MY FINAL THOUGHTS...

        In the beginning of the class I was afraid on what to expect since it was on a Friday for seven hours. However, this class completely changed my mind of New York City, as not only did I learn new things but also got to experience them. I love how we got to interact constantly with the professors and the classmates, instead of just sitting in classroom learning about New York City. I am happy to say that my classmates and I had two great professors Mike and Meritta that really added to our experience of New York. I also created wonderful friendships with our classmates that I hope to continue keeping in contact with. Our New York Experience class made me realize the wonderful aspects of New York City and how privileged am I to live in such a great city. I can truly say I learned through experience about the wonderful city of New York and didn’t just read it from a book or study it for a class. I can see why New York City is one of the major attraction locations from people around the world. New York has so much to offer, everything from a melting pot of cultures, to it's history. I can truly say I am proud to be a New Yorker!

        Coming into the class I had zero knowledge on all the other boroughs of the city of New York. I was surprised that living in New York for 21 years I would know a good amount of information about this city, but the class proved me wrong. I can now truly say I experienced aspects of New York I have never learned or been to before and I left this class with wonderful memories. I definitely recommend this class to future students, since this class is important that we learn about the wonderful city we live in New York. Also, if it wasn’t for this class we wouldn’t of actually experience the Occupy Wall Street protest, and get to actually talk to protesters on their motivations for protesting. One of the experiences I will never forget is walking over the Brooklyn Bridge by foot and not by car, which I have never done before because of my fear of bridges but I am glad I accomplished it because it was such a beautiful and great experience. My favorite part of the class was being able to walk through the beautiful Central Park while viewing a spectacular sunset, and exploring Strawberry Fields and the passionate fans of John Lennon. I also loved our adventures around Chelsea, since Chelsea had so many places we could visit. I have never been to an actual gallery and I am glad I go to experience that because I love art. In addition, the museums brought me a great amount of information on art and having Don a talented artist and professor explain the different artworks we got to view.

        If it wasn’t for this class I wouldn’t have tried all the different cultural foods. I am a very picky eater and since I was in the city learning new things I thought hey why not try new food as well. I have never tried Thai food and I am not very big with Chinese food, but in the end it was extremely delicious food and I was glad I tried it out. I also learned a tremendous amount of information on different cultures and how some cities like Harlem have gone through gentrification and are not as bad as they use to be in the past. We also learned and experienced how immigrants lived in horrible conditions of the tenements in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Furthermore, I took this class because it brought my attention and sounded different from all the other courses in that we weren’t just sitting in a classroom. We explored a good amount of places and I never imagined learning so much information in such a small time frame of 7 weeks. I feel like I could now teach other students on the wonderful things and locations of New York City. I will try my best to continue exploring New York and enhance my knowledge about such a great city that I have been living in for the past 21 years.