cross roads

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I've reached the first major cross road in my almost to be three week stay in nyc. I've been working at the waffle local in midtown for about five days now, all's been going fine so far- I sleep in the shelter, get bitten by ants and have to smell and hear the other 50 roommates, untill last night.
Yesterday I was working with mick at the waffle place and because a couple of employees had called off i had to stay with him as long as possible until a replacement showed up. My schedule was set to end at eight pm and the shelter has a curfew at 10pm, otherwise they take your bed and give it to another man. Well, the replacement got to work at 9:15pm and I took the subway as far as I could and ran 30 minutes almost non stop to the shelter (I wish i hadn't lost my athletic condition by eating so much junk food since I got here!) I had gotten 15 minutes late. They boarded me on a bus along with four other late bastards and transferred us to another place for the night. It was around two in the morning when we got to a hotel very near JFK airport in queens. It appeared like the hotel was operating a shelter program and I was being allocated in a two-bed room shared with some other man. A hotel room... I woke up today in the morning around eight and spoke with the social workers. Now, since the hotel has only about eight homeless men instead of 400, they work 10 times better with the men, and the treatment and attention given is definitely better. The social workers gave me a two month deadline to save up and find an apartment or room i could rent while I stayed with them, whom were going to assist me in finding a place. Now, the problem is that I'm an hour and 10 minutes into queens away from Manhattan, where I am working and have my new friends. The old shelter I was staying at is in Manhattan and the train and my bike make the whole island quickly accessible for me. I went this morning to the older shelter to collect my clothes, they asked what happened and gave me another bed that i can claim later tonight... I'm still here in the shelter trying to figure the best option. I've been in this shelter almost two weeks and they've barely had time to attend to my case, I have no certainty of my stay in here but it's in Manhattan where I've familliarized myself. What to do....

Tomorrow will be three weeks since I left Houston, might aswell close these three weeks with some more uncertainty to make this whole adventure even more exciting.

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