I'm back!

So, my week-long work trip is over, and it was quite fun. The work part was all useful and relevant, which was nice. The conference was held in Camden, NJ, which is basically a poor and run-down suburb of Philadelphia, basically a black-and-hispanic ghetto. Hence the Urban Promise ministry of after-school programs and educational/job support for kids and youth.

One of the things that messed with my perception of the community was that most people lived in single-family rowhouses. They almost looked like the simple brick houses such as one might find in the north Beaches or other upper/middle class areas of Toronto. In Vancouver and Toronto, one mostly thinks of poor people as living in apartment buildings, so it took a bit of adjusting before I could see how run-down the neighbourhoods really were.

Now for the fun stuff. On Friday night we took a bus with a whole bunch of Urban Promise people for a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia. We walked and shopped along South Street, and we saw the Liberty Bell, and we ran up the steps that Rocky ran up in the movie (The Philadelphia Museum of Art). I've never seen that movie so I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about, but I ran up those steps and yelled "Adrian!" with the rest of them.

During this tour, we got in trouble with the authorities twice. First at the Liberty Bell we were trying to take a group picture so some of the people stood up on the low wall. (The bell itself was still about 10 metres away inside a building that had a big window so you could see it.) A cop blew his whistle and yelled something at us that we didn't understand. One of our big black guys walked over to ask him to repeat himself, and the cop got kind of nervous and said "Do not come over here!" as if the guy was going to get rough with him or something. Anyway, it turned out that we weren't allowed to stand on the wall, but we were still allowed to take pictures. It was weird to observe how the cop was afraid of our guy because we knew him to be super-friendly, but I guess he was pretty big (not to mention black), so...yeah.

The second time we got in trouble was at the Museum. Some of us wanted to take a group picture, and we saw this big bronze sculpture of a spider in the courtyard at the top of the oh-so-famous Rocky steps. So some of us decided to climb up on it. Suddenly a voice resounded through the courtyard from an invisible outdoor intercom speaker: "You there taking the picture! DO NOT CLIMB ON THE SPIDER!" (It was totally a "God?!" kind of moment.) I guess they had security cameras and such.

On Saturday, we hopped a train to New York, and spent the day walking around. We saw Times Square (the Toys R Us has a ferris wheel inside, it's so big!), Central Park, and some of 5th Avenue. We also saw Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, for whatever that's worth.

On Sunday we went to a small black church in Camden where you were supposed to say "AlleLUiah!" and "Amen!" and "Thank you JEEsus!" all the time. Sam would have liked it. Although, I did find the sermon somewhat questionable because of one part where the pastor was saying that when you've got issues, just smile and say "It is well!" to people who can't help you anyway.

Then we went into Philadelphia and we went to the museum. It is a gorgeous and impressive building on the outside, and all the art inside was fun too. The most famous painting I saw was Van Gogh's sunflowers. I also saw lots of Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, and Picasso. I really like a lot of Picasso's stuff so long as he doesn't get so cube-y that you can't tell what the painting is about. Once I walked into a small-ish dead end room, and turned around to go out again and - hello! - there was Picasso's self-portrait looking at me from the wall the door was in. It was kind of a "Hey! I know you!" kind of moment. I also discovered Joan Miro, who I didn't even know was famous until I went home and told Aaron I liked "The Hermitage" and that we should hang it in our house if we ever get really rich someday.

Speaking of which, the guy whose house we were staying in was a bit of an amateur art collector, and he actually had two small original watercolours by Salvador Dali. They weren't crappy either, I quite liked them. Tres cool!

So after we went to the museum, we went back to South Street and ate Philly cheesesteaks for dinner.

Those were my adventures. How are all of you guys doing?