Overheard in Philly

Week 2: complete. Here are some of the more memorable quotes.

"Don't tell our moms about this."

Katie and I ordered some great poster prints for our living room, so we ventured out to Ikea for frames. The upside: a bus goes straight from our apartment to the Ikea/Walmart/Target/Home Depot shopping center along the Delaware River. The downside: it's a 40-minute ride each way through South Philly. We met some interesting characters on the bus though. The woman next to us started her phone conversation with, "Hey cousin Shawn died. Yeah cousin SHAWN. The doctor told him to stop drankin'!" and then the segued into stories about her own stint in rehab. Our other neighbor didn't have much to say, he just reeked of marijuana. 

"Maybe modern art just isn't my thing."

Sunday afternoon Katie and I joined my sorority sisters Claire and Jennifer at the Art Museum. First stop? The Rocky statue. Then we made our way through the exhibits: American Art (lots of furniture, boring), European Art (typical), Modern Art (just plain weird), the Armory (okay this is kind of cool), and Asian Art (Holy cow did you see that pagoda?! It takes up the whole room!). Katie and I are thinking about becoming members - $40 for the year for all the exhibits, plus free admission to the "Art after Five" cocktail party with live music every Friday. Because everyone knows that grad students and free drinks go together like peanut butter and jelly. Which is coincidentally all we're eating right now. 

"From Georgia, you say? You have to stop smiling. You're too nice. You have 'easy target' written all over your face."

Katie's orientation-extravaganza continued this week, with an especially thrilling public safety program given by the Drexel campus police. They asked for volunteers based on who was from the farthest away. Los Angeles didn't count because "you can probably fend for yourself just fine" so Katie was the lucky winner of this bizarre contest. In front of the group she got to learn first-hand how to look intimidating to strangers so they don't try to mug her. Apparently this is necessary, since eleven - that's right, ELEVEN - people got shot last weekend in three different neighborhoods of Philly. We've since learned that watching local news is always a mistake. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. (Dear Mom, I promise I'm not going to get shot. These all happened way out in north and west Philly, places I categorically avoid. Plus Katie taught me all her intimidation moves.) 

"The only good thing about being a developer in New Jersey? Bribery is a real bargain."

My classes continued this week, progressing at a pretty fast clip. One of my favorite parts of the week is Property Development, where Professor Landis takes at least one stab at New Jersey every class. And sometimes at Donald Trump, if he's feeling particularly witty. Quantitative Analysis always brightens my day because of our excessive reliance on Excel. I eat those formulas for breakfast. After class I go home and pretend to read the pile of assignments until I get bored and have a movie night with Katie instead. Every Friday the School of Design hosts a happy hour with free beer (see: free drinks, par. 2). I missed last week's, but made it out yesterday and got to meet more of my classmates. The City Planning program is a pretty close-knit group, it makes commiserating easier. 

"Some guy grabbed my butt in a bar so I turned around and clocked him. Turns out it was someone else."

Katie's program hosted a welcome party at the Academy of Natural Sciences with local restaurants offering promotions and tastings from their menus. She took me as her date, and I had a lot of fun meeting some of her classmates. We went out with some Jersey girls for drinks later and got some invaluable life lessons on how to act like a northerner. Conflict resolution is clearly not one of their strong suits up here. Another cultural moment: apparently "thank you" isn't a part of the local parlance, as evidenced by the look of dumbfounded shock on the sales associate's face at Anthropoligie when Katie thanked her for her help. Who knows how long we can hold out here in the land of rascals and ruffians, so I apologize in advance if I offend everyone at Thanksgiving with my boorish Yankee ways. 

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News from the North

Made it through my first week of classes, and the body count is still relatively low! 

Tuesday was just an orientation. Dean Marilyn Taylor gave a welcome speech then we spent the rest of the morning with our respective programs (Architecture, Landscape Architecture, City Planning, Historic Preservation, and Fine Arts). Within the City Planning group students and faculty introduced themselves and Professor Landis, the department chair, explained registration, required courses, and the available concentrations (Community & Economic Development, Land Use, Public-Private Development, Transportation, and Urban Design). Then we joined the rest of the programs in Houston Hall for lunch. The rest of the afternoon was open sessions about things like career services and financial aid so I ended up going back to the apartment for a little while. 

I came back to campus (in a torrential downpour) that evening for a lecture the school was hosting. William Cobbett is originally from South Africa and is currently the head of the Cities Alliance, a global partnership for urban poverty.  He talked about new ways to address slums in developing countries in the "global south" - places like sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia which are urbanizing much faster than North America and western Europe. He  explained why slums are created and how to formalize them so that the governments can capitalize on their potential. He focused mostly on the role of planners in the situation and not very much on specific examples (which I would have preferred to hear about) but it was still really interesting. 

Wednesday was the first official day of classes. My first class, Introduction to Planning History (required for all first years), was canceled. Professor Eugenie Birch is a apparently really famous in the city planning and was probably out at a conference so I guess I'll let it slide. The next class was Urban Economics. I didn't realize until then how much economics I had learned informally in my engineering classes at Georgia Tech. Utility curves? Production possibilities frontier? Pareto efficiencies? Owned it. My last class was Quantitative Planning Analysis Methods... ew, right? Except it was my favorite class. How typical. Despite the awful name, it's basically a class about the data sources that planners use. We're spending our first week of class on the Census, which is hilarious because that's all I did all summer at my internship. :)

Thursday I only had one class - Introduction to Property Development with Professor Landis. We mostly covered material that I had seen in my Real Estate and Construction Project Management classes, so nothing too scary. Afterwards I went back to the apartment and printed out the MOUNTAIN of articles I have to read for class next week. I tried to get a head start on the reading but ended up taking a 2-hour nap on the couch until Katie came home. Then we drank wine and watched movies until 1am. I'd say it was a productive week. 

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