The Patch Adams Project

This morning, I woke up to my sister tagging me in a post on Facebook. This post was about a mall that was flooding and the band that was there was playing "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie Titanic. I thought it was funny, but considering the Titanic sunk on its maiden voyage, I could not help but think if my project would do the same on its first time out. So, that is what I did today, I set out on my maiden voyage for my project. It was a bit bumpy at times, but it went pretty good.
Many people see this area as a family. One person admitted that it is like a family but it is hard to be one because of all the cultures that are colliding in this area. They see C&D as the community center for this area.

I talked to one guy as he was waiting for his taxi to go to the airport. He was new to the area and hadn't really explored it too much. Turned out, he is the Director of Finance at a luxury hotel chain that originated in the United States. I did not use my project to talk to him as it takes some knowledge of the area, however, I was able to talk to him and spend time with him until his taxi arrived. I really hope that this happens more often than not during the time of my project. It was refreshing to talk to someone just on normal things and to get out of my comfort zone to do so.

I gave this post the title of Patch Adams because if you have ever seen the movie, Patch (played by Robin Williams) has a project where he walks the street and tries to get everyone to smile around him. He breaks the system of where people go from point A to point B without anything interesting happening. He would hang from light poles, say hello to random people on the streets, and then have hours-long conversations with wrong numbers on the phone. This is what I am trying to do here and what M does all the time when he walks the street. I walked the street and said hello to almost everyone that passed me by. A lot of them smiled and said hello back. It is with this that we can all do and bring back humanity even more from the little phones that keep us distracted from the people that we pass by all the time.

So, this Titanic did not sink on the first trip. Here is to many more trips this next couple of weeks.