Philly

A 10-day adventure by Madison Read more

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Trip start
May 9, 2017
Philly Madison Adams
We're not in Kansas anymore
May 9, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
o What are you hoping to learn about yourself as a leader on this trip?

The Southwestern Leadership Team has made it to Philly and ready to take on this week in a new place! So excited for this new experience. This trip I am hoping to put myself in situations in which I have not been in before and learn more about myself. I am hoping that with this experience it helps me to expand my leadership knowledge and better understand the urban life. I am from a small town in Kansas so this is going to be all new to me. When I go on trips, I do not go to the rough parts of the city, because I am not doing service. When doing service in the city I am going to have to experience uncomfortable times, but that will help me see why we need to do service in that area. Over the time in Philadelphia, I learned that sometimes even when you may be uncomfortable, you can still see the work that you have done and how much it has benefited the people in the surroundings. When we were working at front steps I was really surprised with how many people actually stopped to tell us thank you. It was a good feeling to see that they actually noticed the work that we were doing. We even had a couple of people that asked where they could get the litter claws or how they could help. It was nice to see us encourage others to act by such a simple task as picking up litter.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Day 2: Salvation Army
May 10, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
o Write about one Philadelphian leader you have met: introduce him or her, describe the parts of the leadership system in relation to him or her
During our time in Philadelphia we met some excellent leaders (Pastor Wes and Major Susan) and some places that did not have great leaders (Share Foods). You have to realize to learn from the good and you become the leader in the not so good situation. Major Susan works with the Salvation Army. I learned that with the Salvation Army, it is similar to an actual army. They have different rankings and wear outfits that symbolize their rankings. The Salvation Army gets donations of toys for their annual Christmas toy give away. Our job was to sort the huge pile of toys by the age and gender we felt matched. That way when it came Christmas time, they could easily place the toys with the right child. Major Susan worked alongside us sorting the toys and even encouraged us. We met our goal of finishing all of the bags, which made many of us happy. Major Susan and her husband even proceeded to feed us a lovely lunch at their building up the street. After seeing the neighborhood that they were located in, we knew that sorting the toys would mean a lot to the kids and the families in the near future. She showed that she was a leader by her actions, her strongest leadership style would be encouraging the heart. By being with her for a little bit I would rate her challenge the process as being the lowest, she strikes me as a woman that follows the rules and does not try differently. Overall I believe we got a lot accomplished at the Salvation Army with the help of Major Susan.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Art Museum
May 10, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 14 °C
Never before had I been to an art museum. It was interesting to have a tour guide and give you information about the variety of paintings that she showed us. We stayed in the same location the whole time so it would have been nice if the tour would have went around the museum.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Rocky
May 10, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 12 °C
Located outside of the art museum is the rocky steps. There were several members of the team who decided to run the steps, personally I was tired and sadly I have never seen the movie so decided against it. Along side the steps is the Rocky statue where many people gather around to take pictures.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Working Hard
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
-Describe one act of a servant leader that you have witnessed in Philadelphia
I know that this says to talk about a leader you witness in Philadelphia but I am taking a spin on it, I am going to talk about two people in which I saw really stand up and lead. While in Philadelphia I saw how good of leaders Karrie and Kendra are. They stood out to me, especially at the Share Food organization. Karrie is on the second year team but she started out on the first year team, so I got to get to know her a little bit at the beginning of the year. We did not really start planning out project yet so I did not get to see the leader in her. Kendra is on the fourth year team and was gone all second semester, I wish she would have been able to be here for the full year. I knew from the beginning she was going to be somebody that I looked up too when she took the initative to get to know all of us freshman. At Share Foods both Karrie and Kendra did several different tasks from putting food in boxes, weighing, taking the box off the belt, grabbing extra food, breaking down boxes and taking boxes to recycling. Every time their station got ahead they would move on to another station to assist people to help it go faster. Along with working hard, they also were encouraging everyone and telling everyone we could meet our goal. We were doing hard work and many people were wanting to give up/ be done and they kept everyone going and working hard.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Litter Patrol
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
o What about the service experiences is different than the service we do on the team?
