Schenectady, New York

Although we had left our family after the couple of days that we were there we were excited to finally get to the New England states, mostly because of how much history there was. Our very first experience with the New England, however, was actually a little bit scary. The first place we wanted to go was to see the house that our mother lived in when she was born, which would be a nice experience for many of us. The neighborhood, however, had turned 180 degrees from when she was there last, all those years ago. It was only a 20 minute drive to get there, but we first saw signs of a ghetto when we first entered the town. Barbed wire was coated over the whole fences in between buildings. The only cars that were there, besides the police cars that were positioned at *literally* every corner, were all rusty and banged up. Boards were halfheartedly nailed into windows and dozens of people were sitting down on the sides of the streets.

When we first entered the town we were a little bit scared of what would continue, as it seemed to get worse as we drove further. Obviously, we had stumbled into the wrong part of america. We started to get anxious as people started to stare or glare at us passing through… when we finally got to the house, however, our mother jumped right out of the car and ran to get a good picture. A woman in her 30’s walked up to her and asked “Are your kiddies asleep?” When our mother didn’t respond and clicked two pictures of the broken down house (which did not before look like that) and made her way to the car as fast as she could. As she was slamming the door and telling our dad to drive, she said “that’s a mighty fine camper, isn’t it?” And we were off. Our mom said “Lets get out of here before someone pops our tires with a knife…” My little brother and I started laughing until we realized that she was serious. “Ray, go past the red light” she said, grabbing on tightly to the handle of the car. “hurry!”

After driving a couple of blocks past angry eyes and barricaded buildings we were finally our of the danger zone. This is but one of our great adventures so far!