NicoleDuvall

3-8-09

We had a late start today, which was nice. I enjoyed sleeping in, plus I was pretty zombified yesterday evening. When we left, we arrived at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville Tennessee for lunch. The food was really reasonable as well as good. I was very impressed.

Next, we went through the Safe Haven Homeless Shelter Exhibit which was very moving. It had pictures in color and black and white of people and children that were in the Safe Haven program and it also had little write ups underneath the pictures saying how the program has really helped them improve their lives and well being. I don’t like being upset, so I would say that my favorite picture was one of a cute little girl smiling great big in a pink outfit while sitting in the grass. Her mother took the picture of her. The reason I like this picture the best is because it actually was one of the few, if not the only happy photo that I saw in the exhibit.

We also watched a brief video that the Safe Haven Shelter had in the beginning exhibit. It was saying how families go there to get back on their feet and the programs they offer to help parents improve their parenting skills and help them get smart about finances. One lady who works for the program, was mentioning how it means so much to how to work with the children and do little crafts with them-like making bookmarks. I think it’s really nice that they are able to help the children of homeless families actually try to live a normal life, be happy, and just let them be kids and not worry about the problems that their families are facing. I hope that we get the opportunity to work with small children because they are so cute and innocent plus, no child should every have to live in poverty. Everyone should have the opportunity to have a happy childhood.

After walking through the homeless exhibit, we walked through a Medieval History Exhibit, which was kinda interesting, but not so much, because I’m not real good with history but the sculptures were pretty neat. It was still a neat opportunity.

After that, we walked through a “kiddy exhibit” which was awesome! If we weren’t on such a time constraint I would have actually participated in some of the activities they offered. They had texture design, some sort of scissor design thing, water color paintings, and a drawing people section. I thought that was really neat so that children could actually enjoy themselves, because little children are normally not that into art exhibits-more into hands on stuff. There was this one piece of art with a women and a black cat that was made entirely out of crayons-thousands of them! I thought that was so cool! All different colors too! I can’t imagine how long that took to make. The little write up on it even said that they crayons were especially cut to certain lengths for the picture. It looked like it actually “popped” out in your face when you looked at it.

Lastly, we went to the Paint in the Flesh Exhibit, which was really interesting! I think it is really hard to draw people so I thought it was really neat! I like this one picture that had a lot of people in it and everyone was different colors- I thought it represented individuality but the write up said something different. There were really so many but they were all really neat-a few were a little disturbing, but most had so much detail to the hands and face. There were a few portraits that clearly depicted people in great pain and sadness while others were just happy. I thought it was really neat but I spent most of my time in the history part.

At the end of the day we did some shopping and went to the Hard Rock Café. While we were walking around we did see quite a few homeless people laying on benches and walking around. We also saw quite a few people with cups sitting around on steps wanting some spare change. There was even one guy who actually walked up to his and asked us for some change but we said “sorry, we can’t.” I don’t want to be mean, but if you help one, you should help all and you just can’t. Also, you don’t know what they are going to do with the money unless you actually take them to go get food. It was said. I hate not being able to help people. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to help others at the Rescue Mission later on in the week. All in all, it was a good day!