For a service day we went to help Pastor Wes, who is in charge of front steps. Some of us were cleaning off a grave site, others were raking and I, along with others, was in charge of litter patrol. Many times in Winfield we do not clean up around town as service work, we do that as fundraising. You would not imagine the things we found, and how much litter we found. Every curb was covered in many things you had no clue what they were, thank goodness we had the claws to pick up the litter. Having the claws also gave the community members ideas that they could also use those to clean up the neighborhood. Pastor Wes explained that many times the people get overwhelmed because the trash gets to be too much to handle. In the Winfield area we do not see streets and neighborhoods with trash all over like that. It was something new to see a place be that dirty. It was good for us to be able to see that not all places are clean. When we are doing spring and fall cleaning we are mostly raking leaves for people to help make their yard look more presentable, never have I went to a job where we were picking up trash because the streets were so dirty. It is common in Kansas for people to keep the streets and neighborhoods trash free. It felt wonderful to be able to make a difference in these people’s lives, I hope we were able to spark a fire in them to either throw their trash in a trashcan or go to out and clean up the community.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Making My Way Downtown
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
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
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Philly Madison Adams
Eisenhower Fellow{{SHIPS}}
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
o What did you learn on the field experiences that helped you understand Philadelphia better?
For one of our activities for the class we went on the mural mile tour. Our tour guide Al took us around the city to take a look at a select few murals, there is no way we would be able to look at them all. One of the unique things about Philadelphia is the murals all around and the different meanings behind them. One of the murals that stood out to me was the Eisenhower Fellowships mural. On the side of the mural it states “Only justice fairness, consideration, and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.” –Dwight Eisenhower, as people go by this mural the meanings and quotes can inspire them. Along the bottom there was the saying “Fostering leadership, progress and internal understanding”, right when I saw this I applied it to leadership. In the mural it showed different items that have been developed over the years, which people used leadership to create. Eisenhower was a great leader and he was from Kansas so it was easy to relate to as we have learned about him since we were younger. The mural is titles “Tree of Knowledge” which was painted by Michael Webb and completed October 2003. The mural gives you incites on all of the knowledge that has occurred over the years. It shows the many people that have taken the initiative to develop something new to better their community. Eisenhower Fellowships was created in 1953 where they decided to create a group to honor Eisenhower and his dedication to world peace.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Mural Mile
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
These were some of the murals that we learned about on the Mural Mile Tour. Our tour guide Al talked about the artists and gave us important information about the murals. Throughout the tour we saw several different murals.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Graffiti or Art?
May 13, 2017 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 10 °C
On a mural tour, our tour guide Al asked us if we thought graffiti was art. After taking some thought about this question, I decided that yes graffiti is art it is a way that a person is expressing themselves.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Rainy Day
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
There was one rainy day when we are all in Philadelphia, the first thing we did was go find a store that sold umbrellas since many of us had not brought those with us. I would say my umbrella was one of the best purchases I've made out there, even though I had to leave it at the hostel since it wouldn't fit in my bag.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Cold..Rainy.. Tour..
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
We went on a tour of the independence mall. The weather was rainy, cold and windy, so it was not the ideal weather for a walking tour. We got to see several historic buildings that we had walked by many times but did not know what they were.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
One of the best things... FOOD!
