OrienTREEing

Sharon and I love trees, but more than anything we love to walk around looking for them and identifying them. Yes, sounds geeky - and it is - but it is also SO much fun. For Forestry Week, the Faculty of Forestry Dean's Office came up with a great idea : a tree scavenger hunt. We got clues (verbal and visual), including riddles, to go around campus looking for trees and locating them on a map for about an hour and a half. We got points for strategy, for speed and for knowledge, and we won first prize ($100) :D It was quite a fresh activity, fresher than what the FUS usually does for Forestry Week, and hopefully they will also do it next year. Below: the two of us with arbutus and coulter pine.

DIALOG IN THE DARK - New York City

Today, Cam and I went to a sensory tour of NYC to experience the city without actually seeing it. The Dialog In The Dark exhibit opened in New York City just three weeks ago at the South Street Seaport with the BODIES exhibition and the idea is that this becomes a permanent museum. However, this Dialog In The Dark initiative is not something new – it has been around for quite some time, starting in the 80s in Europe and expanding throughout the world (been in 22 countries and 130 cities). I had never “seen” something like it! (Yep, tons of puns like this one in the advertisements.)

So the tour is for a maximum of ten people but for our particular shift we were only three: the two of us and this semi-annoying guy we shall call Farid. We had to sign a form saying we wouldn’t sue the Museum if we fell, had a panic attack, or died, and afterwards we were given walking canes and entered a room were we were seated for an introductory video. The lights started to dim and our tour guide, Romeo, walked in. We didn’t see him, just heard his voice. It was pitch-black and we could not see a single thing.  ABSOLUTE DARKNESS.

All the tour guides are visually impaired and they guide you through the cities landmarks, making you feel quite safe. Following Romeo’s voice, we did the following:

1)   Strolled (well, more like stumbled) through Central Park. We heard the noises from the Zoo, the children playing, discovered bikes and benches, and wet our hands in the fountain.

2)   Entered a supermarket. We made a mess trying to figure out what the things on the shelves were. Romeo said that in real life he doesn’t go around the supermarket squeezing ketchup bottles and smelling pretzel packets to figure out what they are, but there are people in the supermarket that help him out. Or he shops online. Online?? How does a blind person manage to see the screen? Well, there are tons of programs and applications that read out loud and respond to voice commands and stuff life that. Who knew you could write an email, read online newspapers and get on Facebook without needing your eyes?

3)   Rode on the subway, minus the nasty smells and crazy people #win. The subway was super cool, it had sliding doors and actually moved! The seats were just as the subway ones, and there were speakers all around of people talking on the phone and asking you to get out of the way and stuff like that, very realistic!

4)   Experienced Times Square. Even the temperature changed when we left the subway. Times Square without the crazy ass lights was nothing like the real thing, but the noise was still pretty intense. Romeo urged us constantly to discover objects and figure out what they were. Farid was a cheater, he actually got out his cell phone light (which he was not supposed to have with him anyways! And his pants glowed a couple times ‘cause someone kept calling him). WTF, thanks a lot for reminding me I am not blind for an hour, Farid.  

5)   Had a nice little chat at a Café. This is where most of the Dialog In The Dark took place, and Romeo opened the table for discussion and questions. We could ask him ANYTHING we wanted about his life. This was pretty cool, we learnt tons about what it means to be blind.

One interesting thing was when Farid asked how Romeo pictured himself NOW (he became blind at age two). He didn’t picture himself – didn’t really think about what he looked like. I realized the contrast between his attitude and my attitude if I suddenly became blind – I would need to constantly picture stuff, including myself, because I’ve always been able to see. This is why I also felt the need to picture him throughout the tour, and from his voice, touch and presence I nailed his size (big) and color (black). But really, physical appearances did not matter AT ALL here. In the end I had no interest in knowing what he looked like; I had liked his personality so much already through what he said. In a sense it must be a gift to be blind and get to know people through their voices, understanding their personalities without noticing the outside appearance (although a really dreadful voice must also be a turn-off even if the person has a heart of gold...)

