June 30th. Finally, I can sit down and write about the events of the past week. We moved to a new place again, and the living conditions here are a bit worse: at first, the lack of Wi-Fi was a bummer. However, the internet finally appeared today. The last 4 days were a break, or rather, you can't really call it a full break, we were constantly doing small things.

As it turns out, our job has many pros and cons.

Pros:

1. Working in the fresh air; we spend 90 percent of our time outdoors, which means healthy sleep and a good appetite.
2. We have housing.
3. We have a job, and that's really cool, because right now jobs in the USA are hard to come by, and many people simply can't find one.
4. We are traveling.

All the cons stem from the pros:

1. Since all the fairs are not in the cities themselves, we can't really explore, we have to ask for rides if we need to go to stores or malls, and we haven't had any fairs in big cities yet.
2. The living conditions are definitely not urban; very squeamish people wouldn't be able to live here, but we're fine with it. The only thing that's annoying is that when we arrived, there were only spots in two rooms, one male and one female, so Yulia and I were put in different rooms.
3. We have to entertain ourselves, we drink a little. I live with a cool rocker, it's never boring with him. By the way, one evening I was sitting with my rocker neighbor drinking beer, and I started saying to him: "Ell, you love country, you love rock-n-roll, but do you know a music style called Rockabilly? It's like a mix of those styles." He said he didn't know it and asked for an example of a band. I told him "Stray Cats," he swore, said it was one of his favorite bands, that he listened to them in his youth, and asked me to burn him a CD with their albums. So, he's a really cool guy.

Time flies here very fast, the rhythm of life is very different from ours. America changes you, and it changes everyone. I judge by myself, it's cool that changes are coming into life.

The next couple of weeks promise to be tough, there will be a lot of work. At the end of the month, we planned a trip to Chicago, we want to hang out there for a couple of days and meet up with our old friend. Then there will be a few hellish weeks in Indianapolis, that's where the hardest work will be, BUT... the Americans said that this city has some of the coolest music stores!! I can't wait to get my hands on some guitars.

Almost forgot, the day before yesterday, Yulia and I were detained by cops.

It went like this:

We were walking slowly through a clothing store, and it's so big you can get lost. I walk slowly, then I go to the checkout, meet Yulia, we pay for our purchases, leave the store, and I see... a police car driving slowly, I would even say rolling. I thought, "Is it for us?" =) And it really was! A cop gets out and says in a strict voice in English, "Get in the car." We replied, "Ok, ok, no problem." We got in, I managed to look around a bit: leather seats, a grate in front of us, a bit cramped, a computer and camera in the front seat. The cop opens the door and says that the store manager called them because we stole something, and that he has the right to detain us for some time. We waited calmly, because we knew we hadn't stolen anything. They searched us, Yulia's backpack, then told me to get out and put my hands on the car—basically, they searched me like a bad black gangster. Then they said everything was okay, we could go, because they had nothing on us. The cops were actually pretty normal, but the managers who came out of the store didn't even apologize. When we were leaving, the cop said something approving about the print on my hoodie (I was wearing a Strike Anywhere hoodie, it had something about the police written on the front). And so we left safely.

Later, the Americans said that this happens to them sometimes.

Conclusions were drawn:

1. Always carry your ID (at that time we didn't take them with us).
2. Don't be shy about your English. America is the kind of country where if you aren't understood, it's not your problem, it's theirs. So we should have boldly expressed our complaints to the managers.