58 by the Golden Gate: Day 5: The Power of Shared Experience

View from the top of the tower at the de Young Museum

After a long first week of Breakthrough orientation, I've finally reached a weekend. As such, I really want some sleep tonight! Thus, this will be a briefer post.

My main takeaway from today is the power of shared experiences. There are three important stories to share from today which fall under that.

Firstly, during the afternoon, the teachers were split into teams and sent off into the city for a San Francisco Scavenger Hunt. I was paired up with four other wonderful teachers, and for two hours we had an absolute blast together. We crashed a wedding accidentally, saw a lady wearing a snake as a scarf, dipped our toes into the Pacific Ocean, reenacted the opening credits to Full House, visited Golden Gate Park and climbed to the top of the DeYoung Museum Tower, educated strangers about bison, fed each other yogurt-covered pretzels, built sandcastles, and generally enjoyed each others' company. And yes, I repeat, all of this happened in two hours. That kind of strong memory-building as a basis for friendship is something I felt was missing last summer during my internship's orientation, so it was a nice surprise and a great morale booster leading into our (one-day-long) weekend. [Side note: I have a slideshow of the scavenger hunt which I cannot figure out how to upload on here, so I'll keep working on it, but stay tuned. Instead, I have included photos of the fun at the bottom of this post.]

The Three San Francisco-migos!

The second important story from today tied to shared experiences was that (on a whim) I spent time this evening with my college friends, Billy and Braden. We went out to dinner at this stylish burger joint downtown and caught up on each others' lives and internships, then walked back and saw Billy's crazy-cool Google-sponsored product-placed apartment. Spending time with them today was a welcome reminder that I have a life outside of my summer job. It also led me to think about the nature of our friendships. I love both of those guys a lot, but upon further thought, I realize that we would not be friends in the first place without the shared experience of the Mask and Wig Club, and our friendship was strengthened tonight because, as we are all alone in a new place, we are each other's main resource to help us ease the transition into life here. The shared experience of living on our own in San Francisco is a way of deepening our bonds.

My first time outside the historic Castro Theater

The third story came later on in the evening when a few of my dorm-mates and I decided to go explore a park in the Castro district and get a view of the downtown skyline. Unfortunately, it was too dark so my pictures didn't come out very well, but the glow of the lights from the skyscraper windows dissipating through the fog was truly awesome. When we stopped for a few minutes to sit down and enjoy the view, an intoxicated middle-aged Latino man approached us to introduce himself, explaining to us in mostly broken English that he moved to SF from Peru. We politely accepted his introduction but did not further engage him in conversation. However, my friend Francisco, recognizing he spoke Spanish, decided to introduce himself as Dominican and continue talking to him in his native language. Over the course of about ten minutes, this man, with great passion and heart, told his entire life story to 'Cisco in fluent Spanish while the rest of us sat in bewilderment. I realize this sounds crazy, but it's true: even though I could only recognize one in every twenty or so words that he spoke, I felt tied to the warmth and honesty he was exuding.

As I watched Francisco's face listening intently to this story, I realized that something as simple as a cultural bond, as finding someone who speaks your language in an environment in which you are usually "other", was enough to build a relationship of trust between two strangers. And sure, this man was clearly under the influence. And yes, there may have been some danger in Francisco striking up a full-blown heart-to-heart with a sketchy middle-aged man in a random area with no one else around. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, watching this conversation gave me an interesting new perspective on the importance of like identities and shared experiences for humans in general, and particularly in classroom settings.

As we left the park this evening and we parted ways with this man, he called out to us, "Todos somos hermanos," or "We are all brothers." While that seems a little silly and unfounded, I think he struck something deeper than just an expression of gratitude to us for having listened to his story. After my experiences today- running into the Pacific Ocean holding hands with two people who I did not know last week, having heartfelt conversations with friends from shared experiences afar and listening to a man we did not understand who had a story to tell- I believe that there is something buried deep in the human condition which makes all of us truly brothers. We just have to give ourselves the chance to dig it out.