On my travels...: To the hospital

Time: 5:56pm in NY America

Temperature: 29F
Location: Reva Rollerdrome
Emotion: Frustrated

Before I get into detail about this blog, I'm going to make a quick disclaimer: if you see any typos or if this blog appears a little short, it isn't done intentionally. You'll find out the reason a bit later in the blog.

So where to begin? I guess the best place to start is the serious part and get progressively more jokey as I start to procrastinate. You know things are bad when you are procrastinate from something you enjoy doing! Last weekend was fairly uneventful; netflix was my best friend and it was nice just to hang out with the Ferros.

City Law Courts

Work Experience at the drug courtOn Monday I had the great pleasure of meeting Tim Donovan who works at the local drug courts. Not only did he allow me to follow him around, introduce me to his colleagues and explain everything to me, he even took me out for Breakfast and Lunch. The breakfast was particularly appreciated because a certain Ferro (not mentioning any names) finished all the milk and failed to tell anyone so I had the traumatic experience of no cereal.

The drug court itself was nothing like I expected. I went in expecting a sombre, almost depressing, atmosphere and a lot of men and women from the same backgrounds suffering addictions. I could not have been more wrong. Firstly, the men and women were widely ranging in background and many I would never have guessed had addictions. I guess it just goes to show that it is pointless to stereotype addictions. It was actually really uplifting to see young men and women who had extreme addictions to alcohol and drugs begin the lengthy and difficult path to recovery. Inspiring stuff.

One of the few photos of me skating before I fell...

Rollerskating
I mentioned last week that the Ferros own a rollerskating rink called Reva Rollerdrome and this has given me the opportunity to go skating almost every day. I absolutely love it and I'm definitely going to buy some skates when I get back to England. In the space of a week I learnt to skate backwards, to spin around, do a spread eagle (both heels together, toes pointing outwards in a straight line) and an arabesque (skating on one leg, the other leg high behind). So I was getting quite far until disaster struck.

The disgusting wrist

Over the week and a half I've been skating, I fell over every five minutes and had no real injury aside from black bruises. So far, so good. Then, yesterday evening, I was skating completely normally and managed to fall over backwards. I wasn't doing any tricks, no special skating; just skating forwards. I managed to break my left wrist. And it wasn't pretty. I'd like to think I'm pretty manly when it comes to pain and I managed to last the first 10 minutes tear free. And then I saw that an apple sized lump was growing out of my wrist. So I now get to spend the next 5-8 weeks with a cast and only one hand!

Breakfast with the Ferros
I had the great pleasure of going out for breakfast with the Ferro family this week and experiencing an American breakfast. The majority of the food was extremely unhealthy - sorry, did I say unhealthy? I meant delicious!! There was only one extremely stressful part of the morning. The tea was sub-par, and even that description is optimistic.
Problems with the tea:

First off, it was delivered to me in a massive glass container. Everyone knows that tea must be drunk from either a tea cup or a mug. Anything short of that is sacriligious.
The water was lukewarm at best. Tea must be made from boiling water. Nothing less.
Only one teabag + a lot of water = albino tea
No milk. Only packet cream. This was the final straw for me. To give me "tea" and not provide milk is quite frankly disgusting.

I can only hope that the few British citizens who live in the US full-time have the resources for the exorbitant fees that Tea counselling must require.

Okay, I admit that I may be overexaggerating the severity of the situation. Tea and its consumption is a controversial issue. I must point out that the rest of the food was fantastic! I just know not to order tea next time.

So, my hand is starting to hurt from all this typing so what I'll probably do is have a picture montage below for anyone interested.