Long Island, New York, USA

its 9-11 today. oooh. wonder if anything bad's gonna happen. still, its a wonderfull saturday and we've got the morning free.

so guess what? joe and i are actually working right now. we're working in this little town in long islang called smithtown at the local shopping mall(its still huge) at the haagen daz outlet! thats right! we're both haagen daz crew! haha. its been fun, yesterday was our first day of work, pays $6.75/hr and we've told them we are available anytime they need us. its been pretty interesting, yesterday we were made to try all the different flavours available and then learned to make every single thingy on the menu from shakes and dazzlers to sundaes and scoops. we've got an okie supervisoer, susan and some nice high school kids who teach us the ropes pretty well, especially alex. hopefully the next few days won't be too xiong for us. still the money's good.

anyway we're also staying with joe's friends sergei, stacy and christina right now. there's also christina's boyfriend, also a sergei. they're pretty nice(except for the boyfriend) and we all share this tiny little apartment-attachment-like thingy. its good enough for us not having to sleep in the car(for me at least) and they're pretty well equipped so we're living comfortably.

so after montreal we travelled to quebec city. its a pretty beautiful old city with old forts and all and joe and i spent alot of time walking through most of the upper forts of the city which has been commercialised.

mt katahdin

next came what will probably be the highlight of our trip. we climbed mount katahdin!!!! set in baxter state park in maine its >5000ft high(doesn't sound that high but its the 27th highest mountain in the usa) and of course, the starting point ofhte appalachian trail. we drove to the park and then in the wee hours of the morning waited outside the gate till it opened. the hike took us 8hrs total. it was bloody xiong and i chose to take the toughest route on a rainy day which took us through the infamous and notorious 'knife edge' its a mile-long trail of huge jagged rocks only about 5ft wide of which falling over either side would result in painful bone-crunching death. i definitely underestimated it from what i read in magazines but the knife edge was absolutely hardcore. joe and i could've died man. haha. and we were one our fours most of the way and usually had to do alot of rock-climbing stunts. it was crazy, but nonetheless worth it. from the top you could see across 5 different states around new england and that was really something. still joe and i agreed that no words will ever trully express the dangers and excitement we went through during our climb to the top. i took alot of pictures along the way and those perilous pix might help offer a glimpse of what we went through. its pretty funny on hindsight that while we were dangling and dicing with death we could still afford a smile at the camera. typical asians.

afterthat everything paled in comparison. i thought the niagara falls were awesome, but katahdin kicked mega ass. so thats currently our #1 thing-we-did-in-our-travels.

then we drove down to portland and then boston. but since we only drove by we will probably head back again for another visit. boston does look like its got alot to offer.

among the highlights of our trip also included me getting pulled over by a police car TWICE within an hour. the first time was for speeding at 49mph in a 25mph(who drives that slow?!) little town and the second time was a routine check because the officer suspected we were drunk or something in the middle of the night. BUT both times the officers were really nice and instead of giving me a fine they gave us directions to baxter state park. must be my politeness.

we've been meeting alot of different nice people along our travels and the current lot we're staying with are no exception. well hopefully we'll still meet more to come. meanwhile thats all the update.