line about two hours.
At nine o'clock a lady came out and gave us this stand-by ticket!

We were so tired. It was incredibly. We probably had about an hour of sleep off and on the night before. We were cold, sick and tired and so when we got back to Edgar's place around 9:30 a.m. we all warmed up and passed out. Around three in the afternoon we got up and was getting ready for the rest of the day...At 4:30p.m. or so we got to wait in line...I couldn't tell you how excited I was. It was just so awesome to be first in line!
Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures inside the NBC studio where they shoot Late Night. I couldn't take any pictures of Conan, which would have been awesome. But the show was really good. The guest were Christina Applegate (from Married with Children, Anchorman) and Lewis Black (a stand-up comedian, who has a show now on Comedy Central called "The Root of All Evil", he actually did a few minutes of stand-up at the show which was pretty good), and Stephan Curry (which was probably the worst part of the show, not funny or all that interesting. We wished there could have been a musical guest, but whatever, we saw Conan!)
It was cool to be apart of the process and see the show being put together. The show went by really fast (a little longer than an hour). The Max Weinberg 7 were awesome even though Max wasn't there himself (he is touring with Bruce Springstein) who played a lot of good covers from The Ramones, The White Stripes, and best of all - Radiohead. But Conan was the best part, obviously...He is just so damn funny. You can watch the episode we saw actually on his website at www.nbc.com/conan and click on "watch full episodes"...

So after we watched Conan, we realized that it was our last full day in New York and it was way too early to end it. Toko has been wanting to buy some bling bling in Chinatown the past few days...so we ventured to Chinatown for the last time....
He found it...We were pretty starving after that. Edgar was telling us about some of the best hamburgers in NYC and we decided to eat at one in the East Village...it was sooo good! the picture doesn't do it justice...
Edgar loved it...
So we took the green line back to Edgar's for the last time and walked back to Edgar's apartment. This is actually a pretty funny story behind this picture...Toko threw his Conan shirt about fifty feet in the air and it was going to land on top of a Audi...Instead of using his arms to catch the shirt...he ran right into the Audi making a loud THUD...I think he is rubbing his shin in this picture taken right after..
We hung out at Edgar's for a bit before the three of us left for Queens...This is a picture of Edgar and his mom...They were such good host, I can't thank them enough....
Around ten or so Edgar dropped us off at the Subway (which was closed, we had to take a transfer to another subway...long story). We said our goodbyes and I'm not going to lie...I was pretty sad to leave...
But the night was far from over...We rushed to the train station only to find that there weren't any trains going to our area of Queens in which we needed to get to. So we walked to the subway that took us to Flushings (K-town as Toko calls it)...I had to carry around my backpack and all of my luggage throughout this whole ordeal...I was sleep deprived and I have never been more tired in my life...When we got to Flushing, we had to wait a half hour for our bus...it was about one in the morning and no one was out except for drunk Korean people coming out of Karaoke bars...
We stayed the night at Toko's sister's place. It was a pretty nice place to stay for our last night on the East Coast. Toko's sister got us some hot wings from the bar she works at and then we went to bed...Peter and I shared this bed you see here, but I was so tired I could have slept on the floor...This is Toko and his sister. She's really cool and down to earth. It's actually kinda scary how similar they act sometimes. She was also a great host. She bought us Korean food in the afternoon, which was great...
Around 2:00p.m. we took a Korean cab to JFK Airport where we waited a little while as our plane was getting ready to take off...

It was a pretty nice flight...We slept, ate, watched some TV ("How I Met Your Mother"), I even got some time to do some homework and read...American Airlines treated us well...
Probably the most interesting thing about our arrival back to California was that we got to exit the plan with a stair car, kinda like the one the Bluth drive in Arrested Development. I never really get the chance to travel by airplane, so anything new is always exciting to me...
And then we were home! Peter's brother picked us up from LAX and drove us to Huntington Beach...
The night was still far from over...I don't have any of the pictures but if you want to see them they're on Steve Ponce's Facebook...We just hung out and relaxed.

The next day Toko and I went back to Santa Barbara...

To conclude, I think I can speak for all three of us that we had a great time in New York. Our hosts were so great and couldn't have treated us better and if it wasn't for them we'd be spending all of our money on our hotel rooms and we wouldn't be able to do all the cool things we've been doing - so thank you for that!