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
Throughout the trip there were several times in which we had the option of where we wanted to eat. We ended up stumbling across many unique places and got to try different styles of food. Overall the food there was very good.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Sunday Morning Service
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
For our Sunday morning church service we attended the first Church of Christ. This was something new to me coming from the Catholic Church and not being exposed to many other religions. We know the church as a historic place, but it is still a common church for people to attend.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Burial Grounds
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
After church service at the Church of Christ, we attended a tour at the Church of Christ burial grounds. Courtney was our tour guide and explained significant people that were buried there. She also explained the normal thing to do back then was to burry people from the same families on top of each other. There were many tombstones which had sunk down into the ground, they got special permission from relatives to pull the important ones up.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Night City Life
May 14, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
One evening the fourth year team decided that they're going to have a surprise for everyone. Everyone was very eager to figure out what this secret surprise was at nighttime. We ended up going to this really cool hammock park which had food trucks, lights, and games.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Transportation
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
Through our stay in Philadelphia will used the public transportation system, which can be kind of hectic with all the people that we had. Most of the time we used the train but there were several times in which we would use the bus.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
View of the City
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
o Kouzes and Posner suggest exemplary leaders should “treat every job as an adventure.” What have you learned about how to do this on this trip?
This was my first time in Philadelphia and I see every trip as a new adventure. The definition of adventure is an exciting or very unusual experience. After reading this definition I believe the word adventure describes this whole trip, it was all new to me. I knew that this was a service trip but there were also going to be some historic, normal Philadelphia things, tied into it. As we went to our different service locations, we had to experience the rough neighborhoods, which is something I was not used too. We adventured through the neighborhoods, good and bad, and through the public transportation, even some people got lost. There were times in which we felt out of our comfort zone, but it Is good to branch out and try new things. When we first arrived in Philadelphia we were staying in a loft in an area that we were unsure of. After a couple of days in the loft, we moved to a hostel, before this trip I had never even heard of a hostel before. The hostel was very different and not something I would want to do all the time, but it was nice to be downtown and walking distance from many places. It was a great time to experience something new with a big group like ours. We got to see different historical aspects such as murals, liberty bell, independence hall, the first church, and multiple museums. I adventured out and tried many things I would not have if it would not have been for this trip, such as the colonial meal. Even if it was not my favorite I still can say that I have tried it before.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Ben Franklin Museum
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
The Ben Franklin Museum was one of the places that the class tackle together, it was an interesting museum. It was very hands on and showed you many of his experiments and or inventions. It was good to get some better insight on the man that was very popular Ben Franklin.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Colonial Meal
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
For our lunch one afternoon we took a trip to the city Tavern do you have a colonial meal. This was something way different than any of us had experienced. At our table, not many people ate the salad because it was something different than what we had ate before, and there was a gnat in someone's salad. The main course was tasty, but it would have been better with some good water, not the tap.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
The First Market!
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
After colonial lunch one day we decided to hit up the first ever market. We decided that this would be a new experience and maybe we could find some goodies. What we realized about this market was it was mostly food, and we had just ate. It was a good experience to see all the variety of food, even though we didn't purchase anything.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Liberty Bell
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C
The Liberty Bell it is one of the main things you think about when you think of Philadelphia. While we were on our tour the lady explained to us that the Liberty Bell was inside of this building but we would have to come back another time to see it. While walking by we realize that there wasn't a long line so we decided to jump in line. Most of the time spent was waiting in line for security. Once we got in, we were out fast.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Art Everywhere
May 15, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C
Walking around Philadelphia you'll see many different forms of art. On this tattoo parlor this art work was done with all spray paint. I loved the different words all over it in different fonts and how creative the artist was.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Chinese Lantern Festival
May 16, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
While in Philadelphia we attended something new that none of us had done before. We went to a Chinese lantern Festival, which all of us assumed would be the lighting of lanterns and send off like we had seen it in movies. Actually it was nothing like that it was a performance, food and light up characters. Had a wonderful time experiencing something new.Read more
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Philly Madison Adams
Lost Abby.. Now found
May 16, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
During some free time in the morning before we left, we decided to go explore the old city again. There was a boutique we wanted to go into but didn't open for 10 more minutes, we decided to burn some time in CVS. As we are walking around all of a sudden Abby is no where to be found. Knowing her soon to be Pharmacist self... we decided to check the drug isle and around the pharmacy.. We ended up finding her up the street sitting at a table.Read more
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