Pizzas and deep fried oreos

Hi

We've been here a week now and it's still beautiful. I'm getting a bit more to grips with the everyday things like washing and shopping etc - Sam's potty training still isn't massively successful, so I've spent a lot of time at the launderette. I still get quite confused with the shopping because everything costs so much more than I think it does because tax isn't included. Americans must be good at calculating percentages in their head. Also everything is full of sugar. Sam is starting pre school on tuesday for the 6 months. So that will be intersting.

Last week we didn't do much outside our area. We just spent the week going to the local parks, playing by the river, visiting preschools and just trying to work things out. I've just been ogling at how beautiful it all is. We've done a bit more exploring this weekend. Yesterday we went to central park with Tom's ex colleague Lucia. It's a park and a half indeed. Sam was really happy climbing up the rocks, collecting sticks and racing the horses. Max smiled and clapped at everyone. We had great pizza. Afterwards, we went to Times Square which was a sensory overload - noisy, bright comletely mad and not massively pleasant. It reminded me of Blade Runner. I was expecting to see flying police cars. There was some kind of incredibly noisy motorbike meeting there which didn't help. Sam said he liked all the televisions but the whole place was a bit silly. Max, meanwhile managed somehow to nod off.

Today we went to Little Italy for the festa di San Gennaro. This was also completely crazy but amazing. There were loads of stalls selling gelato, home made pasta, beautiful pastries and all manner of the lovely Italian food that you would expect. Right next to them there were stalls selling deep fried orios. There was a very wierd section where they were charging 50c to go and see a woman with the body of a snake and a further $1 to see an elephant woman. We went to Lombardi's which is America's first pizzaria and had more great pizza. If we carry on like this, we'll waddle back to the uk twice the size we left.

All the bits of new york I've seen have been so different to each other and intriguing and exciting. I just can't wait to get to know more of it.

I'm off now as Tom is trying to educate me in the intricacies of American football. Tom has fixed the voip phone, so you can ring us on our old home phone number (not before 1pm uk time please - 8am here). You just ring it and it is the same price as if you rang us in streatham.

Take care.

Love Lyn