The lunch time crew! From the right: Philip, Biba, Faisal, Mer and Philip's friend. The food was great, but if you look in the background, you'll notice something more interesting than the food...
After I was finished gawking at the mall's lobby (just like some gobsmacked huckleberry in Times Square for the first time), it was time to get our lunch on in a restaurant named Sezam (pronounced SHAZZAM!) Which is a giant "we have everything you can think of" type restaurant...
We slept in on Friday. Here's Biba, Faisal and Meredith relaxing in Biba and Phil's amazing all-glass living room and trying to work up the motivation to do something.
The ride back to Bernadette and Phil's was a soggy, gritty, sandy affair, but at least we didn't get caught! We stayed up super late playing a trivia video game called "Buzz."
After lazing around and digesting for a while, we finally got motivated to get up and get going. On the way out, someone was nice enough to take a pic of all of us together.
Madinat Jumeirah is ridiculous even by Dubai's standards. It's a resort that takes up an entire kilometer of the coast and the entire thing is connected by man-made waterways. Here's the "water taxi" that showed up to take us from the lobby to the restaurant.
After toweling off and getting changed back into dry clothes, Meredith called her friend Faisal and he confirmed that he'd be driving from Abu Dhabi to Dubai to come visit later in the evening! Here's Bernadette on the phone explaining how to get to her apartment in Dubai because, get this, there isn't a standard address system in Dubai. Stop for a minute and let that sink in. Seriously, how crazy is that. All mail is delivered to PO Boxes. If you need something delivered to an actual address, all of the boxes and shipped labels there have a huge blank rectangle on them so that you can draw a map of where you are.
After gorging ourselves, we still weren't tired (our internal clocks were all effed up!) Bernadette busted out the DVDs of the show How I Met Your Mother (which we'd never seen) and we stayed up late and watched a bunch of episodes. A little after 4am, this mouse passed out on the couch so I woke her (grumpy ass) up and we headed off to bed.
...Meredith returned with her passport! (Look how happy she is!). And that's how our month-long vacation almost got completely derailed twice before it even began! (The first time being when I mixed up the dates and showed up to the airport A DAY LATE!).
While I never imagined that I'd find myself in Dubai, I certainly never imagined that I'd find myself at a water park in Dubai! Thanks for taking us, Beebs!
This is a step that you only need to take if you have a friend named "The Fatty" that happens to have a birthday right before you leave town. Since we do, we made sure that we took the Fatty out to PUMPS in Bushwick to celebrate his birthday with some shady-ass noody bar action!
And it was also one of the first nights we hung out with our new family-tv-night buddies Lisa and Pauly (seriously you should click that link and watch their video, The Broker, right now). Here's Meredith with Lisa...
After saying farewell to the birthday girl, I headed around the corner to meet up with Meredith who was out drinking with some ITP people. Here's Jaymes and Meredith.
On Thursday night Meredith and I went to see a movie. Little known fact about Meredith: she likes to posh with promotional displays for upcoming movies. Here she is with a baby polar bear. Awwww!
Later that night a whole bunch of people came over to hang and play Cranium! L to R: Josh, Posh, Niki, Amanda, Quinn, Faran, Rosie, Murdo and Ellen with her arms full of dogs!
After the shuttle dropped us off, we decided to get out of our "fancy clothes" and change into something more comfortable. We didn't have a room at the hotel (we were planning on just driving back to my parent's house) so we just changed in the parking lot. Hahaha.
...and then piled into a van that was shuttling people from the reception over to the hotel where everyone was staying. Here's Meredith, Steve and Steve's wife.
I tried to take a photo of Meredith dancing but she jumped right as my flash went off and instead I ended up with this awesome shot of Mer's airborne boobies. Yes!
We actually didn't mind at all. We had a way funner time than anyone else because we got to do coloring and no one else did. Here's Mer and Abbey tag-teaming a page out of one of Abbey's coloring books.
Meredith couldn't come because she had to get up early the next morning for work (and not everyone a weirdo like me who likes to go out at midnight on Wednesdays). In lieu of her attendance, Meredith gave me a little bday present to give to Dens from her.
After dinner, we fired up Guitar Hero! Yes! Here's an action shot of Scott tuning up as he prepares to take on little miss Leigh Lezark (bonus points to Max and Meredith who are on opposite extremes of the "excitement spectrum" in this photo). Hahaha.
On Saturday night, Meredith and I went up to Kip's Bay to see a movie (because the theater is usually less-crowded on weekends). After the movie was over, we stopped to laugh at Homer's stolen arm...
Monday was Memorial Day and a bunch of us went to brunch at La Palapa. Meredith showed off her tongue tricks. Here's her world-famous "I can make my tongue into a bowl." Which was followed by...
Asscat's special guest was John Krasinski (and he was hilarious). Here's Meredith ambushing him with a smooch (which caused him to reflexively make a Jim Halpert face!).
Later that night, Meredith, Matt and I met up with Alex (who was in the same improv class as Matt & I) and we went to see the Sunday night Asscat show at the UCB Theater.
Here's Meredith a couple hours later, totally crunked on stolen vodka, squatting down in front of the best, unintentionally-funny vanity license plate...
On the way out of dinner, Cat and Meredith stopped at the small bar that was set up outside and started flirting with the bartender. Once they had his full attention, Catrinel leaned in and started flirting extra hard, and once Meredith deemed that the bartender was sufficiently distracted, she grabbed a full bottle of vodka from off the table and ran away with it! Hahahaha. COLLEGE!
Hahahaha! How amazing is this photo? "COLLEGE! WOOOOOO!" I pretty much spend the whole day sitting on the quad, enjoying the sunshine while Meredith caught up with old friends she hadn't seen in a while.
