Making My Way Downtown

o What about being in Philadelphia is a new experience for you?

Before this service trip, I had never been to Philadelphia or even Pennsylvania. When I thought of Philadelphia I thought about the historic aspects and the Phillies, not all of the poverty in the city. After arriving to Philadelphia, some of the girls on the team and I got separated from the group, we had got on the subway before everyone else could. We got off at the correct station and sat there for a while waiting on everyone else, who had passed the station and had to come back. We noticed there was a “football field” behind the station, which to us looked like a field of some grass. The kids were out there playing around and it hit me that this was the first wakeup call that we are not in Kansas anymore. After everyone arrived we started walking to our loft. Our first impression of the loft was not the best, it had the address spray painted on a bright blue door and was in an unsure neighborhood. Once we got inside the loft we realized that it was livable, it was nice to get to stay in two different types of neighborhoods on the trip to give us two different experiences. When I had traveled in the past, I had always stayed in hotels or a house, it was good to get to see the loft and hostel side of staying. The hostel was something I did not know even existed. At first I was very sketch about sleeping in the same room as 30 girls, but it was not that bad. We were downtown so most of our free time was not spent in the hostel anyways. Overall it was good to get to experience all new things throughout the time in Philadelphia.Read more