New York

Claire Cathro

I always get excited at Christmas but this Christmas 2006 was special. I wake up remembering I was in New York; my first move was to go to the window to see if it was a white Christmas in New York, but it wasn't snowing - it was just frosty with condensation on the window. I sat at the end of my mum and dads bed excited to open my presents, my mum was away to get everyone's presents. We all opened our presents with excitement and smiling away. I was still finding it hard to believe I was in New York over Christmas; it was just a weird atmosphere. We still had presents to open when we got back home, which made me more excited; it was like having two Christmas'.

Later on that morning about eleven-ish we got dressed and went down for breakfast, it was big breakfasts we got with toast and melted butter, hash browns all crispy battered. We finished out breakfast thinking what could we do for the day, because all the shops were closed -well most of them, we thought going to Central Park for the day would be good.

When we headed out of the hotel, it was so cold whenever I talked you could see my breath in the cold air. We had to walk up this hill, it wasn't that big to get you out of breath, when we got to the traffic lights in the corner there was a homeless old guy lying down on this mattress with blankets over him; we would always see him lying there when we were heading to Times Square. He had grey hair and he was coloured; he had a chair next to his bed with his suit jacket hanging. We got to Central park and had a good time - we headed home about six-ish' we would head home and had a Christmas night in. It was freezing heading home. When we got home we just had showers and got ready for bed and watched TV, I will never forget this feeling it was amazing.