Mr David Ball

4th of July in America. We were woken up by a bass band, had hotdogs for lunch, spent $10,000 on fireworks and then went to the local bar. (Shots taken on my new 70-200mm @ F2.8.)

At camp we are told when our days off are. We get 3 days off every 3 weeks however there is no normally to it. Currently I’ve worked 19 days in a row and our next day off is the 6th of July then 12th of July then the 27th of July. Camp plans trips for us (New York City, Boston, Philly, etc) and we get to choose if we want to go on them.  On this particular day we were offer a trip to Ithaca (A small college town somewhere in upstate (3hrs north of NYC) new york) but we decided to head to the falls instead.

You lose all track of time at camp as we don’t have mobile phone reception, we have one tv in the staff lounge and we don’t get the news (American or International)  via any means. (*Even if we did get the American news they don’t report on anything outside the US) Days are just days. Everything is provided at camp (food, laundary, bunks) thus money now doesn’t play a major part in life. Obviously you need money for the bar but when drinks are $2 for beer and $4 for spirits (A pour of a spirit is half the glass, none of this measured crap) money doesn’t really matter. Its funny how the game changes.

“The Falls?”

We BBQ’ed, swam, drunk and had lots of fun.

My first couch surfing experience was in Brooklyn, NY with Arik with housemates Kate and Mike. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.

THE COUCH!

Mike, surrounded by his artwork. His natural habitat.

Me, Kate, Mike, Arik

New York City:

I spent 7 days in NYC and fell in love with it. Chaos. Total and utter choas. Driving. No one indicates, people pull up anywhere, people honk continuously, people jay walk and yet it is beautiful. NY people just deal with it. They don’t get angry when they get cut off in traffic, or blocked in, they just deal with it.

As previously posted America has free wireless everywhere so they don’t bother with internet cafes. I’m looking into a netbook but I’ll get there.

Couch surfing in Brooklyn has been the highlight so far. Arik, Kate, Mike, Mikki, Nora and Yael were just awesome. 4 Days with them:

• Walked around Harlem (The Bronx) @ 10:30pm with Arik and 2 girls
• Caught the subway home after midnight from the Bronx
• Had beers and porridge @ 1pm for breakfast
• Tried NY Pizza & Hotdogs
• Got woken up by a jackhammer about 9 feet from my head
• Made out with an Austrian.

I also saw the statue of liberty (photos) wall street, Donald trump (photos), ground zero, times sqaure (photos), phantom of the opera (broadway) and probably a million other things I’ve forgotten.

Camp:

For the past 7 days I’ve been driving from camp to Newick airport to pick up kids,nurses and paint. So I can seriously say I’ve driven for 24 hours on the wrong side of the road. Yesterday I was at the airport for 10 hours getting kids off of planes. They are all here now and in another 3 weeks we’ll do it all over again on change over day (the camp has 4 x 3week sessions. Some kids stay for 1 x 3 weeks, some 4 x 3 weeks.)

The councilors are awesome. About 40% of us here are Australian so I’m not left out. Scottish, English, Welsh, South African. The food is alright considering they are feeding 1000+ people 3 times a day. I will get fat though.

The camp computers are old school macs. You remember those macs we got new in grade 8 in mr finolios class? We have those. So email is hard enough, photo editing would be impossible. Thus the lack of photos atm. As I said, I’m looking into a laptop, but size and weight is an issue.

So obviously now that things have settled down I should get afternoons off. I haven’t taken any shots of the campus yet but its a typical campus; except for the gym. The gym is better than any fitness first you have been in.