The next morning, Ilona arrived—the same one I couldn't manage to meet in New York. She told me about her trip, her walks around New York, and how she also couldn't find me. We hit it off immediately, even though we were from different countries. In Ukraine, many people speak Russian. So, as I already wrote, I was supposed to start working on Friday, but... by mutual decision, we decided to wait for our employer and, in the meantime, get settled, find a grocery store, after all. Through the Internet, we found the location of a nearby grocery store, which was about a fifteen-minute walk away—that was nothing, or so it seemed to me. Before leaving to look for the store, Wyatt introduced us to a young man, Zhenya, who was already working at the hotel. He told us how things worked here, but we couldn't distract him from his work for long.
Fifteen minutes turned into twenty, but that wasn't a big deal. The main thing was that we reached some real food. The supermarket had everything one could wish for, but the prices for some products didn't please me at all. The cost of potatoes was clearly not the same as in Russia. I didn't want to pay two and a half dollars for just a kilogram. Bread was also terribly expensive, eggs, milk, meat, chicken... everything was very expensive, unusual for me as a Russian. Milk is a separate topic; it's terrible there, sorry for being honest! There are fewer problems with grains, but forget about buckwheat porridge right away! It simply doesn't exist there, but we got lucky; there was a small Polish shop nearby that sold buckwheat, Russian chocolates, even condensed milk, and Babkiny Semechki, but it wasn't a cheap pleasure, although we did end up buying the buckwheat.
On the second day, another surprise awaited us. Another girl, Nazym, was moved in with us. Our job offer didn't say we would be living three to a room, but you know, it all worked out for the best. We were lucky! Our personalities clicked, and we became roommates with pleasure! Sharing household expenses saved us money!
Two more days of freedom before work lay ahead. Zhenya introduced us to the buses. And I realized that I could have saved twenty dollars if I had understood that bus stops in America are marked with the same traffic signs as, say, a 'pedestrian crossing' in Russia.
A comfortable bus took us to the Atlantic Ocean in a little over an hour. And there it was—the very embankment and the beaches I had seen on the Internet. A wonderful place, few people. Warm water on my feet. I was as happy as if I were five years old. The girls and I ran along the beach and had fun with what we were seeing. That day, for the first time in my life, I saw the ocean—not a bad start to the summer, right?! Even though we were an hour and a half away from the ocean, that didn't stop us from returning to the coast the next day to have some fun and take photos as a keepsake.
