Beauty of the Streets

Professor Lamas gave us back some of the extra hours he has kept us in class this morning. We could choose to sleep in or hang out with the TAs and discuss a topic of our choice. Because I was feeling a bit sleep deprived, I decided to sleep in. I spend a lot of time outside of class talking to the TAs as well. Once I woke up, I went out to brunch with one of my friends at a cute cafe that I wish I had discovered earlier! The prices were amazing, the food was great and they took our Penn cards as payment. 

The red sections are painted over graffiti

Tags are everywhere if you look for them!

One of the tour guides
 pointing out some graffiti.

We met the rest of the class at 1:15 PM to go to Central City and meet with an old student of Professor Lamas and two of his friends. They were graffiti artists and they taught us everything they knew about Philly graffiti. We walked around the city and observed the different styles. Since they have been interested in street art since they could tell things about people from how their tags looked, like where they were from or their experience. It was really interesting because I had never really taken much notice to graffiti before and now I know about this whole other culture that revolved around it. Graffiti really is the same thing as advertising, it's just not being paid for. Both can be considered art or eye sores depending on the person. It was definitely very fascinating to learn about!

After class, some friends and I got dinner and went swimming. It was very refreshing because it was extremely hot today. Afterwards, we saw "The Conjuring," a horror movie, which I though was pretty scary. There were a lot of screams from the audience, which added to the intensity. Some people found it boring, though. I'm glad I enjoyed it! I enjoyed all of today a lot.