Immersion Week In Chicago

Immersion Week in Chicago

Emilee Biondi

September 1, 2022

The 5 senses. What I can hear, smell, taste, see, and feel. All of these senses were activated in my immersion week in Chicago. Even though I have walked all of my life, this week I was walking in a different way, and now since I have taken this class, I will never walk how I did before again. There is so much to gain from a walk that I am disappointed in myself that I did not utilize until now.

We started off our week with a walk in the Lincoln Park Depaul Campus. I have walked this route before, but I never allowed myself to really see where I was and appreciate the world around me. As we started to walk in the beaming sun, chatter arose of the students and I complaining and not engaging in the class’s objective of the “history in footsteps”. Communicating is obviously important, especially in the beginning days of being an incoming freshman at a new university, but I took this week to communicate with my mind, body, and soul.

On Tuesday we started our day by getting a birds eye view of Chicago. It was beautiful and stems creativity for all who look upon it. Endless questions come to my mind when I look at the city, I think about how in between each one of those perfect grid lines is a neighborhood that has its own culture that I was eager to explore throughout the upcoming week.

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Some of the towns that stood out to me during immersion week the most were Humboldt Park, which is a Puerto Rican neighborhood, Bronzeville, which is an African American neighborhood, and Pilson which is a Mexican neighborhood. These communities hold history of all of its residents that is apparent through landmarks in Bronzeville, and colorful murals that line the streets in Humboldt Park and Pilson. These towns care about keeping the streets the same as when their ancestors stepped onto them, all while keeping their history alive. Gentrification has widely grown in Chicago and I applaud these towns for keeping their area unique and withholding the generations of stories.

I connected my mind, body, and soul this week by thinking of the walk as a museum and that every person was someone of importance, and every corner was an area with decades of history. By doing this I noticed things I would of normally walked past and was able to experience how every city block has a different ambience. While looking at the towns like Old Town and Gold Coast with high end neighborhoods and new money, I realized there was a lack of that historical meaning that Pilson and Garfield Park carried. History is very important to me and it seemed in more historic areas is where the strongest sense of community was.

Immersion week allowed me to go into areas of the city I would not normally go to because of the lack of knowledge I have on these areas, and the rumors that cause fear about small towns surrounding Chicago. I believe that change is scary, and that is where peoples’ fear comes from. Instead of being scared of new adventures I am excited to embrace them, like how I did this week. I will continue to use my skills I have learned this week about mindful walking by taking in the world around me, and embracing new scenery, instead of ignoring it.