Our tour began with handing out our maps, which (so far) has been the only map-based tour amongst the class. We stopped at our stops to explain how they related to both our home place and our memories. The other tour leaders handed out visual references to the class. While we gave our maps to each student, other tour leaders handed out one visual reference per group. The tours differed in other ways as well. For example, one tour was more activity based, while ours was more of a talking experience.
The Wheels students gave us their tour on places that were meaningful and important to them. For each place on our tour, we told the class what it meant for the Wheels students and what it reminded us about. We made connections to each place from our home towns. The audience seemed to be intrigued and interested in the stories we were sharing. There were funny moments when we were talking about memories back home.
Exploring the streets of Washington Heights was definitely an experience. From taking a tour to giving a tour, we can surely say that we feel relatively familiar with that part of the town. We spent a significant amount of time researching and visiting Washington Heights. The perimeter of the part town that we saw now feels like a place we could visit on our own, or even with people we know.