It was great walking through these rooms (which would have probably looked horrible and bare with the lights on) feeling like we were actually surrounded by an imaginary reality. Every tour must be different, as there are many tour guides and they all personalize it their way. The group you get also makes a difference because from the questions people ask the tour takes its shape. Our particular experience was excellent and Romeo was just amazing, really funny and insightful, I loved him. I can’t describe how much I admire Romeo and everyone that lost/never had the sense of sight and still lives their life at the fullest. Dialog In The Dark ($18 for students) was totally worth it and I highly recommend you check it out if you're in New York! 

The Big Apple Checklist

THE BIG APPLE? Yes, why New York is known as the Big Apple is a very complicated story that has nothing to do with apples. I would call it The Big Rat, but that’s not a very marketable name.

• Try New York Style Cheesecake (check)

• Visit the Statue of Liberty (check)
  Let me tell you, the Statue is way overrated. It’s TINY and we saw it in the distance by taking the (free) ferry to Staten Island, where, by the way, there is NOTHING to do.

• Go to a Broadway Musical (check)
  We went to see Memphis, which won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical. We got Student Rush tickets for $26 so we were pretty happy. It was a great show with great costumes, music and scenery. It was mostly “black” music, and the story reminded me of the movie Hairspray. The scenery is what impressed me the most, how furniture moved on its own and people came out of the floor. Talking with friends later, though, it was interesting to notice how the level of enjoyment you get from a musical depends on whether you knew the songs from before or not.

• Go to watch a play (check)
  We went to The Select (The Sun Also Rises), a Hemingway adaptation in the New York Theater Workshop. It was fantastic, truly a great production.

• Learn how to skateboard (check)
  My amazing hosts Juli and Elsa taught me how to do it and now I get the basics and I CAN’T WAIT TO SKATEBOARD AGAIN!

• Fall in love with a Killer Cat (check)
  Manola was my cat friend, she was so funny and attacked everyone once in a while.

• Visit the MoMA (check)
  There is this really cool exhibition on right now, Talk To Me, which is about interactive technology. I loved how you could get the free Wi-fi and tweet your impressions using the provided hashtags at each stop – even the way of walking through the exhibition was kind of interactive!
  
  
• Have a picnic in Central Park (check)
  This is a lovely and huge park with trails, ponds and grass! People really do take advantage of it, which is great.
  
  
• Go to Times Square (check)
  Both at daytime and nighttime. So many shops and lights and people and smells and sounds. Sensory overload.
  
  
• Visit Wall Street (check)
  No light shines through this street.
  
  
• Visit Chinatown and Little Italy (check)
  We had dinner at Nagasaki, this tiny little Japanese restaurant you wouldn’t see unless you were looking for it. We entered and there were obviously no seats available, but the waiter made everyone move and rearrange, change table and shift, so that two free spaces showed up. It was funny how people were okay with moving while eating their noodles.
  
  
• Survive Hurricane Irene (check)
  We stayed indoors Saturday AND Sunday, my only week-end in NYC eating Mac&Cheese and watching movies...
  
  
• Go to the SONY WonderLab Experience (check) This sucked.
  
  
• Bike along the Hudson and walk along the city’s Highline (check)
  
  
• Visit the Frogs exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History (check)
  Did you know the largest frog in the world is the size of a newborn baby? And that this tiny little frog, the golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) is one of the most venomous animals (venomous means it kills its predators, poisonous means it kills its preys) and if you touch it you die, just like that. Also, about half the frog species go through the tadpole and metamorphosis stuff, the other half hatch like froglets!
  
  
• Shop in SOHO (called like this because it’s South Of HOuston, which is a street) (no check) because everything was super expensive. There was this really trashy couch that was $18 000 and these horrible guy shoes that were $5 000…
  
  
• Go to McClaren’s and Central Perk (no check) BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST :( I feel stupid.

Street chairs in SOHO. Everyone leaves their unwanted furniture outside and you can take it home if you like it. I want THESE chairs, they're beautiful.