I have finally finished my blog project on poverty. Luckily enough I was able to make my trip into the city on Christmas Day! It was the perfect time to really differentiate who was really struggling with poverty because it was a national holiday. I went into the city around 3 that day to go to dinner with my family. It was about 25 degrees, aka it was really cold, and with the winds in the city it is even colder. We walked down 42nd street to see the tree and I spotted a good 10 homeless people on the street. It was a shock that I saw this amount of people because it was Christmas and it was freezing.  The first lady I saw was wearing a black hoodie and black sweatpants. She was dark skinned and her hair was slicked back in a bun. She was sitting down up against a building on the sidewalk floor. The main thing I noticed is the cup that she was holding did not have any change in it, but she sat there repeating " Help, give money for the holidays". She was shaking and it looked like she was on some sort of drugs. It really saddened me that she was not only so poor, but that it was a holiday. I stayed around to watch if people would give money but most people just walked past.  As I was walking to the tree at Rockefeller center i saw a couple more homeless people who were sitting on filled laundry looking type of bags. It seemed that they had there clothes and belongings in the bags. They weren't asking for money, but you could tell that they were homeless and most people avoided them as if they were invisible also. I was hoping to see more of the people interacting with the homeless especially because it was Christmas, but the questions I had asked myself on appearance were definatley answered.

I am almost ready to begin my experiment. I have written down the questions that I am going to ask myself when studying the homeless people in the city. It just so happened that I went for a quick trip to the city this past Friday. It was kind of a spur of the moment type of trip and although I did not get to do my full study, I did get to see that their were a lot of homeless people on the streets. This tells me that hopefully my study will be a success knowing that I will have people to study!  I will be performing my study over the break.

It just so happens that I will be going to the city this sunday, Decemeber 2nd. It wasnt planned, but it turns out i have to go their for a family outing. When i go to the city this sunday I won't have time to fully watch the homeless people in their habitat but i am hoping that I will be able to answer a couple of survey questions for visual appearance. I will ask myself questions like "what are they wearing?" "do they have teeth?" "how bad is their physical hygiene?" I will do another visit to the city probably a couple of days before Christmas. This will give me the chance to fully watch the homeless people and answer some more questions do to the way that they act.

2nd Quarter Project
I have already mentioned my 2nd quarter project and what I am going to do, but I am going to get into more details about my project. Of course my project is going to study poverty, but mainly I am going to be studying the homeless. I am going to take a trip to the city and study the homeless. I am going to write up a survey for myself. Hopefully, I will be able to answer all of the questions in the survey after my visit in the city. I am going to study a homeless person and do a write up about how they look and what they are wearing. I am also going to study what they say and if they have good speech. Not only am I going to study the homeless, but I am going to study the types of people who put change in the homeless people's cups. I am going to try to make my trip to New York as soon as possible before it gets to cold because hopefully their will be more people on the streets. I think that I may take a second trip, more towards Christmas to see if their is still the same amount of homeless people in the cold. Also, I am going to see if people are more generous during the holidays. I am really excited to see how my survey and natural observations come out!

For my quarter two project I am going to participate in natural observation. I am going to find a day to go the city and truly study the homeless. I am going to study what they wear, how they act, what they say. Not only am I going to study the homeless, I am going to study the way people react to their poverty.  What does it take a homeless person to say to get someone to put a little change in their cup?

I cant believe this picture. The thing that makes me sad about this is how skinny the kids are. Girls in america are anorexic and think that they are so fat when they are not. Meanwhile, kids here are so skinny and their is nothing they can do about it. The size of their body shows how much little food they are eating and it looks like they are close to death. It is sad that anorexic people chose to look like this and think this is healthy, where as people in poverty can't do anything about it.

This week I found a website about Poverty. This website told me something I had not yet come across in my research so far. This website says that we actually have plenty of food in the world to feed everyone, but the people that are suffering from hunger are so deep in poverty they don't even have the money to get this food.   So this website proposes that to get people out of poverty we do "food for work". Basically, you work for food. This way no one is hungry. Also, they give education for food. So when people get food from work they can also use that food to pay for education. This is a great way to end poverty.