Getting Outside the Comfort Zone

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Keeping our discussion of cultural connection to place in mind, I want you to choose an unfamiliar place somewhere in the city. You just did a blog post on a place with which you connected, a place that felt familiar; this second place should feel foreign, strange, and unrelated to you. I want this place to be somewhere that does not resonate with you culturally, where you feel a little out of place. Again, please pay very close attention to your word choice and work toward creating a vivid picture of the place using detail and description. Use 150 words at minimum. In your paragraph, you must include the following:

1. One overheard conversation or snippet as seen here or here
2. One smell
3. A bodily reaction (ie adrenaline rushing through your veins and making your heart beat fast, goosebumps, a nervous feeling in your stomach, sweaty palms, etc)
4. A list of three things

Don't forget to comment on two classmates' blogs and leave me a comment with their names!

A Place in Chicago

In our last class, we watched Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's music video, "Home." It talked about how home can be with a person and not just a place. I think all of us understand that home is a complicated thing--it isn't just a place (but it can be) and sometimes it's not a person (but often it is a person). Some of us might feel the most comfortable at home, the most loved, the happiest. Others of us might really dislike being at home. Home, for some, can be uncomfortable, stressful, and difficult. Regardless if home brings up warm memories or bad ones for you, home is definitely a place with which you are familiar.

I want you to talk about a place in Chicago with which you're already or becoming familiar.  Maybe it's a bench down by Lake Michigan or a favorite coffee shop. It needs to be a place outside of your house or dorm room. Pay attention to very specific details about the place to help you express why it feels familiar and comfortable to you. In your post, you must include the following:

1. One color
2. One sound
3. A specific memory in that location (ie on a Tuesday during finals last semester, I worked from a coffee shop for eight hours straight; I watched the sun come up and set again, I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same table near a drafty window where cold winter wind made me keep my coat on the whole time I wrote an essay on naps)
4. The word artichoke