Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Trying Something New

Today officially marks our halfway point. I know I say this all the time but I still can't believe that a week and a half has passed by already! 

The morning was like any other morning and nothing changed, except for the weather. I brought my umbrella to class because I knew that it was going to rain by judging the clouds. I am no meteorologist, however, I figured that since we are in the East Coast and it supposedly rains a lot, I might as well bring an umbrella just in case. After breakfast, it turns out I was right and it did rain. 

Instead of going into the classrooms today, my group went to the theatre workshop (Theatre of the Oppressed) that the another group had gone to the previous days. We were greeted with name tags and had to write our names on it so that Dr. Lisa Jo Epstein and the teaching fellows would know. After everyone put down their bags, we had to gather around in a circle and introduce ourselves and also why we are taking Social Justice. It took a while to go around the circle but it was interesting to learn more about why other people are taking Social Justice. Dr. Jo had us snap and step forward if we found something in common with the person speaking. The next activity Dr. Jo had us do was we had to mingle around the room and make different movements with the people we were partnered up with. I don't like to dance or move around much in a continuous motion like wiggling my body so it was a weird activity for me to do. 

We were then told to gather in groups of five and had to answer questions Dr. Jo gave us on a sticky note. She said that by the end of this activity we would have a "garden" like wall. We were told to draw some of our ideas from personal experiences or things we have heard about. Using my experience and the things I notice from school, I wrote down some things that others did not think of.  We were told to stop and partner up with the person nearest to us; I partnered up with Emily. In this activity, we had to sculpt our partner from a word that Dr. Jo gave us. Emily had to sculpt me first and Dr. Jo instructed the sculptors to sculpt an action that had to do with fear. When it was my turn, I had to sculpt Emily into a somebody who looks like they don't care what people are saying or doing. It was interesting but very hard to stay in position. 

After coming back from lunch, we did a new activity and this time, it had a lot to do with theatre. We were given different categories to choose from and had to make a mini sculpture play. I chose education because that is something I feel strongly about. It didn't take long for my group to come up with a name (The Scholars) and also to sculpt each other. Everyone had to present the category they were part of and the audience had to analyze and interpret them. All of them were very interesting and it nice to hear how others interpreted each category's sculpture. I think this adds to the diversity of the class and it gave me a new way of looking at things. After the activity was done, we had to gather in groups and do a reflection on the class. 

Chiamaka, Jun, Elexis, Justeen, and I really wanted to go to the Art Museum today but we wanted to sign up for activities first for tomorrow and the Sunday so we missed the stand by and couldn't go. We mostly just hung out in Justeen's room before grabbing dinner. We ate at the food court by a CVS Pharmacy because we wanted to try it for so long. I bought Japanese ramen (not the instant ones) from a restaurant called Nom Nom Ramen. The food was disappointing for the price and it was too small. Since we went there about 30 minutes before closing time, the restaurant didn't give me a dine in bowl to eat from and instead gave me a plastic bowl with a container of soup. It felt like the workers really wanted to leave badly, so much that they didn't want to wash dishes anymore. I don't think this would happen in California but I cannot speak for all restaurants in California and can only speak from experience; no restaurant has never not offered me in dining dishes before their closing time. 
We went to Wawa to get ourselves desert and then went back to the dorms. Since there wasn't really much to do, we decided to watch people sing karaoke. It was very entertaining and great to see how much fun all the students and RC's were having. Everyone there sang "Happy Birthday" to one of the students who was there because it was her birthday. 

Elexis singing with Terez (L) and Tiphani (R)
Sarah, my RC, cutting cake for a floor mate's birthday
At 10:15 PM, I had to go to my RC/floor meeting. There we celebrated a floor mate's birthday and the RC bought cake for her. While eating the cake, the RC discussed what was going to happen this week and things we had to be pay attention to since we are going to the beach on Saturday. Personally, I'm not a fan of the beach or water so I might just walk around the boardwalk. We did talk about the possibility of it raining at the beach but don't know what is going to happen. 

Tomorrow will be another theatre workshop day and I'm looking forward to it. It's very different from the things we have done in the past week and on Friday, we will be going to the Eastern State Penitentiary. Lately, I have had lots of mosquito bites and it's really annoying but this is what happens in the East Coast. 

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