A pair of tweezers, a nail clipper, a keychain, and an electric toothbrush..

So silly Aronson and I have never been to a hotel without our family, and it didn’t occur to us that on a Saturday night at 9 all of the 3 hotels by the Grand Canyon might be booked up. So our options were to drive 50 miles out of town or pay $150 for a shitty room. So we drove out of town and were pleasantly surprised to find a sketchy hotel only about 30 miles away. So we check in there and go to our decently clean hotel room. I feel like such an adult!
We try to open our bottle of wine but realize we didn’t bring a bottle opener.. we get resourceful and use pretty much everything in sight to try to open it. The bottle is putting up a tough fight, but Aronson is determined. He didn’t want me to make him sound like a wuss in my blog. We finally use the toothbrush to push the cork into the bottle, spraying glass everywhere. Aronson cut his finger, but I’m so proud of him, he didn’t even faint at the sight of his blood! Then I sat on a shard of glass and my leg started bleeding… but it was all worth it for the $4 wine, right? The cleaning ladies at the hotel are going to be pretty confused when they see the mess of wine splatters and glass shards!

Damn, where did that hoover dam come from?

First off I have to congratulate myself on thinking of such a wonderful pun for the title. We start driving to the grand canyon and in the middle of the desert we hit insane traffic. Jen starts freaking out because the navigation system shows some crazy curves and she doesn’t quite trust my professional driving skills. I mean it is pretty tough taking a turn at a blazing 15 mph. We figure out the traffic is from the new Arizona Mexican checkpoint law. After about 20 minutes of mexican searching they let us right through and the Hoover Dam shows up. Now maybe we are kind of retarded but neither of us expected such a famous national monument to surprise us. Jen keeps trying to convince me to stop and enjoy the scenery. Finally I give in at the very top and we find a little indian family to take our picture. Before we can get back into our car the perfect stereotypic Chinese tourist couple pulls up and we take their picture and are on our way.

High school Party!

Tonight we had a joint party with a couple highschoolers. Now the set up starts nice, an island of liquor, a cooler of beer in the hallway, and a couple high school guys walking around. What more could we need for a kickin’ party? For some reason Lorenzo puts on Jackass 2 and everyone (and by everyone I mean about six of us) start cracking up hysterically. Then the Highschool mom comes in, she offers us some chicken wings and shots. She gets into how beautiful her kids are and how lucky and blessed she is. A couple more high school girls shuffle in, a little mutant like. Lorenzo’s date seemed slightly horrified at the fact that she was the oldest girl there besides the mom. Jen and I tried to make her more comfortable by talking about stabbing vaginas and choking people. From there the party somehow manages to slow down and we decide to pass out on the couch. -aronson

two's company, three's a crowd, four's a date?

In the evening we went with Lorenzo on a romantic picnic third date. He really went all out on the setup- he spent $50 just on cheese and had a pretty professional picnic setup complete with stakes he set in the ground to hold the wine and wine glasses His date met us at his place and we all drove over to a park that was projecting a movie outside. We get there and it’s total babyland! I of course, was completely thrilled. We were the only people there without a toddler or infant. Lorenzo unfolded his three course picnic while making fun of our TV dinner meal. Even the guy at the checkout counter at the supermarket told me I should try to find rich boyfriend after Aronson bought our $4 wine, haha. - Jen

Guten Lauden!

The drinks helped loosen everybody up- before you knew it we were all dancing around the living room and singing along to American Pie. The Russian girls have finally come back, and so it’s just us, the Russians, and Germans alone in the home of someone we all barely knew. The Germans were also taking a road trip around the country so they pulled out their giant U.S map and we sat around on the floor comparing routes. They are ending their trip in Miami, so we might have some German couchsurfers when we get back to Gainesville!
After a lot of convincing on my part, we all pile into my car and take off for the strip. I assured the Germans that we would make it back in time to watch the World Cup at 4:30. Las Vegas is even crazier than I imagined- it’s like a combination of Disney land and a cruise ship. We wander around the hotels, but since the Russians and I are 19 we face the usual problem of not being able to get in almost everywhere. We did find one club and all jumped and danced around together. Just walking around the casinos and replicas of famous monuments was pretty incredible.
When 4 rolls around we trek back to my car and make it back just in time for the big game. We try to figure out sleeping arrangements in the small apartment. Lorenzo has been letting the Russians sleep in his bed, since he never sleeps. When we ask the Germans if three people can fit in the bed, they say that it’s too small. When the Russians ask if they want to stay with them in Lorenzo’s bed, they quickly say yes and insist we sleep on the couches. So we get the couches and the teacup Chuawua. As a first time couchsurfer, I found it a little hard to get comfortable sleeping in a stranger’s house. I turn to ask Aronson if he’s having trouble sleeping too, but of course he’s already fast asleep. - jen

2 germans, 2 russians Lorenzo and a dog.

The drive was beautiful, tons of la traffic, blah blah blah. The real adventure starts when we reach our first couchsurfing host. Kind of a coral springsy condo place, nothing out of the ordinary, but once inside we are greeted by two germans and blaring german folk drinking songs. Lorenzo tells us he has work from midnight til 8 and goes to bed to catch a couple hours of sleep before heading off to work. As we walk around the place we notice little labels on light switches and bathroom toiletries. This is some sort of couchsurfing twilight zone. He has about six hundred movies organized by great genres like drug flicks and dramas with sad endings. The bar is fully stocked including a tip jar. We hear a couple of Russian girls are staying for three months, but left this morning and probably got abducted by some prostitution ring. To add to this wonderful atmosphere a tiny little rat sized dog jumps around at our feet. Upon further inspection we notice a tiny pink dog bed with a picture of her and Paris Hilton. Well I need a drink, time to try and find some good American beer and show those germans whats up. - aronson

Grandpa Hal

Never did i think I would be having a conversation with a 95 year old dude about the pirate bay, but here I was at the dinner table telling Grandpa Hal about all the music and movies you can download. You should have seen his face light up when I said you can even get audiobooks.
-aronson