Simon's Fulbright USA 2016: Philadelphia PA

We travelled through Philadelphia en-route to Lancaster PA. Arriving in Philly on Sunday we stayed at Joshua and Jessie Block's in the city. We really enjoyed our time in this cosmopolitan city. Josh took us for a walk through his suburb of Kingsessing. Many older houses with porches - typically three stories and built c. 1800's. Most are either being done up, or needing done up. Lovely tree line spaces and a great community feel. We were treated to a musical performance in Josh's house as his wife Jessie was playing traditional jewish music with her band. The house was filled with lovely sounds as we talked. We look forward to seeing them in NZL in the early part of next year.

I visited Joshua's school on Monday 'The Science Leadership Academy' in downtown.The school has many more black students compared to Indiana. I enjoyed meeting all the students and they were very easy to talk too as Joshua introduced me. We left to travel by train to Lancaster; an hour or so away. Good choice. We really enjoyed the ride and recommend the SEPTA system. Rolling out of Philly the landscape grades out of concrete to fields and farm houses. The characteristic signature are farms with 2 to 3 silos for grains. The trees were all yellow and rust coloured with dashes of red. The landscape and train ride were similar to southern Germany - but swap the housing styles.

Lancaster was founded in 1720 and is a lovely PA town well worth a visit. It has an older style and ambiance associated with its artisan hub, and narrower streets and older stone buildings to match. On Tuesday I visited the Lancaster Country Day School, a private school from K to 12. I enjoyed a visit to a POGIL chemistry classroom and followed this with a professional discussion time with the teacher in charge. In the afternoon, I went to Franklin and Marshall College. This is a private college of about 2500 students who are all undergraduates. The fees are approx. $60000 USD per year. I was hosted by the Professor in charge of the POGIL programme in the USA. I also visited his POGIL class in Chemistry. It turned out that one of his students had cousins that lived in Dunedin. Now what are the chances of that!? Another meeting in the afternoon involved Higher Education at FMC and the links to the Fulbright Programme.

We went out of town on Wednesday in search of some solice after the election day result. Fittingly the day was wet and grey. In German there is an expression 'Und the Himmel Weint' - the heavens cried. It was hard to avoid the poignancy of that saying, the fitting weather, and our mood in comparison to what we thought America stood for.

The picture says it all

So it was a delight to meet the Amish people. Firstly, we took a wild taxi ride some 20 km east of Lancaster to Intercourse - a place. Unfolding from the vehicle, we booked a buggy ride and were joined by 5 other people. An Amish older gentleman took us around some of the farms and explained how they did things. No electricity, but they had gas. They farmed cows, fruit (apples, pears and peaches), wheat, corn, soy, potatoes. The horses clipped and clopped through it all. Stopping at a farm, all of a sudden we were confronted by two younger Amish men selling cookies and root beer. It turns out that they school their own children to 8th grade only and that's it. Older young people can leave the community to explore the outside world if they wish. For example, this man's son was a truck driver.

We had a traditional meal at an Amish restaurant and took the bus into town. I thought I was on a charter bus?! Already seated were 10 Amish and Mennonites. The bus ride took some time, so we said Hi and talked together. One man wanted to know about NZL and farming there. It seems that farming and environmental issues are prominent in the USA too. The ladies smiled, but didn't say anything. The election came up and we all expressed the need to treat each other with more respect than had been shown throughout the campaign. We wanted to know about how they got the grain into the grain silos - they blow it in. Some of the oldest silos were made out of stone and must have taken ages to build on make-shift scaffolding. These silos are the signatures of the landscape - pronounced silhouettes at dusk...