November 23rd, 2025: Another day of work but until 10:30pm tonight, I woke up at 6:59am because I didn’t set my alarm, so now I missed church for the day and I can’t enter super late. I got breakfast, got dressed, and brushed my teeth before taking the first bus. I got down there and thought of taking 1 of 2 buses over. I took the slightly busier one and missed it just as it was leaving. I waited for the second bus on the route to come back and got on while it was on its break. I wrote a bit before the bus started moving. A few stops later Skeleton said hi to me, he told me he was going to this One Piece card game event. He told me his 23rd birthday is today and after a while we went about doing our own things. He got off at 9:17am and I got off 3 minutes later, I walked in and wrote my time in. I got to the booth and my first customer was the Central European Santa Claus, although I think he was actually supposed to be an early 19th century American explorer. I filled up his horn cup with coffee and he paid. Next came the Benjamin Franklin guy and I got his mug filled up. We got our money drawer and we could officially start selling coffee. More people started coming over and we were quite low on volunteers today, but with the Packers game and it being Sunday, not as many people were showing up. It was mostly me, Elon, and Mrauku, I remained at the cash register and I spent most of the rest of the day counting cash. Lots of people came over like Joy, the Polish lady, Portia, Seth M multiple times to take some cash off of our hands, Keke, Kiana with her father, Lillehammer and her mom and dad, Seth M’s friend, the Latinx lady, the 3 Ukrainians, Harmony C, and practically everybody from the office except for Ahwahn and most of the volunteers. I saw Helly R and waved to her. A bit later I was handing back cash to customers when Mrauku told me:
“You know in my culture, we don’t hand out cash to people with the left hand, its the lesser, weaker hand.”
I restrained myself from replying with:
“Because it’s the hand you wipe your bare ass with whenever you take a shit?”
And instead said:
“Oh that’s interesting”
I already knew about the Islamic world not liking the left hand. I texted Zach A about my break and he told me I could take it at 1:00pm because I agreed with Titania that she should come. I accepted the $30 in cash and free ticket and bought first a Keema Paratha at the Rohingya booth. It's this square bread thing which tastes like Indian food on the inside, I loved it, and then a nutella banana crêpe. I got a text midway through lunch from Titania saying that she just got out of the shower and would be here soon. At 1:56pm she texted me:
<i’m here, got a 5 min walk
It took like 5 more minutes until we saw each other, she got a drink at my booth and then we talked while the booth wasn’t busy, I gave her a 1 armed hug and then she went to explore more. I saw her eating at a table but I couldn’t get her attention. She came over later and we talked a bit and I gave her an actual hug as she left to explore more. She texted me asking about any Cuban booth. We had none. I continued with running the cash register, Mrauku told me he was 22 just like me. I didn't see Markus or Zephyr, I felt disappointed by that. It came to be roughly 6:00pm when we started closing down. The Chinese guy from yesterday came over to my booth and gave us some free food. People who set up came over to get free ice cream. I had 2 scoops of the birthday cake and 2 scoops of the strawberry. This Afghan guy who works with us introduced the team to his 6 kids, I remember the order being girl, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, and his wife’s pregnant with a 7th. I overheard later that the oldest is a senior in high school and will go to my college. We had to take down this sign which signified this is an America’s 250th anniversary event. We started eating more ice cream and the 1983 woman challenged me to how many Spongebob popsicles I could eat, I refused her challenge. I took down and had to wrap all the flagpole bases in plastic as told by the Polish lady with Joy, we didn’t say anything to each other. We got done and for some reason ran around in a circle holding hands, once that was done the team and I took a group photo, then we were allowed to go home. I signed out at 8:31pm and opened my phone to see a text from Liseuxa at 8:26pm:
<Me and my three friends got zero matches in Nashville
I continued the conversation:
>It’s so over…
<I'm having fun in Nashville so it was still worth it. But my friend is crying
>Your friend?
<Yeah the female friend I'm staying with who invited me to go to it
>The one who was with you on Friday?
<No, this is my friend in Nashville
>Oh…
>I’ll pray for her.
<Thank you. How was the rest of the FF? Really wish I had remembered before planning this trip I would have been there all weekend
>It was super well but I saw nobody I knew or gave tickets to.
<I hope [company] has more cultural events. I love those.
>It’s only one a year.
<Nothing else at all though?
>There was one smaller event a month back where this famous musician from Nigeria came.
<Oh that's cool. I'm going to volunteer to be an ambassador
>Nice!!!!
I got in the Afghani’s cars and we passed this Black guy with a sign, he then talked about the safety of different parts of the city. Welp I got off and got a message from Titania saying she wanted to see me again! I took a shower and went to sleep.
Song of the Day: Janis - Focus (1971)
