day 1: rojie vs beau mec’s version

rojie’s version

Flying from LAX is one of my least favorite things to do. Between parking the car, taking the shuttle, going through TSA, finding my gate, and then waiting to board is exhausting… and I haven’t even boarded the plane yet.

As soon as I took a seat at the gate, I popped a Dramamine to prevent motion sickness. Why am I cursed with being motion sickness on every mode of transportation possible? I have no idea. No one else in my family has this problem but me.

I boarded the plane and knocked myself out till I arrived “home”. I looked out the window and I knew immediately where I was. All the beautiful lush greenery and dirty looking lakes made me feel a bit emo. I told myself that I needed to get it together cause I didn’t want him to think I was some sort of crybaby.

When I touched down at MSP, I got a text from him. I responded back that I’d be at the car rental area. As I reached towards the area, he pulled up next to me.

“Hi,” he said.

I smirked. “Hi.”

It was rather anti-climatic, but then again, I wasn’t sure really what to expect other than I was happy to be back in Minnesota and curious to finally meet someone I’d known online for years. He already knew basically everything about me from reading/lurking around my blog. He didn’t have a blog so I had my work cut out for me.

Thankfully, he looked exactly like his picture. I was hella relieved I wasn’t catfished. I didn’t care what he looked like but I knew Yummy definitely would.

Once I got the rental car situation figured out, we headed to the hotel about twenty minutes from the airport. We checked in, grabbed our key cards, and headed up the elevator. Normally, I pick the bed on the right but since he was technically the guest in Minnesota, I let him pick whichever one he wanted. Yup, Minnesotans are nice like that.

We were going to meet up with my cousin, but I desperately needed to take a nap beforehand because the Dramamine was still kicking my ass. Unfortunately, Beau Mec was a chatty Cathy and wanted to talk. He happily rambled on until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. We only had 22 minutes of sleep before we had to head on over to the fairgrounds.

Parking at the State Fair sucks balls. My friends and I always try to park in one of those shuttle lots because attempting to park anywhere closer is a hot mess. On the shuttle, Beau Mec entertained himself by trying to guess people’s ethnicity. I shook my head as he challenged me.

“She’s Chinese. That guy’s Hmong. That old man is Vietnamese. No, she’s not Japanese.” He seemed to be impressed with my skillizzles. But the truth of the matter is, there’s a lot more South East Asians than East Asians in Minnesota. And different races have very distinct features that are easily recognizable to me.

Beau Mec didn’t know it but I wanted him to meet Kathy (my cousin) and our friends because I wanted to see what they thought. I knew my opinion would be biased since I’ve “known” him for years so it wasn’t really fair.

He apparently passed with flying colors. He was able to hang with us as we put on the feed bag and started going to town on all the yummy fried foods. Gah, those little donuts get me every time. They make them fresh on the spot and it literally melts in my mouth. And you know I had to get my cheese curds. IYKYK!

Being around all these people in the heat is no bueno but the food definitely made up for it.

After walking around for a bit, we decided to go eat… again, at Cafe Latte. Man, I’ve been going there since high school and it’s so delicious. Their strawberry cheesecake is killer and even their salads and pizzas are delicious. Kathy, Beau Mec, and I sat around like we’ve been friends forever. It was actually quite nice.

We said g’night to Kathy and left St. Paul around 2310 and got back to the hotel about thirty minutes later. As soon as we got back to the hotel room, I told him that I needed to take a shower and brush my teeth. Nothing feels better than climbing into a clean bed wearing clean pajamas on a clean body.

Before the trip, Beau Mec curated a bunch of older foreign films for us to watch. I randomly picked a Taiwanese movie about a high school love triangle, where the girl was questioning her sexuality. It started off a bit slow, but somewhere in the middle I became completely invested in the characters.

