The backpack is full, the gift bags are ready, the gadgets are charged. I even have some black tea bubble tea for later, when I’ll be driving part of the 10-hour trip. It’s guaranteed to keep me awake until late night with no problem.

I’ll be back on Saturday, when I’m flying from Toronto. Should get to NY around 8 PM, same time as my friends from Romania. And then the fun begins!

Seven more days until my friends get here.

I’ve spent the day cleaning up my place. Not that it was very dirty, but I do like to put extra effort for when I have visitors. Still, that didn’t keep some of my friends here (who know how my apartment usually is) from making fun all week of me and my “neatly organized, no mess, no dust, with everything in the room thoughtfully placed” home (direct quote from Ethan). Which might not be an exaggeration considering it took me 7 hours to clean a place that wasn’t that unclean to begin with. But hey, everything is sparkling now.

I’m checking the extended forecast every day now in order to form a plan of visiting – sunny days for walking the city, rainy ones for museums – but so far it changes every time I look. First there was sun next Saturday, then rain all weekend, this morning it was sun, and now there’s rain on Fri and Sat. So much for weather forecasting.

I’ve also started to fill up the fridge and pantry with all the necessities. Which would be candy, chocolate, ice cream and snacks. They used to raid my pantry when they used to come over back in the day in Romania so I’d figured I’d be a bad host if I wouldn’t give them the opportunity to do it again. I’ll probably regret this.

No you pervs, the title isn’t some sexual reference, I’m talking about actual stuffed chicken here!

It all started with a friend’s post on Yelp (a review site on almost anything, but mostly restaurants and bars) that mentioned a place in Flushing where they served chicken wings, stuffed with all kinds of interesting things. The post included this link (warning, clicking it will get you hungry!), which was all I needed to convince me I have to try it.

After almost two weeks of bugging the hell out of her, we finally managed to get a group going to the place. And it was well worth it…

There’s no point describing how good everything was since there’s nothing I can say that you can’t see in those pictures I linked before. I mean, chicken wings, broiled (I assume), stuffed with veggies, kimchi and shrimp(!) and covered in spices. What more could you possibly want? Add to it a slushy alcoholic drink – Soju – which I had for the first time. And second time, since we didn’t stop at the first pitcher (strawberry) and we ordered another one (apple).

We have some pictures, courtesy of Helena. Definitely a great place, I will go there again. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, when my friends from Romania will get here.