Quantos Anios, Beaches!

Tuesday March 17th

Dear Fans,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the format of these posts, and I have decided, after kicking it around with the other bloggers for a long while, that I should mention the day of the week as well as the date at the beginning of each post, so please be advised of this change. Oh yeah, and we’re in Miami!
We are staying at the Clay hotel and International Hostel in South Beach. It’s an okay hostel, but I probably only think that because the Econolodge was so very shitty. So shitty. The Clay is right in the middle of a pretty hoppin’ neighborhood. There are attractive people buying expensive things all around us! The dining is second-to-none-ish and also really expensive. No one has gotten sick or injured so far – knock on wood!
When we arrived the first night, it was about 11:00 PM and we sang some karaoke and then went to the beach. The beach was gorgeous! The moon was bright and high in the sky, the water was dark and beckoning, and the steady breeze spoke of the salty solace to be found behind each cresting wave. I threatened to take a shit in the sand, because I just wanted to get to the hostel and go to bed.
The interesting thing about the beach so far (which we re-visited the next day) is that it could really just be someone’s driveway somewhere with a stereo playing ocean noises. No one was doing anything beach-specific. No one was in the water except us, and everyone looked really unhappy with us for playing Frisbee in the sand – our bad! I guess we’re just Miami noobs.
Speaking of awkward confrontations with the locals, I have only really spoken with two of them, but each was an interaction I’ll cherish for at least 1 years. The first was today at lunch when Zac, Sarita, and I decided to try and guess where our waitress was from. She had an accent, you see, and kept saying funny things, like when she pointed to the soup Zac ordered and said, “This day of soup.” I guessed Holland, Zac guessed Turkey, and Sarita refused to guess, so her guess defaulted to Denmark, as per the Rules (FRCC, 8c). Turns out she was from Lithuania, which means that Sarita wins! That wasn’t so bad, but then she said some stuff that made me feel compelled to tell her that we were trying to guess, and what our guesses were. She thought we were funny, and I laughed, which was good. Then she asked where we were from, and I said, “America”, which was bad. “What a dumb thing to say,” I thought to myself as we left. Zac agreed (somehow).
Almost immediately after that, we were walking back to the hostel, and Sarita noticed a douchebag costume store. We went in, and Sarita picked out and bought a lovely pair of sun glasses while Zac and I tried to find even one thing we would actually wear there, if forced to at gun point (we did eventually find some flip-flops, which were actually so nice that Zac purchased them). As we were looking around at things, I accidentally looked at a green t-shirt – big mistake! A high-pressure sales guy noticed and came over and was all, like, asking me if I liked the shirt and asking why I wouldn’t try it on, and telling me that it’s only $20, down from $60. These shirts are very hard to find, he assured me. When I finally told him, “No, I’m good,” and started walking away, he became desperate, and asked, “Are you from England?” At which point I felt very much bewildered, and said that “I’m from America” – which was bad.