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Christmas Letter 2003/4

 

 

 

After 3 weeks in Canada we took the train to New York, where some old friends were still waiting for us, even though the train was over two hours late. From the first our impressions of the United States were not good. The frontier guards who got on the train to check our visas and passports were aggressive and very unfriendly, especially to non-white visitors. And they were all armed.

 

Here are some young people relaxing by a lake in Central Park
In New York we had to walk a lot, because the metro stations were unbearably hot. As a result we got very tired.

There was a lot of poverty in the midst of all the ostentatious wealth of the big city.

I spoke to a woman collecting metal cans from rubbish bins. She told me her problems – her mentally defective son caused trouble with the neighbours, so she was continually being evicted from the place they were staying in. Each metal can was worth 5 cents, so on a good day she could earn $20 to $25. I wondered how she could live on that. Life in New York is fairly expensive, even by British standards.

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