This weekend, I took my first (voluntary) trip outside of New York City (and first trip out of New York State), and it was definitely worth the 8+ hours in a bus. Although I would have been fine if that part hadn't been necessary. However, this time gave Katie and me a chance to reflect on how ridiculous it it that the entire state of New Jersey is basically a giant suburb of sorts to New York.
We originally planned the trip around the Help the Homeless walk in the National Mall, but we also went to the national zoo (everything in DC is "national" this or that), eat dinner at a restaurant/bookstore/coffee shop/bar/performance space with Gandhi on the menu cover and a Langston Hughes-inspired name, spend quality time with old friends, meet new friends of old friends. While I still have a little trouble completely telling cities apart in my head, especially ones I'm not very familiar with, Washington is pretty distinct from other cities. If you don't know much about the history of DC, it's pretty interesting and definitely worth looking into. Part of it has to do with the fact that it's a designed city, meaning it was planned out from the beginning and didn't just grow out organically or haphazardly. Also, no buildings can be taller than the Washington Monument, so even in the areas that are pretty dense with commercial buildings, they were significantly shorter than the typical skyscraper.
Back in New York, Monday brought another day of my socialization class in the nursery. In case I haven't summarized that yet (or you've forgotten), it's a class for toddlers and parents (usually the mom). The goal of the class is to overcome that many of the kids live in rather crowded houses and probably don't have room to move around or try out talking. Also, a lot of the kids spend all their time with their moms and don't get used to strangers or non-family members and the moms can be isolated from support themselves. For the class, we spend part of the time on an interactive music lesson where the moms and kids sing, move around, play instruments, and overall get actively involved. We also have arts and crafts time, a snack time, a time for the moms to chat, and sometimes a little parenting lesson about something like how to know your kids are too sick to go to school or the Agency. The kids usually start off pretty attached to their moms (sometimes they start crying if she crosses the room without them), but now that some of them have come for a few weeks now, I feel like they're getting used to the setting. As the only non-Latino in the room, the kids are usually pretty interested in me. The last couple of weeks, they've started acting on it a little bit, letting me play with them while their moms chat with each other. I hope their future kindergarten teachers appreciate it.
We originally planned the trip around the Help the Homeless walk in the National Mall, but we also went to the national zoo (everything in DC is "national" this or that), eat dinner at a restaurant/bookstore/coffee shop/bar/performance space with Gandhi on the menu cover and a Langston Hughes-inspired name, spend quality time with old friends, meet new friends of old friends. While I still have a little trouble completely telling cities apart in my head, especially ones I'm not very familiar with, Washington is pretty distinct from other cities. If you don't know much about the history of DC, it's pretty interesting and definitely worth looking into. Part of it has to do with the fact that it's a designed city, meaning it was planned out from the beginning and didn't just grow out organically or haphazardly. Also, no buildings can be taller than the Washington Monument, so even in the areas that are pretty dense with commercial buildings, they were significantly shorter than the typical skyscraper.
Back in New York, Monday brought another day of my socialization class in the nursery. In case I haven't summarized that yet (or you've forgotten), it's a class for toddlers and parents (usually the mom). The goal of the class is to overcome that many of the kids live in rather crowded houses and probably don't have room to move around or try out talking. Also, a lot of the kids spend all their time with their moms and don't get used to strangers or non-family members and the moms can be isolated from support themselves. For the class, we spend part of the time on an interactive music lesson where the moms and kids sing, move around, play instruments, and overall get actively involved. We also have arts and crafts time, a snack time, a time for the moms to chat, and sometimes a little parenting lesson about something like how to know your kids are too sick to go to school or the Agency. The kids usually start off pretty attached to their moms (sometimes they start crying if she crosses the room without them), but now that some of them have come for a few weeks now, I feel like they're getting used to the setting. As the only non-Latino in the room, the kids are usually pretty interested in me. The last couple of weeks, they've started acting on it a little bit, letting me play with them while their moms chat with each other. I hope their future kindergarten teachers appreciate it.
No comments:
Post a Comment