We finish our tour with an ice cream a really kind gesture offered to those who experience the Stanley Theatre.

The best roast Turkey, Cranberry sauce, corn bread stuffing, corn on the cob and the freshest of vegetables, followed by mocha ice cream.

We were able to arrange a special tour of the audio visual department. It is housed in a separate building and we go by car. It was fascinating, truly state of the art with huge sound stages.

Kind Tom and Tina have invited us for ‘supper’ (dinner) as well and then after getting changed they take us for a drive all over Patterson. Our tour guide this morning, explained that the package of land was bigger than needed but the price was right and so of course more land is better than not enough. The family has room to spread out with fields for playing sport. Tom and Tina take us for dessert at a local restaurant and then to their room.

Our dear brother Les has invited us for lunch and meets us in the lobby. Its so nice to reacquaint ourselves with this wonderful young brother from the dining room staff, who has been in Walkill for 5 years. He takes us to a table marked ‘guests’ and he has invited others from his congregation to join us.  Lunch was Korean b-b-q, a favourite with all the young ones (there are many) and it was delicious.  With so many nationalities in Bethel they try to cater for all tastes. We had a long tour in the afternoon, from 1-4.  The grounds of Walkill are magnificent and with central lake and bridge. Les finishes his shift in the kitchen at 4.10 and he offers us a rare privilege, a walk through the “Launching Pad”, the burial site of many faithful bethelites, Brother Knorr, Franz, Lloyd Barry and many others. You need a key to enter boom gates so without Les it would not have been possible.

We then drive to Patterson where we have booked into the Patterson Inn, a beautiful hotel run by the brothers and within the grounds of Bethel, for two nights.

Shadi says that Bethel always take Gilead graduates on a tour of the United Nations –not something we’d ever thought of doing – but if its good enough for the graduates its good enough for us! Quite a performance to get there, however, sure was interesting. We saw the General Assembly and other rooms such as the Economic and Social Council, they decide such things as all traffic lights are red, green and yellow in the world and red always means stop, green go. China apparently wanted to go against this at one time because of the significance they put on ‘red’, but they soon saw the ‘light’! The concept of expiry dates on food was also decided by the economic council.

Mark worked really hard on finding a Kingdom Hall we could attend today and after many phone calls the hall on 20th St is the place to be at 1.30pm. So after having this penciled in we walk to Central Park and sat and watched a bit of baseball being played and did our Watchtower and some Bible reading. Really very pleasant surroundings, loads of trees with squirrels playing and people really relaxed enjoying this wonderful park that New Yorkers are truly thankful to have covering the length of 40 city blocks right in the middle of there city.

After a subway trip and much walking we arrive at the Kingdom Hall to find a group of brothers standing chatting from the Spanish congregation that meets there. No English meeting today, its their District Convention! It was so nice to meet these brothers though. One was a traveling overseer who has just changed from this Manhattan Spanish circuit to one in New Jersey. The circuits overseers wife’s sister and her husband are visiting them from Patterson Bethel and they invite us to be their guests at Patterson on Wednesday when we are there, so nice! So after talking for a while we walk down to the Chelsea Piers, an interesting place with a lot of history. All the big cruise liners docked here in the hey day of the cruise liners. The Titanic was expected here but of course never made it, the survivors were brought there though. Nice cup of coffee in a true New York Bakery, huge and buzzing with New Yorkers going about their favorite past time, socializing!

Mark and Justin visit the worlds largest photographic store, of course! Massive place, I on the other hand read the New York times at Starbucks, very civilized I think! I’m served by a friendly black man whose sales approach was “speak to me” when taking my order!

We walk down Wall St past the NY Stock Exchange to the Federal Building. This building is impressive with a larger than life statue of George Washington as this is where he was sworn in as president. Another, more interesting site was the Faunces Tavern, just down the road where George Washington actually drank. It has been a tavern since 1762 and it was great to sit and have a beer on tap there.

We caught the ferry to Staten Island as its free and goes right past the Statue of Liberty. Its a really warm 30C today. A walk back along the South Port towards the Brooklyn bridge gives us a clear view of the Watchtower buildings across the water. We remembered where to buy discount broadway tickets down near the port there and we managed to get Phantom of the Opera tickets for tonight, greatly reduced due to the last minute.

We managed to walk back to Century 21 for another pair of sunglasses, not as smart as the first pair but still. Mark says that the ‘Guess” name is appropriate since its anyones ‘guess’ where the first pair are!! Well Phantom was wonderful! Time square as sight to behold, sure must burn some greenhouse gases there! But sure worth a look.

To the tune of 747 jet engines the plane left the Sydney runway, it was a great feeling to finally be on the way to New York. I knew I was in trouble when my knees touched hard up against the back of the seat in front, and it hadn’t even been laid back in to recline.

This was going to be arduous and uncomfortable… the time was passed with a movie marathon, I lost count after ten movies.

We were met at the JFK airport by a delightful sister, she is in the Spanish speaking congregation and lives and hour drive SW out of the city of NY. She drove us all the way from JFK to down town Manhattan NYC, what a champion.

This journal entry should probable start on the next day since its been 24 hours since we started, but we lost a day coming to NYC. By this time it had been 27 hours since we left the front door of my apartment in Sydney.

In a zombie like state I tried to perk up a bit and show a little interest in my surroundings, after all this is NEW YORK… New York I kept telling my self.

The sister seem really comfortable navigation the streets, mind you the numbering system in NYC is really easy. We park the car and walked two city blocks to our address. We had to return the favour our New Yorker friend, so we hit the local up town Sushi bar for some real food… beats airplane spam any day. After walking the sister back to her car we had only one thing on our minds… SLEEP.