New York Blackout 2003

    New York - signs

    New York - a concrete desert

    New York - Trees on a skyscraper? Why not :)

    New York - an oasis in the concrete desert

    New York is an amazing city full of skyscrapers, cars, shops and people. When you look down the street (or avenue) you can only see modern world but when you walk along the street you can suddenly meet a little garden. That place looks like from a different world, like an oasis in the concrete desert. There is also the biggest river I have ever seen. Everything looks similar to what you know but you can feel the difference because everything is immense.

    I spent one week in New York at an international summer camp for the exchange students. We stayed in a university campus and we were introduced to different American customs. We played typical American sports such as baseball or American football. We tried cheerleading. And we were given useful advice – what is normal in American culture but can be slightly different in other cultures such as wearing a T-shirt one day only, use a lot of deodorant, girl’s legs must be shaved under any circumstances and so on. Actually, I like that American teenage boys care about themselves; they wear nice clothes and smell good.

    The last day of my stay in New York was very unusual. There was a blackout which didn’t take only a few minutes. It took several long hours. At first it was quite OK. We didn’t care that we had to stay outside of buildings and we did sports as usual. Then we got ice-cream for free because the freezers in the canteen weren’t working for a long time. That was the best part of the blackout. After that some problems started to appear: we were cold, tired and we needed to pee. The last problem was the worst because we knew that in America it is illegal to take off your clothes in public. My friend and I were really afraid that we could be arrested for peeing outside. We sneaked to a lonely place and did what we needed to do but we felt like criminals. We thought that some of the American laws were really stupid.

    Our counsellors had to do the worst work after the blackout. They had to call to the New York airports and rebook the flights for about 100 exchange students because no plane took off during the blackout. Public transport in such a big city was totally crazy in that time. I had to make a phone call too. That was the first time when I spoke English on the phone. It was quite hard and I didn’t like it very much but I had to tell my host family the new time of my arrival. Phoning in foreign languages became easier for me after some practice but I still prefer a face to face communication.