Then it hit me, I was a conduit for Yummy and Beau Mec… just like Kerou became the conduit for Yuezhen and Shihao.

beau mec’s version

I went to the airport right on time, and as I was waiting in the security line, I thought I recognised one of the girls who’d just gotten in line. And then I did recognise her. And my friend. In a weird coincidence, we were both in the line at the same time–they were headed to California, I was going to Minneapolis. I left them in the line and went ahead to my plane, which was just starting to board. After I got on and sat down, I was looking up at the people getting on my plane…and there were my friend and his girlfriend again. They were apparently going to California through Minneapolis. And the seat next to them turned out to be one of the few empty seats on the plane, so I abandoned the people I’d been placed next to and went to sit with them. So it was a fun and easy flight! We kept talking about planes falling out of the sky and horrible deaths, but we eventually had to stop because the people sitting across the aisle were starting to turn green.

When I arrived in Minneapolis, I texted Rojie and asked her where she wanted to meet. She told me to meet her by the car rental area, so I started heading over there, but just as I went through the doors to the main hallway and started heading there, I saw her come through the doors on the opposite side. We were walking down the hallway, but she hadn’t seen me yet. Now, I suppose it could be considered a bit sadistic, but one of my favourite hobbies is sneaking up behind people and startling them. So I let her go ahead of me, decided she had more of a blind spot on her right side, sneaked up until I was walking right beside her, and said hi. Unfortunately, she was only mildly startled.

So that’s how we met. Old friends, meeting for the first time.

It’s a strange sort of feeling, but it’s nice. I waited for her while she picked up the car, and after a bit of searching, we finally found it. It was a pretty big car, but our bags fit in it easily. Minneapolis is her home ground, so she knew her way around and I was a stranger. We drove to the hotel (it was quite near the airport), got our keys, and went up to the room. I took the right bed, she took the left. After unpacking a little bit and checking out the room, we decided to take a short nap before we went to meet her cousin at the Minnesota State Fair. But we really ended up talking instead of napping. We laughed about this and that and told each other little stories about what had been going on in our lives. I think that’s when we started to feel a little more comfortable in the fact that yes, this person was the same person we’d known all these years, and yes, we also got along face to face. Finally we closed our eyes for about 20 minutes and headed off to the fair.

We parked near a Wal-Mart and headed over to where the bus was ferrying people to the fair. We were debating whether an old couple was Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or what. It turned out she was right and I was wrong. I should have known better than to take homegirl on in her own state. Lot of Hmongs around. When we got on the bus and got to the fair, wooooooo there were a lot of people! A sea of people, all over the place. We bought tickets and went in, and waited for her cousin a little while.

We eventually met up with her and her two friends, then went on a wild food-eating frenzy. We ate cheese curds. We ate rice burgers. We drank lemonade. We ate sweet corn ice cream. Draft root beer. Fried green tomatoes. The only failure that still burns painfully in my breast is that we didn’t try the Jamaican jerk fries. But really, there was nothing to be done. We were full as hell. We also checked out some sheep and pregnant cows. I have fun moving through crowds. It’s about knowing when to shove people aside and when to slither through them, when to dart and when to sway. Always an enjoyable exercise.

We finally left when it was starting to get dark, and went to meet up with Rojie’s cousin at a famous little cafe in the downtown area. They’re supposed to have really good pizza there, but I was too full to contemplate anything but some iced tea. Rojie and her cousin got some slices of cheesecake and tres leches. I tried a little bit and the cheesecake was heavenly. Some of the best cheesecake I’ve ever eaten. The three of us sat around and talked about our favourite foods.

At around 11:00, we left the cafe and Rojie and I headed back to the hotel. We brushed our teeth, took our showers, and washed the dust of the road from our shoulders. It’s nice to feel clean at the end of a long day! We wanted to watch movies, so I let her take her pick and she chose “Blue Gate Crossing”, a Taiwanese coming-of-age story about a high-school girl coming to grips with the fact that she’s a lesbian. A really sweet, sad, thoughtful movie. When it was over, we lay back in bed and talked for a while about this and that, then we finally went to sleep. We had big plans for the morrow.