I know this is a bit delayed, being well over a year since the last entry, but I had always intended to make a final post. We arrived in New York with mixed feelings. Partly caught up in the clamour and vibrancy of the place and partly in despair that it was the last stop. Only Joe had any real enthusiasm for going home but Joe gets excited about everything.

To add to the general depression of going home Andrew decided that having been itching for weeks the problem wasn't going away and he thought he had scabies. After waiting in a clinic for several hours the doctor he saw agreed. But having reached this conclusion from a safe distance on the other side of the consulting room how the hell did he know? He was also miserable enough not give Andrew sufficient cream to treat the whole family so I had to repeat the whole process the next day.

It was however at the William F, Ryan Community Health Center that I finally completed reading War and Peace. Someone asked me just recently if it was worth the effort and I would certainly say it was. My only criticism would be that there were too many battles in it. Seeing as out of the three words in the title one of them is war this maybe seems slightly unreasonable. As someone who also thought the film Gladiator was spoiled because it had too much fighting in it I should maybe just learn to take more notice of the titles.

New York wasn't just about nasty burrowing critters and finishing big books. We visited our fair share of museums Eddie's favourite being the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum, set on an old aircraft carrier. Everyone was also intrigued with the Guggenheim Museum both because of its amazing shape but also because of it's attempt to convince us that several thousand dead flies stuck on a large bit of board can be classified as art.

And of course no trip to New York would be complete without sailing by the statue of liberty to give her a cheery wave and an ear popping lift ride to the top of the Empire State Building. Here Joe managed to make the security guard very touchy by seeing how far he could lean over the edge.

So our few days in New York flew by and now we're so well back into our old routines at home that sometimes it feels like the whole trip was over in an instant. But sometimes I watch the boys dealing with a situation that I know they can take in their stride because of their travels and I wonder how many other situations will occur where that will also be the case. And I have read in their school work glimpses of the mayhem of Dehli or the exhilleration of reaching 'the furthest south we ever went'. And as if to mirror all the things we have already forgotten I'm sure there are also those memories that will always be with us.
- posted by Vivien @ 2:26 AM