Summer times...

Its not really summer....in fact its far from that...the weather is getting colder and more schizo...today its on prozac so its happy and bright...im quite certain it'll get depressed again tom.

It has been one crazy week so I haven been quite on the ball with updating my blog. In fact I haven been quite on the ball with much....so from my little diary i say:

Last Sat - Potter's House mission at Lea Elementary School.
My first time in an American public school. Kids there were like under 17 but they were the most talented ppl I've ever met. We thought them performing arts and improv games but it looked like we were the ones with the rusty grey matter. These kids are such a riot. We played some "Whose line is it anyway?" type theatresport games and they kicked ass. If they were at our theatresports they would have whooped our ass, IH, Medley and all. Morbid, ghetto, punk and a poker face renditon of forrest gump, it was such a good afternoon. And how 5 year old Coshi told me I was doing the "Speak to the hand" thing wrong. I tried.

Last Sun- Church at ECF
A couple of us were sitting at the playground bench behind barbed wired fence when seven police cars came speeding down in front of us. Sirens ringing and all.

Me: Hey, is this a dangerous neighbourhood?
J: Erm...well in Philly there are pockets of dangerous neighbourhoods.
Me: Well is this one of them?
J: Erm....yeah.

Last Mon - Penn-for-Unicef
You know how in orientation they told all of us never wander off 40th street into the ghetto cuz they will mug you and stab you and then rape your dead body a few times over. Yeah I got lost on the 52nd street today. I've been on 47th and 48th street the last two days but that was ok cuz each time I was either with a large group of people who knew where they were going, or in a yellow school bus. Today i was officially lost with4 other asians and one spanish in a sketchy neighbourhood, in the evening. We were trying to look for the afterday care house to look after the kids while their parents went through re-training. Except we couldn't find it. So we walked around and around, threading through broken concrete laced with weed and smashed beer bottles. The overcast sky threatened to rain onto rotten brick buildings with barbed wire and prison like protective covers over windows. In the old rickety houses, screams could be heard through the boarded up windows and nailed in doors overed with graffeti. Little children ran around playing football next to the busy street. Their frail legs swamped under their dad's old pants, bunched up at their waists so it wouldn't fall off. When we finally found the the day care centre, I played with the children, whose mother was younger than I was. Families sat, overcrowded on little porches, looking aimlessly to pass the night away. 8pm. It was dark, we were soaked in the rain and terribly hungry. But most of all, as we stood in the bustop, we were scared. Scared that perhaps those stories about getting shot and mugged was true. For 10 minutes in my life, I caught a minute glimpse of how a child living in the inner city felt. Without ever feeling safe, ever feeling warm, ever feeling full, and ever feeling the sense of security that we take for granted, in our lives cramped with security guards, well-to-do friends and health insurance.

Last tuesday - Sushi party
Three japanese gals, one dutch chinese guy, three hongkongers, one african american gal and me the lone singaporean tried to make japanese food. Except none of us could. It was such an entertaining night. We terrorized the pseudo-japanese sushi chef at fresh grocers to sell us wasabi and seaweed and made sushi out of very unfresh salmon and poor cut vegetables. We bug friends for rice cookers and attempted to make our sushi decent. We made fake tempura out of egg and flour and basically fried everything we could get our hands on. And since we cooked the food, it had to be nice. It's psychological. Now we are thinking of starting a sushi-tempura restaurant on campus.

Yesterday - Lancaster
Went on an International House tour to Lancaster to see the Amish people. These are suppose to be a community of people who do not believe in technology and who wear old bonets and dresses from the middle ages, ride horses and buggys and make excellent quilts and jams. Except when we got there, we realised that this particular village we visited has its on website that sells stuff. And alot of SUVs. And the buggys have that triangle sign behind it that you only find on cars. And they shop using credit cards. And the clothes they sold there has the Made in Mexico tag on it. I was telling my friends that perhaps there is a little sweatshop hidden somewhere under one of the house's here cramped with little chinese people sewing those quilts frantically.