December 8

Central Park. New York City.

I and seven others were with Bill, the tour guide, for a nippy stroll around the park. It was supposed to be a chilly day, and (as everyone can tell) there was a predictable briskness on our pace as we soaked the slowly disappearing warmth of the midday sun. Although there was rain in the forecast, the sky couldn't be clearer and bluer and the squirells were on their typical bold mendicant ways begging for food and scraps. Bill would later say that my spanish tourmates had charmed and brought the spanish sun on this winter day.

Central Park has a lot of charms that could captivate any first time strollers. There is something fascinating with its history and its present scenery that i will just drift with enjoyment and take them as it comes: the bare elm trees that stood beautifully stripped against the glaring skycrapers in the background, the small bridges in the pond where ducks glide on their V formation, the sight of a red-tailed hawk (one in my group innocently tell everyone it is a falcon) that made me wonder if it is the same bird of prey which has nested on top of a million dollar apartment and stirred a love story between the cooperative owners and the wild-animal loving citizen of New York and out of curiousity, i learned that the ducks do not migrate in the dead of winter but were netted and taken down to the zoo.

And the last wonder of my day, for the short hours of sunlight was almost up, we stopped at this small section of the park called Strawberry Fields and then Bill made a little speech: "I am supposed to do the Brooklyn tour but i told them to switch it to Central Park because today is the death anniversary of John Lennon". "The fallen Beatles", that's how he described and paid his respects to John, and as he led us to the "Imagine" memorial, we could hear people singing and before i knew it, i was singing "War is Over" in harmony as well.