January 28th, 2013 – You Guys Study Grass

Today we had another class called “contemporary urban issues,” which is co-taught by our three faculty. It also involves our individual research project, so we talked about that briefly and our proposals are due by the end of the week. I’m still not sure what I’m going to write about…but I’ll let you know as soon as I know. Other people have some really great ideas like researching how families eat meals together, or what does it mean for a girl to become a woman. We can do the project on whatever we want, as long as it is something that we can’t just look up the answer to on the internet.

Then we heard a lecture called “Bushwick to Brooklyn: From Ghetto to Gentrified?” which was given by our program director. He read his essay and then we talked a little bit about Brooklyn’s history and how gentrification is a double-edged sword. Then we were assigned neighborhoods for “Neighborhood Day.” My neighborhood was downtown Brooklyn, so we met with an agency there that works to insure affordable housing for residents in the neighborhood. Then we had to walk around on our own and talk to people, make observations, and experience Brooklyn life in a new way. We saw the very gentrified areas, where mom and pop shops were next to a starbucks and a “cheap” clothing store was across from an Armani. We ate Brooklyn bagels for lunch on our way to the agency, and we went to the Shake Shack for dinner…both of which were delicious.

Then the group came back together to talk about our learning community in more depth, and to write letters to ourselves that we will open again on the last week of the trip. We also discussed some generalizations about Americans and how we can work to overcome these as we go abroad.