To be honest, I went there accidentally.

In our camp schedule, I saw 3 options to choose from for a certain weekend, or atleast I thought that they were 3 (but were only 2), and they were written exactly this way: ‘Ocean City, NJ or New York City’. I really wanted to go to New York City.

And I was pretty sure, they would take us to the Statue of Liberty on the trip to NYC, for obvious reasons. And I wanted to visit that. Why? Not for obvious reasons. I wanted to click a pic of the statue and keep it on my status. Also, I wanted to drink the lemonade served below the statue as my Dad had liked it when he tried that. My father’s and my lemonade favs are quite alike.

But, as my mind was super excited, I chose the Ocean City, NJ option. I didn’t even know about this goof up until the previous day of the trip, when the organisers announced the list. I felt dejected. I couldn’t even change my preference.

But the twist came a few minutes after the meeting, in the form of a WhatsApp message.
The people going to NYC were going to the following places:
– Chelsea Market
– Hudson Yards
– Bryant Park and Times Square
– Pier 17 and South street
And not Statue of Liberty.
I hate going to American markets from my 3 previous experiences until now. I also went to Hudson Yards and Times Square with Deepak Bhaiya (family friend) before the camp started.
So, I got relieved. I won’t be missing anything. I will also enjoy at the beach.

At the beach:
We built a strong sand wall to create a base kind of thing.

The tide was low when we started making it. We checked on Google and it showed that it will rise by 2 pm. Till then we would have even completed the wall. But the tide started rising a bit early. Roman (a resident advisor) wanted to bury me behind the wall and I also wanted to try something new. We started. I tried to keep my head in the air to avoid sand getting into it. Within a few minutes, a wave came up and also crossed the wall. I was stuck in the sand. My hair was full of sand particles sticking tightly together due to the water. I panicked and came out. I wasn’t fully packed, so it was easy.

However, we couldn’t get a nicer photo, so they buried me again at a place which was quite far from the wall. This time, I got my hair dirty, as the damage was already done.

After the photo session. I got a clip of myself trying to jump out of my burial place. It was way tougher than I thought it would be. I hadn’t realized that I would be having such a large amount of sand in my body.

Cloth blunder: I wrapped the clothes which had sand on them in a plastic cover and took it to my room. Then, I took it to the laundry and directly put them in the machine, without taking the sand off them. This caused the sand particles to attach to other clothes as well. I big shake with a force was enough for the sand particles to go away. However, the sand from the dresses which were initially sand filled, was not gone.
Even today, on 26th July 2024 (more than 1 month after the beach-visit), I have a pant which has sand particles from the Ocean City in New Jersey in its pockets…