new york city - turns out it's big

We kicked the day off right, by sleeping in after a long day yesterday, and then getting a huge, filling breakfast at a local soul food institution called Amy Ruth's. No one went all out and got the fried chicken and waffles, but the servings were large and scrumptious. After breakfast we came back to the hostel, played games for a while, and then four of us made an epic shopping trip to a tiny grocery store, so we're set for dinner and lunches for the rest of the week. Everyone wanted to explore the city, and since today was a free day, that's what we did. Some went to the Met, walked around central park, went to the Harlem flea market or got lost on the way back. Apparently the subway has a slightly difference schedule on Sundays, so yeah, now we know.

It may seem like we were just idly walking the city, unrelated to our trip topic, but NYC was wisely chosen as a location because we all interacted with people from different countries and cultures all day long. People remarked how they barely heard english all day, or how everyone who ran the shops they went in to (especially at the flea market) were obviously recent immigrants. We all brought these observations back to the hostel for some dinner and discussion. Neha had us all take an "immigration test" made up for 20 questions selected at random from the 100 questions that could potentially be posed to immigrants taking the test to become citizens. Everyone was amazed at how poorly we all did, since few of us could name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and I don't think anyone got the question about when the constitution was adopted correct (1787). This led our talk in to the differences between types of immigrants, and why people want to come to the US in the first place (refugees, seeking work, have family here, etc). It also turned out that only two of us don't have a parent who was born in another country, so all of us deeply identify with the trip issue. In fact people have been talking all trip about visiting family in India, or South America, and a number of us speak at least one other language. The discussion ended up centering a lot around two questions: how do you sort people out, and how should we as a country decide who gets to stay, and who has to go?

Obviously none of us had answers to those questions (because if we did, I assume we should be getting a call from the White House soon), but it left us a lot to consider as we explore the issue for the rest of the week. We're going to visit a center that helps recent African immigrants (http://www.africanservices.org/), see the experiences of immigrants from a hundred years ago at Ellis Island (whose descendants make up many of the people who are anti-immigration today), and check out the Chinese immigration experience later this week, so we'll keep you all posted as we learn more about why immigrants make this country great (sorry, couldn't resist editorializing!).