Sunday, July 13, 2008

2 Trips to Chinatown, Talks in the park, sunsets, and the piano bar...


So I have had 2 experiences in Chinatown this week. We did a community Mapping Activity and split up into a few groups and went to various locations around Manhattan Island. I got the opportunity to learn about Chinatown and the lower east side where there has been a long history of immigration. The Irish were the first to settle in that area and then came the Italians and now it is the Chinese. But right now the government, big corporations and developers are coming in and taking back the land where there are low income housing and making it into million dollar properties (it is waterfront property). This causes the people in the area to become displaced and loose their homes the place they have come to to try to achieve the "American Dream" or come to have a better life. It makes me sick how we treat people that are coming to our country. I could go on a soup box about immigration and how we have completely missed the point on how to handle "foreigners". Maybe everyone needs to re-read Exodus. Besides all that it was a great experience to see different cultures and also I enjoyed worshiping at a UMC church there this morning. I am a little sick of chinese food though..

Talks in the park...well let me just say that is one of my favorite things about this training is the people and the wonderful conversations. The other night we took another trip down to the pier to watch the sunset and we also sat and talked for 2 hours about relationships and life. I love hearing other people's stories and learning from them. Today I had a blast going to the park with Meg. We went to just relax and read...turned out we talked the whole time but had some much needed conversation. It was a beautiful day and hundred's of people were enjoying the beauty. We enjoyed it under a tree in the shade laying down looking at the sky and feeling the breeze.

Tonight we are headed to a Piano Bar down on Christopher and I am pretty excited. We have been exhausted from so much going on but a bunch of us decided a nice adventure would be good for tonight. So there will definitely be a post about that in the near future.

Overall each day I want to sing, dance, shout, cry, yell, run, jump, hide, love, and dream. It's a lot of mixed emotions, but its wonderful.

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