New York, New York

So we have been in NY for 11 days. All in all our first week here was great!  We rolled into town on the 20th (Monday night) and made it to Pete's cousins house around 11:30pm. Tuesday morning we took the ferry into Manhattan where we met Pete's Brother and Sister (Adam and Hannah) for lunch. We spent the day in the city and saw the empire state building, Rockefeller center, times square, and lots of other things. It was awesome, but Manhattan was freezing and ridiculously windy.

Wednesday evening we had our first show, in Brooklyn. We took the bus into Bay ridge earlier in the day and met up with Adam for lunch, visited Pete's uncles carpet store, and saw the house in Brooklyn where he grew up. The show went really well. it was at a little "hole-in-the-wall" coffee shop called "roots cafe". It was small, but a nice evening. We met some cool people, sold some cd's, and found out that the barista was actually from spokane, and knew some of the same people we did!
Thursday was Hannah's birthday so we went to Queens and celebrated at a catering hall with her and her friends and family.
We spent Christmas eve at Pete's aunt and uncles in Staten Island where all the Wells in New York gather every year, and I had the chance to meet all of them in the course of a single evening! After the Party there we made the four hour drive to Baltimore, Maryland to spend Christmas day with the grandparents on the other side of the family. It was a great weekend all in all...until the drive home. A four hour drive quickly changed into a nightmare on the New Jersey turnpike, when we were hit by an insane blizzard (which they say only happens once every three years), and forced to stay over night in a hotel. After three hours of digging the car out of the parking lot the next morning, we finally made it out.
The drive was slightly better the next day, since they were able to plow the freeway, but everything else was a mess. Semi trucks stuck everywhere blocking on and off ramps and the streets were lined with buried cars. Luckily we were kept safe throughout the whole trip and made it back to aunt Sharon's house and spent the next two days inside sleeping.

This last Wednesday we played another show in Brooklyn but there wasn't a very good turnout. Aside from a friend that opened for us (and Hannah and Adam) there wasn't an audience. We would like to think of those situations as practice. Thursday(yesterday) we had a show in the city which actually went really well. We had a hard time getting there because our bus never came and we showed up 10 minutes late but were still able to play and had a really good time.

Today is New Years Eve and we are currently hanging out at aunt Sharon's. We walked to dunkin' donuts and got bagels and donuts this morning and now we are just hanging out for the day and probably going over to Pete's cousin Missy and her husband Ben's house tonight.
We have 4 days until we head to London! can't believe it's finally here! we are really looking forward to it and will keep you guys updated and post a lot of pictures!