America day 2

We woke up at the crack of 11pm, fed ourselves some bagels and some extremely sugary cereal, then proceeded to make our way to the gun range with Jacob.

First we made a quick stop at Walmart  to buy some ammunition. It turns out, you don't even need a licence to buy a gun or ammunition, all you need is an American passport. So Kaz bought about a hundred rounds of bullets for a 22 Cal rifle and a 16 AR. As we drove about 45 mins to the shooting range, we had some time to probe Jacob to find out more about his views on gun laws. Here's what we found: 1) you can apply for a licence to have a concealed weapon. This means exactly what you think; you can walk in public places with a gun hidden under your jacket. 2) You can drive out into the woods to go shooting if you don't want to go to a gun range. This is cheaper, but you run the risk of getting shot / shooting other hunters since (according to 19 y/o Jacob) there are no designated hunting areas or shooting directions. You just have to hope no one is in the way of your bullets. 3) This is my personal favorite: "The best thing about having a gun is that you feel invincible with it".

When we arrived at the gun range, we found out that firing the gun was no way as exciting as hearing other people firing guns. Every 10 seconds we heard deafening booms coming from shotgun fire and sniper rifle fire followed by hoots, cheers and simple one liners. The whole atmosphere of the place was drowned with male bravado - this was made especially obvious when we found out women don't have to pay the $10 visiting fee.

When we got back we had a bit of time to devour some left over pizza, ham and creamy potato salad from last night before heading off to the Kennedy space center. I won't go into detail, but it was a lot of fun. You got to see the actual space ships, launch pads and simulation training machines. Sadly they didn't go into a lot of detail about the Engineering behind the difficulties the Americans had, or the historical significance German rocket scientists played, but either way it a was a lot of fun.