Today, we went to Roosevelt island. I’ve never heard of it before so the size and location was unexpected. From the Island. you could see Queens on one side and Manhattan on the other. Taking the tram there we were mainly surrounded by tourists. There is also a way to get there via subway. The island was surprisingly saturated with greenery. On the other hand, there were construction trucks nearly everywhere. The one side of the island had modern buildings, shopping complexes and was very developed. The older side of the island was apparent by the cobblestone roads and odd panelling on apartments. Being surrounded by made everything feel cooler and cleaner. A lot of people who work here are foreign. I bump into this lady with a thick accent and ask her if she lives here. She says she comes here to work like most people and says it’s boring. She’s obscure and starts repeating herself. After sitting next to me, she asks me the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. After a while I bump into two mothers who have lived on the island for two years. They say the most prominent change the island has seen in her time there is the construction of a Cornell campus on the island.
I was surprised at how starkly this visit contrasted the preliminary research I did. The area seemed to be on the way to being developed. It reminded me of Newport, New Jersey.
