Chapter 41: New York, New York
Raul's rented house is located in Queens, New York, adjacent to Flushing, which is much cheaper than Manhattan, and has complete supporting facilities and security, making it a very suitable place for human habitation. There are a lot of Chinese here, on the way to the Manhattan shopping mall area, Li Mudi sitting in the car saw a lot of compatriots on the side of the road, it seems that the number of people with white skin is not smaller, it seems that Lao Mei does have a tendency to be "colonized" by the people of the Celestial Empire.
Serious people in the Celestial Empire are no more than Christmas, at least Li Mudi thinks so. Now in the Celestial Empire, foreign festivals are more popular and valued than traditional festivals, which is really funny, no wonder a country related to sticks has declared the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival as theirs. It's okay to talk about other festivals, but Christmas? This festival is a holiday of the Western Church, if it is a person who does not believe in Christ, why should he celebrate his birthday? Therefore, in Li Mudi's eyes, this festival has changed in the Celestial Empire, and has become an excuse for merchant promotions and some people to deceive "one blood", rather than its original meaning.
The Raul family are devout Catholics, and Christmas is their most important holiday of the year, so naturally they attach great importance to it, just as the Spring Festival is to the people of the Celestial Empire. Li Mudi came to him on vacation on this day, and if he didn't believe in the church, he had to celebrate the festival, so it should be regarded as a grand reception banquet. This time I didn't go to Manhattan to do some shopping, but Raul had ordered a suit from a suit shop there to wear to a dinner party. The order time was a month ago, Li Mudi naturally couldn't participate together, of course, he couldn't afford to participate, a handmade suit cost 6,000 dollars, or a brand he hadn't heard of (in fact, he knew Armani), which is too luxurious for the current Xiao Li. After taking his suit, he took a few children to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a tour, and then went home. Before leaving, Li Mudi bought a light gray casual suit at an H&M on Seventh Avenue, a total of only 129 dollars, and gave two pairs of socks.
As mentioned earlier, Queens has all kinds of facilities, and naturally there are large shopping malls, and they are going to probably the largest shopping place in the whole of New York City - Queens Center (Queens Center), which is connected by a two-story sky bridge, Macy's to the east, JCPenney to the west, and contains nearly 200 specialty stores and food and beverage stores. When they arrived at the parking lot, Gines and his wife, Laura, had been waiting there for ten minutes. After a group of ten people greeted each other, they entered the building in a mighty way, and this time they really went shopping. Going shopping on Christmas Eve, that is, Christmas Eve, is like going to the New Year's fair in towns and villages in underdeveloped areas. The two ladies dragged Gines to buy ingredients for dinner, while Raul and Li Muddy led five "matryoshka dolls" to buy the most important thing for Christmas - gifts. The gifts prepared by the children are very simple, just buy one each; Raul, as the head of the family, has to prepare one for everyone; Li Mudi, who was a guest, was not a believer, so he didn't need to prepare gifts, but in the next week, he had to eat and drink with his friends' family, and he was in time for such an important day, so he decided to buy some small gifts for Ma Man, Lola and the five children to show his heart a little.
Li Mudi has not experienced such a lively family dinner for a long time, and it is okay before the crossing, and relatives can always find a chance to get together. After combining the FM system, he came to Spain, and his family in China can only be contacted occasionally by phone and online video, and although his parents are not far away, he usually can't stay together often due to busy work, and the atmosphere of eating for three people can be compared with so many people. Seeing the five children happily playing and playing with each other, Li Mudi suddenly missed his relatives in the Celestial Empire very much, and missed his cousins, cousins, nephews, and nieces...... Get drunk before you know it, who says red wine isn't intoxicating?
The next morning, Li Mudi was woken up by the little princess Maria, who liked the gift given to her by the uncle of the Celestial Dynasty and came over to thank her happily. After accepting a kiss from the little angel and shaking his somewhat sluggish head, Li Mudi went to the bathroom to wash up and returned to the guest room to check the gifts. Raul gave him a tie that he didn't recognize; Maman sent a tie clip, this dog food spilled! The gift that Gines and Lola gave together was a Montblanc fountain pen, which had to make Li Mudi complain, and the agent gave the player a signature pen as a gift, which is a custom in the last century!
On Christmas Day, the Raul and Ginnes families would go to a nearby church to do a ritual — wrong, sorry, a service, while Lee Muddy slipped into the playground beneath the Queen's Mall by himself to play a morning game. Originally, he planned to see if he could go to watch the NBA's Christmas game, but unfortunately the New York Knicks' record in the past few years was too poor, and he was not qualified to participate in the Christmas game this year. Of course, even if there is a competition, the crazy ticket price Li Mudi may not be able to afford it.
