Of course, it wasn't all as bad as it might seem after hearing about the work – we didn't forget to have fun either.

A vivid first impression. My first work evening at the restaurant: live music, guests laughing and singing along with the performers, rays of the setting sun piercing through the hall. Misha is sitting on the terrace by the water, right outside the restaurant window – today was his first day at the laundry (yes, he managed to work in quite a few places). I get off early, and we head out – for some reason not home, but to the ocean. “We have to hurry, or the carriage will turn into a pumpkin”... It turns out that on his first day of work (!), he was left two full-day tickets to ALL the rides at Morey's Piers as a tip. One such ticket costs $80... Just a day before, I had seen the prices and thought I’d hardly dare to spend that much on entertainment – and who would have thought..!

It was pure delight. Absolute happiness. We rushed from one roller coaster to another with all our might, since we had about an hour and a half at our disposal. I had never experienced the feeling of a loop-the-loop before, but you can't describe it in words – if there's one thing they know how to do in the USA, it's amusement rides. Fear, delight, falling, soaring...

Night city from the height of a roller coaster

Another scene – the restaurant again. Night, no customers left. We sneak into the kitchen, Misha makes delicious ice cream with chocolate syrup, and the three of us devour it at the bar counter. By the way, every shift we are entitled to a free cocktail :D

Report from the scene

Next frame: morning, it rained all night. Our house is in a lowland, so now the ocean starts right at the porch... Despite this, work was not canceled that day – the hotel management came to pick us up by car and even drove us back later.

Almost every rain ended with such a view from the porch

For Yulia's birthday, we made a crepe cake: we fried crepes for a long time and persistently (we ate half of them, of course), greased the layers with yogurt, and laid out fruit. We played board games all night and planned a big trip for the end of the summer...

Yulia making a cake

One day we firmly decided that we had to watch the sunrise at the ocean. Five in the morning, cold and sleepy, but the view was simply stunning.

To work in a couple of hours – but what does it matter?

We went to the ocean in the mornings, between jobs, and at night. The best thing is to climb the lifeguard tower. They stand every 200 meters and become empty at five in the evening. A couple of times we came there with food and enjoyed the evening breeze.

Evening on the ocean shore

My favorite place in the city became an old lighthouse at the very edge of the island. Inside there is now a museum, and a blooming garden is laid out around it. In general, there was very little greenery in our Wildwood, contrary to the name – perhaps that is why this place was so memorable to me.

Somewhere in the garden we even met a hummingbird. Well, or someone very similar

But the trip to Cape May showed how different neighboring cities can be. That day I strained my back and could barely walk, but that didn't stop me from pedaling a bicycle. The city turned out to be completely unlike ours – “gingerbread” houses, lots of greenery, a pedestrian street with fountains in the very center... A fairy tale, nothing less.

Main street in Cape May

I also finally tried the first burger in my life. No, I'm not joking – I had never eaten anything in the shape of a burger before, anywhere, ever. And yes, you guessed it – this specimen was prepared in the kitchen by Misha :)

Patty in such burgers is three times thicker than in McDonald's

Sometimes we had to fight for our rights. Our tips at the restaurant were calculated as 8% of the total income for the evening and divided equally among all the bussers. But it wasn't the managers who paid us this money, but the waiters, from “their” tips. For example, if a waiter received $200 in tips for the evening and served $1000 worth of tables, he had to give us $80 out of his two hundred. Of course, almost all of them gave less – and it never occurred to the manager to recalculate!

We found out about this by accident. One waitress was bragging about how much she earned the previous evening and how much she gave to the bussers. We weren't afraid to raise a scandal – we told the manager everything and asked to keep an eye on the waiters. A couple of days later, she gathered them all and gave them a dressing down, and then sent us home so the waiters would clean their own tables: “Let them feel that your work means a lot.” It's sad that this story surfaced only at the end of the summer – the tips have almost doubled since then...

It's hard to list all the bright moments of this summer. We lived like a big, friendly family, learned to combine everyday life and manage a budget, walked, talked, met people, missed home, supported each other, made plans for the end of the summer... We learned to solve all problems on our own. We looked at an unfamiliar world from an unusual angle, and it was really cool.

My advice to you: don't get hung up on work. Always look for opportunities to get out somewhere and meet new people.