Me and Nomali went to St Benedicts for the week, more to come about that, but on one fine day we decided to drive to Aspen for the afternoon and this is just a brief account of the surreal kind. Aspen is soo0o cute, like Boulder but exaggerated to absurdity. The main area is aloft with ridiculously expensive clothing and jewelry stores, it is kind of sad though… once you realize you can’t afford any of it. There are also nice art galleries everywhere, fancy restaurants and outdoorsy stores of all kinds. After deciding that 24 dollars was too much for a gondola ride we decide to get some ice cream. It was hard to find an ice cream place but after observing a rugby match we stumbled upon for a few minuets we saw a Ben and Jerry’s. We were standing in line only a moment when a lady walked in behind us with two kids she spoke loader than most would choose, as though she were the only one in the shop. She did everything franticly while talking to her two small children, it was quite amusing. We all soon found out they were going to be late and were in fact supposed to be at the hotel right then. The lady yells at the kid to get in line while she goes to make sure they take credit cards first. She runs to the register and yells “do you take credit cards” and they tell her yes and she starts rambling in our direction as she stands behind us. She makes it very clear that she had no cash on her and takes out a dollar bill jokingly as though that would be enough and drops it. She actually had two, drops the other one and laughs with us about it proceeding to then drop her credit cards as well.  We laugh with her, clearly this woman has a lot of money, if not with her than in the bank. You can see it in her collagen filled lips, large and smothered with pink gloss, her overly tan chest sticking out of her pink tank top covering her fake perfect breasts. She stated loudly that they were in a hurry many times talking to her kids, telling them you can get one little thing but it must be quick and said “oh your dad emailed you” to the three year old and when she asked to see it she started searching for her phone (I must admit, she actually had the same phone as me for which she said I had good taste but seemed a little embarrassed, I as well) then she said to us “that’s the thing about Aspen everyone is so rich they have to hire eight year olds to serve you ice cream, that why it is going so slow!” We joked about it and talked about how rich Aspen was compared to Boulder and she informed us that Aspen is in fact the richest town in America, but also pointed out that the problem with it is lack of diversity, gesturing to her two small children, she informed us that they have house in Aspen and one in Miami and that is all her kids know, rich white people. We agreed and somehow got on the subject of charity when Nomali pointed out that Colorado was the fourth worst state for giving money and Boulder was actually below the national average. The woman agreed and stated that she is a Catholic and proved that she was a very charitable person through some examples and something about mosquito nets in Africa. We made some encouraging remarks and told her that we were actually staying at St Benedicts, the monastery in Snowmass. Her eyes widen for a moment and she asked whether that was Buddhist? …or Catholic? We said yes, yes it is catholic and she suddenly became a little less sure of herself letting us know that she doesn’t get to church as often as she would like. Then she started talking about charity again and told us that the thing about Catholics is they give to everyone but Jews (informing us that she is married to one) only give to Jews. Me and Nomali laughed again and made eyes at each other for a moment, but at this point we were at the front about to order and asked if she wanted to go first, but she said no and we went ahead. The woman was oddly pushy or rather just didn’t mind invading one’s space a little more than most, but she got right back in there telling us how it was. Finally we were trying to pay for the ice cream and she pushed ahead and slapped her old, bent, over used credit card on the counter and said “here just take care of them” Nomali protested a little bit but the woman was still in a major rush and said it was no problem, the eight year old still fumbling with her card as we thanked her and she said “No problem, I love do’gooders!” and we said bye have a nice day she yelled back to us “pray for me I’m going through a divorce!”