Rockin Rocky

Wowz so a lot’s happened since last we spoke. Sorrys for the lateness.

We’ve started working for a few hours on a Wed morning at the West Philadelphia YMCA, lending a hand at a summer scheme there and nearly drowning in the process. Every single child there is black except for one, (on closer inspection he’s actually albino). This stands in sharp contrast to Drexel University, our hosts, where most students are white. From first impressions, America really does seem much more racially divided than Europe and the fact that West Philly is the poorest part of the city doesn’t help.

On a more upbeat note, we went to New York City on Saturday which was HellaBallsToTheWallsAwesome (I think that’s a French word) and definitely an improvement on the original York. Touristy sightseeing was the order of the day, taking in Liberty, Wall Street and Ground Zero. We’ve a couple more trips up there to come. Good times.

Trips to the National Constitution Center, Independence Hall and Liberty Bell on Friday were also pretty cool, along with a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sunday, of Rocky fame. Every American history museum we’ve seen so far has been incredibly patriotic in its presentation of the facts, which makes things more interesting but a bucket load of salt is also required (or saline equivalent: the average US pretzel). The ‘Freedom Rising’ presentation at the Constitution Center especially is just tear- jerkingly patriotic. The Constitution for Americans was presented like the Resurrection for Christians- a woman bounces about the stage expounding American Colonial history (following the subtle historical philosophy of TheBritsAteBabies-ism) as four giant screens descended from the roof to completely surround her with flames followed by images of the Apollo Moon landings, fall of the Berlin Wall and the Civil Rights movement. How much of that is contained within the Constitution I’ll leave to you to decide...  But the patriotism was still sweetly endearing and if you can’t be proud of your country at a museum dedicated to its founding, something’s clearly up. I’d certainly like to have bits of the US Constitution in the UK I s’pose.

Otherwise, the work’s heating up, as is the weather. We’re in for 105 degrees tomorrow. Somehow three hours of class today was spent scaling a climbing wall and last night we were round a professor’s house for a screening of Rocky in his back yard. Surreal but awesome. Staying with an American family for the weekend, they have a swimming pool and XBox Kinect. So many levels of win.

Stay tuned.