First day in New York

I arrived in New York yesterday, at 7:00 am. The bus ride was overnight and hellish. When we got in at the border an insane patrol officer told us all to shut the fuck up and sit down and if we just did as he said we could all get the hell out of there faster and lady sit the hell down are you deaf? Etc.

This was repeated in a more mild fashion when in the town of Plat-themiddleofnowhere-mouth , a concrete wasteland community, we took on some new passengers and a new border patrol officer. He started grilling the new people. One poor sap didn't have any papers. This led to 30 minutes of the border patrol guy radioing dispatch to have different records and databases scanned for this guy's history, in front of everyone.

"Have you ever been arrested, sir?"
"No."

15 minutes later, after the NCSX2D1R scan is completed by dispatch,

"Hoho, Looks like you've got multiple arrests in Baltimore!"
"But I thought you were asking if I was arrested in Platmouth!"

Eventually we got into Manhattan, cabbed into Brooklyn, slept, then wandered the streets looking for cool bars and stores. Nice neighbourhood Madeline's aunt and uncle live in! Got all these storybook Cosby show stone steps leading up to old two-storey apartment buildings. Very quaint.

Next day saw an interesting crazy guy outside a bookstore. Kept shouting for some, as far as I could tell, fictional black person to step outside. He litterally GROWLED. Never seen any person I could accurately describe as "feral" before!

Funny event:

Met a hardcore Jew in the metr... I mean SUBWAY (gotta stop doing that), of which there are uncountable numbers here. He asked Madeline and me what sounded like, "Are you rich?"

Madeline shook her head and pointed at me. But wait, I'm not rich! What's this guy on about?! goes Andrew's highly intelligent thought process. I say "No!" The Jewish guy walks off, looking sad, whilst I feel more or less proud of myself for narrowly escaping some kind of strange Jewish timeshare scam.

Madeline spent the next five minutes looking at me strangely. Oy Vey!