After the Christmas holidays, there are normally a few days of work before New Year's Day, but the family is still very quiet. Raul's La Liga promotion ambassador doesn't have to go to work in the first place, and there are not many activities throughout the year; Although Marman has his own partnership fashion company, he is even more of a hands-off shopkeeper, focusing on taking care of his family; The children are in school at this time, and there are many holidays in Western countries; Genes was originally the big boss of the brokerage company, and he rested when he wanted to; Li Mudi is on vacation during the winter break. So everyone is like the eleventh day of the Celestial Empire or the Spring Festival holiday, a group of people play everywhere, parks, museums, shopping malls, squares, and visit several major attractions in New York.
In the blink of an eye, the penultimate night of 2015 came, and the important reason why Li Mudi was fooled into the United States finally began. Real estate mogul Donald Trump, a well-known "big-mouthed young man" and one of the Republican presidential candidates, will host a charity dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel on New York's Fifth Avenue on this day, with the participation of celebrities and high-level elites from all walks of life from around the world.
Although this charity gala is to raise funds for some children with incurable diseases in the United States, in essence, Trump is taking the opportunity to expand his network, prepare for the Republican party primary that will start in February next year, and canvass votes, so the people present are really from all walks of life. The influence of the sports world in the United States is very huge, and Trump will naturally not let go of this big vote base, but most of the local sports elites are black athletes, and they prefer the Democratic Party under the influence of Ao Guanhai, so Trump can only win over the ideas of those influential foreign athletes in the sports circle, except for only a small percentage of white people. Gines and Raul were not to be missed, and Moody's rookie agent pointed out several sports stars who attended the dinner, such as the white bigwigs of the New York Yankees baseball team and the New York Giants football team, but unfortunately neither sport was very popular in the Celestial Empire, and Muddy Lee didn't know anything about these familiar names to New Yorkers.
Trump led his family to appear before the official start of the dinner, and Li Mudi finally saw one of the goddesses of his dreams, Ivanka, and was so moved that he almost cried. As the hosts, Trump and Ivanka gave short but affectionate speeches respectively, which received warm applause from the guests. More than ten minutes later, the dinner officially entered the networking session, the buffet table and the waiters walking back and forth in the hall provided countless delicious food and champagne for everyone, and everyone was looking for people to chat with everywhere, expanding their social circle. Suffering from a phobia of strangers, he politely declined the invitation of Genes and Raul to talk to someone, and then entered a mode of being out of place with his surroundings, looked around roughly, and found that there was no one he knew, so he came to the table alone and began to eat.
The American buffet really didn't fit Li Mudi's appetite, and he couldn't get used to drinking champagne, so he had to take a small snack and orange juice to eat, and it was a pleasure to eat. At a time when everyone is seizing the time to communicate and exchange famous brands, there is such a strange thing here who has been eating, which makes people involuntarily pay attention. After stuffing two small doughnuts in one bite, someone suddenly patted Li Mudi's shoulder behind him, startling him, and when he turned around, he couldn't help but be happy, it turned out to be Beckham. Since David's retirement, the two of them have settled in the United States, and the family has appeared in major media magazines from time to time, and is considered one of the most well-known people in the world. When David was playing in Real Madrid, Li Mudi had just graduated from college in the Celestial Empire, and the two did not have a work intersection, but they still met a few times through the relationship between Raul and Qizu and they could be called friends. Victoria had just been talking to a group of fashionistas, and after a long time, David felt a little bored, so he left his wife and went to the table to take a break, and found this strange foodie.
Encounter old acquaintances in a foreign land! Li Muddy, who saw Beckham, was very excited, hugged each other hard, and finally opened the conversation, which made Beckham, who planned to come over and hide quietly, feel a pain in his head. Fortunately, Victoria followed after finishing the conversation, so that Li Mudi, who was not familiar with her, instantly shut up and rescued her husband, who was already dizzy.
Victoria is a cool woman, and she doesn't have much enthusiasm for strangers or people she doesn't like, but she still has a simple exchange with Li Mudi in front of her husband's face. After learning that she and Ivanka knew each other, Li Mudi was rarely bold and tactfully asked Victoria to help him introduce him. The result was very good, Li Mudi fulfilled the main wish of this trip to the United States, shook hands with the goddess and completed a group photo. The selfies of the two appeared on his Twitter and ins for the first time, and they were liked by many people, and they were relieved for a while and had nothing else to ask for.
An hour later, the charity auction, the highlight of the dinner, began, and naturally there was nothing to do with Li Mudi, who had a deflated wallet, so he still secretly ate at the table, and directly ate his stomach, and he leaked several times in the evening, which was considered to be happy and sad.
Coming out of the Four Seasons Hotel, Li Mudi's trip to the United States has come to an end, and tomorrow after a day in New York, he will be ready to fly back to Mallorca Island to accompany his parents to welcome the arrival of 2016.