End of Week 1

Hey guys! Hope all of your projects are going well. My project has gotten off to a pretty neat start: it's a photography blog of Cleveland. I thought before I go off to college I should see the city I live in, so what I'm basically doing is going to all parts of Cleveland (Downtown, East side, West Side, University Circle, Lake Front, etc) and I'm taking pictures as I go and then writing about my views and thoughts about the city and what I've seen. On Monday I took the Rapid from my house, through Tower City (which I've never seen before - it's absolutely beautiful!), all the way to Windermere on the East side. On the way back I walked around University Circle for a while, going down by the Clinic and the museums, near Citizen's Academy and back up by Case.

On Tuesday, because of the dreadful weather, my mother and I went to a photography exhibit at the Cleveland Public Library which college students had made where they found old photographs of Cleveland and then rephotographed that same area again and placed the photos side by side. In the end, the biggest difference between the old and new photos is the lack of people today. Back then, in the 1930s-1950s, the streets were packed with people and cars and children. Now, they're empty. Yesterday, I once again took the train to Euclid and 120th street and then walked Euclid through Case, took the Healthline bus up to CSU, and then walked the rest of the way, through the theater district, to Public Square (the end of Euclid Avenue.) To be honest, I never expected Cleveland to be so beautiful. It also really helped that yesterday was warm and blue sky so people were out and the city didn't seem so gray.

Today was absolutely one of the best days so far: with my sponsor and several of his colleagues, we took a boat tour up the Cuyahoga River starting just by Terminal Tower and the Q and going up to nearly Lake Erie and the salt mines and then down to the Flats as well. I realized that all the times I've driven over this area and looked at this industrial center as a dump and out-of-use, I never realized that all of these industries are still very much alive and running and are in fact growing. For instance we passed today the Cuyahoga River Towing Company and they are both building new tugboats and building a giant lock to lift huge boats out the water which will be the biggest in North America. All in all, just because Cleveland's still an industrial giant, doesn't mean the giant is dead. I finished off today with a trip down to the West Side Market which is awesome. I have never wanted to buy a leg of lamb as much as I have today.

So, in the end, this project is really interesting, and is a nice way to finish off the year at home. Last week I probably wouldn't have said this, but now as I've been in Cleveland so much - we have a really great city. It's not huge and towering like Chicago or New York, but it's smaller and understated. It almost has a cozy, more intimate feeling to it. I really do think I'm going to miss it.