Monday 10th June

Free day today so we had brunch at IHOP- International house of pancakes! If the Americans have only gotten one thing right over the span of human history it is that pancakes and bacon are a bloody good combination! Some people have gone into the city to shop but there is only a certain amount of shopping I can stand in one trip.. instead Darren and I decided we would see if we could make our way to Salem. Not the witch hunt Salem as that is in Massachusetts but Salem, Westchester County- supposed home of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters! Unfortunately it would have taken 2 buses and a train so we may try and bribe Davis into driving us another day :)

Not really a lot else to say about today, except that we are going for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory :) I am hoping to see Penny, if not I am still going to ask the waitress who gets the other half of my 'soup and a half sandwich'.

I forgot to write about something quite important in yesterday's blog. On our way back through Chinatown we passed an open Firehouse and stopped to take pictures with the fire trucks with their gold dragons on the front. Shortly after a man called Ben came and started talking to us, answering all our questions and taking pictures with us. He then started telling us some of the stories from that particular fire house's experience of 9/11. Ben was grateful that 8 of their men/women who went into the building nearest to them came out again, only because a woman had started to freak out on/under a stairwell and they had agreed to stay with her to calm her down. When the building collapsed that stairwell was one of the only places that remained in tact and so they were all saved. But not all of their colleagues were as lucky. Ben was training two very new recruits that day and because of that one of his friends who he had known and worked with since kindergarten had ran ahead to get into the building whilst he was still trying to talk the new guys into it. He finally managed to do so but when they were on their way towards the building it collapsed, killing nearly everyone that was still inside.

For people of my generation 9/11 is probably one of the first major world events that we remember, we have grown up in the aftermath of it and have heard countless stories about the devastation it caused. But hearing it first hand when we were not expecting it made it feel so much more real to me and showed how after all these years it is still affecting lives here, it is still very much at the forefront of people's minds. I don't think that in other parts of the world we have forgotten about it but neither do we remember it as people do here. Meeting Ben was an incredibly humbling experience and I imagine that Thursday 20th when we go to the Ground Zero memorial will be emotionally draining but I think we owe it to the people who lost their lives to remember them, even for a day, as the New Yorkers do every single day.