A photo of me sitting on some rocks next to the bridge in the middle of Tacoma’s Chinese Reconciliation Park, taken by my lovely friend Luna.
this tuesday, our program visited tacoma’s downtown to go check out the exhibits that were up in the washington state history museum, the tacoma art museum (TAM) and visit the chinese reconciliation park that sits along the waterfront in between downtown and north tacoma. for me, though, this wasn’t a field trip as much as it was a nostalgia trip. tacoma is my home; i consider it to be my second hometown, next to san diego, my birth city. i’ve lived in tacoma for almost 10 years now, and in washington for about 12, but it still feels like i moved here just a while ago. time is weird.
while most of the folks in our program were busy absorbing the information from the museums and the park (i really hope they did at least, these exhibits and this place mean a lot, there’s a lot of history hidden in the streets and buildings of tacoma that i’m still trying to uncover), i spent a lot of my time reflecting on my life in tacoma so far. i was distracted by all the memories i’ve built up over the years in that city that sometimes i just couldn’t pay attention to what was happening around me. i’ve only been to the history museum once before this field trip, and it was for my school’s homecoming dance in my sophomore year. i’m not a big dance or party person so it’s a wonder even to me why i went, but that night, instead of dancing with my friend-slash-date-that-i-didn’t-realize-was-a-date (oops, sorry buddy. we still had lots of fun hanging out that night though), i took off my flats and ran through the entire first floor of the museum in a sugar-induced rush, effectively sweating off all of my makeup in the process, but it was a fun night nonetheless. as i walked around the museum with our class, though, i thought back to my excitable high school self, back to that night. i vaguely remember looking briefly at the exhibits that night, but during our trip, i kept thinking to myself: would i have been as absorbed in these exhibits as i was today if not for that dance? most likely not, since i wasn’t as much of a history nerd as i am now, but it was nice to really take in the exhibit with the knowledge and mindset that i have now. i actually need to take a look through my phone gallery later and look at the photos that i took of the parts of the exhibit that tie in with this program. maybe after i finish updating my blog with these entries.
unfortunately, i wasn’t able to look at the exhibits in the art museum, but for a good reason. when your class’ field trip is basically you going home, wouldn’t you also want to visit home? after i was done looking around the history museum, i called my mom and asked if she could take me out for lunch, and luckily for me she had some time. it was nice to see my mom for a bit and eat with her at this teriyaki place down the way from my house. we used to always get takeout from that place, usually after soccer games or if she didn’t want to make dinner that night, haha. i even convinced my partner to come down and eat with us, and he was sweet enough to come down to our end of town and join us. i guess this whole field trip was just a trip down memory lane for me. this weekend my partner and i are gonna go to the art museum together and i’ll get to go look at what i missed then. i’ll probably update this post with my thoughts once i do that.
i also thought i had never heard of the chinese reconciliation park when chico brought it up, but once we had gone down to the waterfront i remembered that i have been there before, i just never realized what the place was called before. i’ve gone there a few times to walk my dog with my sister or my partner and his sister’s dog (there are always people walking their dogs at the waterfront. it’s a nice thing to see when you’re having a bad day). once when i went with my partner to the park he told me about how the shiisaa* sitting in front of the fuzhou ting** had been vandalized in the past (which i found an article for here). i could see where the folks had dug through the mouth of the shiisaa to get to the granite ball that was inside of it before, since the teeth and mouth of the statue had noticable chips and dents from whoever vandalized it. that park is a beautiful and highly important space, and i hope no one else decides to disrespect it like that in the future.
all in all, it was interesting to be back. it was nice to see my mom and my partner and to learn more about my home, even if going home isn’t always the best time for me. i think i’ll revisit the history museum, as well as the art museum and the chinese reconciliation park inevitably in the future. what will i see next that i never noticed before?
*shiisaa: traditional chinese statues, similar to gargoyles. used to ward off evil spirits (open mouth) or keep good ones in (closed mouth)
**fuzhou ting: fuzhou is tacoma’s sister city in china; ting: pavillion in mandarin