The time I got a selfie with a cop.

---

Hi again,



My first time ever actually leaving the state that I could clearly remember (I went to my great grandma's 90th in Colorado when I was 5, hey I sort of remember it) was to the Midwest after my first summer up in Sequoia. I had never even been on a plane before.



The reason for this trip was to visit a friend I had met working over the summer. Although the trip was to visit in the Midwest, we decided to drive over to New York City to experience the 2010 New Year in the bitterly cold (yeah, yeah I'm from California what's it to ya). That was probably one of the most memorable New Years I've had because I got to see the historic Times Square ball drop with my own eyes and it was pretty fantastic I have to admit. It wasn't just seeing the ball drop, but the whole atmosphere of just being there, one in a crowd of about a million different people from the nearby Brooklyn all the way to Asia. It was an experience. I saw a man and a woman who were complete strangers to one another get into an intense elbow jabbing fight, I met an Irish-Canadian (?), and a badass guy from the Bronx. Bonus: I even got a selfie with an NYPD officer after the New Year's shenanigans! These were people and things you just don't see in the Central Valley of California, at least not normally. They may have been mostly American but in some ways they were completely foreign to me and I loved it. I loved the hectic yet all the more alluring chaos of New York.

I flew back home to California already a changed young woman. Yeah that sounds extremely corny, but just that simple flight halfway across the country let me know that I was capable of traveling and that I could even get to places by myself. It was a big deal to me and even to my family because we just weren't travelers, plus I am the youngest of five so that made it extra nerve wracking for my parents. I had always had the lust for travel, but never the tools (or income). The only other person in our immediate family who had the travel bug was my oldest sister who had already been to France and other parts of Europe by that stage.



Anyway, by the time I got back to Cali I was already planning my return trip to NYC for the spring.



Keep in mind people, I am by no means rich, even today (ha ha ha, just the thought makes me laugh) but I somehow managed to get around within the states on my minimum wage income. Yes, I lived with my parents at the beginning which of course made it a lot more possible, but they made me pay for everything else except rent. I did however take off my second semester of college. I just found a lack of motivation for college after high school. My first semester were probably some of the worst grades of my academic career. I got a little lost in the whole being an eighteen year old with new found freedoms and definitely screwed around that first year. I'll tell you that I don't regret a second of that though. I learned a lot about myself which definitely helped shaped the path to where I am now.



-Rhi

---