Hey everyone - I haven't posted a blog in a while, mainly because...well...not much has been going on to post about..., but I just have to rant to someone about the friggin' scary night I had last night. And to let everyone know ahead of time, everything worked out fine and I'm okay. But it still doesn't take away the seriously intense fear that I felt...

To start at the beginning, me and my 3 other friends (one of them my roommate Crystal, the other my friend Brenna of over 10 years, and my other friend Ibiso) were sunbathing by the outdoor pool at my school yesterday...hey, I know it's only April, but it was 84 degrees! We stayed until about 4 pm, and then decided to take a bus to Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which is only about a 15 minute ride from campus. Crystal had just gotten over coxsackie, which is an illness that causes you to get sores all in the inside of your mouth and makes it hard to eat...I had it when I was 13, and had to drink PediaSure for 10 days. SO not fun. But since she was better, we wanted to take her out to eat, to get a nice juicy burger from Fuddruckers. We we sure there was one just by the Harbor, and there's a bus that goes directly from campus to there with free fare. So we went, knowing only vaguely which stop we had to stop at, and ended up getting off the bus a little early...but we were all pretty familiar with the layout of the city (I've visisted the Harbor every year since I was a little kid), and we knew where we had to go to get to the Harbor. So it's a beautiful, sunny day, we're walking through the city - and there was a Yankees/Orioles game that night, so there were people crowding the streets and tailgating...good food everywhere...pretty much just a great atmosphere.

So that was all good, right? But this is when the scary began...we were just walking down the street and talking, when some guy who must have been in his 40s, walking from the opposite direction towards us, yelled out "Hey, you 4 are looking FINE!" then gave like a "whoop, whoop" noise. We just sort of bunched together, tried to ignore him, and walked the other way really quickly...luckily he didn't try to follow us. Then, we're standing on the corner of a street waiting to cross the crosswalk, and a car with a bunch of guys yelling in it drives by and honks at us...the guy in the passenger seat was leaning out and staring at us with a creepy smile on his face.

At this point, we all started realizing that we made a mistake in not bringing any guys with us...we all knew the city, yes, but I had only been wih my dad walking beside me. We're all from small towns where you don't really have to worry about creepy guys. We just wanted to look cute, too, for a night on the town...which might also have been a mistake. It was hot out, and even though we were all dressed tastefully, I guess we were showing a lot of skin. I had on white short shorts and a bright blue halter top, just to give you an idea, but I'm not used to not wearing what I want just to avoid creepers! It was just scary, and I started wishing that I had a sweatshirt or something to cover up with.

But anyway, we got to where the Fuddruckers was, and found out that it was closed down...so we went to the Hard Rock cafe instead...( I know, we had to settle... ) We had to hurry through our meal a bit, though, because we wanted to catch the bus that left before dark - we weren't used to cities, but we did know that staying past dark wasn't a good idea. Unfortunately, we didn't plan too well and we missed that bus...so we decided to just stay until 9:07, which was when the next one came. After all, by the Harbor there were a lot of people, a lot of cool stores, and a lot of fun things to do...it felt pretty safe. And we also knew a couple of people that could pick us up, should we need them to.

We walked around the Harbor for a bit, then decided to go to the Gallery - which is this pretty ritzy mall with some great stores in it. So we're going into stores we can't afford just for the heck of it...Aldo, Coach...then decided to stop at Starbucks. Ibiso and Brenna didn't want anything, so they were sitting at a little table while Crystal and I waited for our double chocolate chip Frapucinos. I happened to look over at them, and then freaked out when I saw these three big black guys hanging around them...now I'm not racist at all, Ibiso is black and I have a lot of black friends, but I just mean to say that these were the types of guys that wore the chains around their necks with like a ton of tatoos and stuff. Scary. One of them was actually sitting AT the table next to Brenna, leaning in close to her and saying something I couldn't hear, and I tried to catch her eye - I could tell that she was terrified. So Crystal and I quickly grabbed our drinks and walked over, saying pretty forcefully "Are you ready to leave?" Brenna and Ibiso nodded and stood up really fast, looking relieved.

Then I sort of felt like there were eyes on me - when I looked over, one of the guys was like licking his lips and looking me up and down...then he said "You're looking good." I felt terrified and my heart was beating faster...we left as fast as we could, going down the escalator and looking back every now and then to make sure they weren't following us. It was awful. When we were walking away, Brenna told me that one of the guys was playing with her hair and standing behind her, and Ibiso said that the guy gave him his number and wanted her to call him for "some fun." They had made up fake names and a fake college so the guys couldn't find them on Facebook or anything and try to stalk them...

When we left the mall we realized it was already dark outside, and figured we should start walking to the busstop to get there on time...

Now the busstop is further into the city, not by the touristy and fairly safe part of the Harbor. We were all really scared at this point, and even though we thought we knew where we were going, we got a little disoriented. We had three other cars drive by and honk, a few guys on bicycles ride by us exceedinly slowly, whistling and saying "Mamacita..." Another car drove by and a man leaned out, yelling something maybe not appropriate to type on here, and by that point we realized that we had to get inside...so we ran into some hotel lobby, where there was a nice looking guy standing in a suit. Whew. It felt good to know that we were safe, and we just wanted to stay there for a few minutes. He was really accomodating and said that we could stay in there as long as we wanted...he told us that we were really close to the busstop, though, and that if we wanted to try and walk over he would look out the window and see if we were okay...he really understood how scary Baltimore city could be at night, especially to 4 college girls.

Brenna had her cell out, ready to call her boyfriend if she needed to, and we knew that we could always wait in the hotel should he pick us up. So feeling a little safer, we finally found the busstop, and got there just in time. I've never been happier to see a bus in my life...I like ran in, sat in the seat, and hugged my friend...the whole night was so scary...

We weren't planning on staying out past dark, but we learned our lesson...you can't count on the busses, and 4 girls should never go to Baltimore without guys around. Lesson learned, but let me just say it was most definitely the hard way. *sigh*