Friday, July 17, 2015

Prides of Everyone

This is the second Friday at UPenn and I cannot believe that we are leaving in a week. Time flies when you are learning and going on field trips with others with care for the same thing as you. Today we went to the streets of Germantown in North Philadelphia to explore street art. The multicolored graffiti art was impressive because it brings up a lot of questions like, "How can our trip to the Eastern State Penitentiary to explore the place as it became the first prison to have this system. The others are more caring about the time left to go to the movies and dinner so we could request it would not the exact time of departure, but looked at it like a pre-school summer camp.
The graffiti streets along North Philadelphia that we visited today was interested and reminded me of Oakland, California. The streets of the area as a whole to me to a whole new level. As we walked down the streets, we're introduced by amazing street art and its really amazing how some of them climb up that wall. We took a good two and a half hour walk around the most populous graffiti centered areas and we headed back for lunch. I did not have any change so I just decided to go get Houston Market and order a Spicy Chicken Teriyaki Bowl. Boy that was some good bowl that I could be having. After getting it, Joanne and I walked back to the Quad to meet them having a deep conversation about graffiti, black people, neighborhoods, etc. It's devastating to hear some of those issues but it's true and we need to acknowledge that.

At 1:00PM we headed to the Penitentiary and everyone's face was in shock when they saw the exterior of the building. For me personally, I have been to a prison in San Francisco before, Alcatraz, and yet it had a familiar and unfamiliar feeling. Sure they are situated in different states with different backgrounds; Alcatraz is a island and ESP is inside a city. This makes me feel agitated there are some stereotypical views on the jail cells. Some of the rooms are made so clean that one might feel as if it was an inn. State penitentiary could care less about the well beings of the prisoners. It just made me felt so sad that solitary confinement was used back in the olden days. After the walking tour, two guest speakers came and talked about their time in jail and why they got sentenced. This is also not new  to me as an ex-offender came to my high school and educated on us for anti-drug use, staying in school, utilize your life well, etc. These two speakers today really just reminded me of the presentation at my school a while back.

We came back at around 5:30PM and our Teaching Fellow, Carly, collected all of us in her group to talk a little bit about these two days. This mini discussion happened at a yogurt/gelato place. The gelato was delicious, especially with two flavors combining together in a cup. Shortly after the discussion, Joanne and I hurried back to the Quad to get our movie tickets to go see Trainwrecked. And surely, this was totally worth it. The movie could be described by using one word: crazy. It is a movie worth thrown into your bucket list. Tomorrow's trip to the Jersey shore would also be one inside my bucket list; let's hope the weather will let me check it off my list!
Tiramisu & Pistachios!

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