Hey...as long as there is access to Fried Dough

Yesterday the alarm clock went off at 615 and Pierce, Shirah, Emily, and I tiptoed out of the bus to begin a 4th of July to remember. Little did we know, we wouldn't return to the bus for 21 hours.

After talking to people around the area, we decided to forgo the humongous line for the Neil Diamond concert and just secure a money spot for the fireworks over the water. We found a spot right by bathrooms, foodstands, and the water! We ended up buying shower curtains (to lay on), magazines, and junk food from CVS and camping out till fireworks. Although it was a long day, it was so fun to get to know the people around us and relax. We were surronded by such a wide variety of people from a young air force pilot and his family to a canadian family, to Janice and her Cosmo-reading husband.

Today everyone part of my body is tired and I have fallen asleep in several awkward places including a bench in Central park, but I will always remember our 4th of July in Boston. One of the people we talked to was Frank, a young guy that was sitting by himself reading. When we asked him our questions about what unites us he responded baseball. Pierce and I laughed thinking he was being sarcastic because he didn't strike me as the baseball type. But he was serious and said that as cliche as it might sound he had just been at a game and felt a common bond with all the people in the stands. As I snuggled in a blanket with Emma and Shirah later and sang along with thousands of people during the patriotic sing-a-long I thought about what Frank said. It would be easy to be cynical about some of the traditons of the 4th of July--the millions of dollars spent for a 20 minute show for example. But then I looked around me at the people I had spent the last 17 hours with and realized that we had formed a little temporary community--saving each others blankets, swapping stories, etc. And I took a deep breath and vowed to embrace the experience because feeling connected to people was something that I had missed and certainly a part of being an American citizen.
We had a good first day in New York full of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Central Park. More on that later but I HAVE to go to bed.