Exploring Brooklyn

We arrived at our Brooklyn apartment at 2am. A view over the Brooklyn skyline sure felt different after having been in Renmark only 48 hours earlier. It’s a change, a really big one, one that we couldn’t be more excited about. Exhausted on arrival, we needed food, so we went for a walk downtown to a 7 Eleven to get some supplies. Within the 5 minute walk to the convenience store I had a pretty big culture shock, one that I was very surprised about. I woke up immediately and could feel the bigness and the energy of the city already. I wasn’t sure what to do with that feeling but my body apparently did: my eyes widened and I smiled, my left foot stepped first, followed by my right. This was amazing. Inside, we told the store attendant what we needed. Hearing the accent, the fast paced nature of the service, the different branded food, the people outside at that hour of night: this was New York City. We were back in bed at 3am with a 4:45 am alarm set to get up and start exploring the city. I'd never been so excited to only have a couple hours sleep. We were back on the streets of Brooklyn before we knew it, it was still dark out, the distant sound of cars rushing through the streets and a new smell around each corner. It was peaceful, exciting; we just loved it. We walked as a few cars driving the streets turned into traffic, as people wandering the streets turned into people hustling to get to work. We wandered down each street with an anticipation of what was coming next, a new conversational topic around each corner, in each store, in every home, we stopped and took in the lights that were still up for Christmas, the traffic lights that looked so different from back home. We were startled each time crossing a road when the traffic lights didn't mean anything to garbage trucks.