Walking On Garbage And Posting Signs

That’s the industrialized part of Detroit as we were leaving last Tuesday morning.  We were going to meet up with others so that we can go around posting signs along the Detroit river about advising people on what fish they should and shouldn’t eat, due to contamination.  Normally, the bottom feeders such as catfish are the ones you don’t want to eat.

So the first location we went to go put up signs was probably the second worst.  The first worst place was the last location and I didn’t get many pictures…more on that later.  So at the first place it was near the bridge to Canada (?) I guess…or possibly a bridge to Nowhere, but I’m not sure.

I did manage to get those urban decay photos I wanted.  This area of Detroit is really bad.  There’s so many closed business and dangerous areas.  When I finally got the chance to learn how to post the signs about fish consumption, some guy came over and said people aren’t going to pay attention to those signs.  He suggested we just toss them into the water….of course, we didn’t though.  He’s probably right though.  I doubt many will pay attention, fish and fishing is extremely important here and telling people what and what they should eat is hard to do.  But, it’s necessary for people’s health.

Anyways, the Michigan state worker showed us how to post the signs and he was impressed by my quick metal cutting ability.  Then the lab manager said that means she might be able to beat us up lol.  Next, our stop was at Belle Isle.  It was a nice day to be there.  Belle Isle is the big city park of Detroit.  It’s an island and you can easily see Canada.

Ummm…I have no idea what most of these buildings are.  Pretty sure one of them is the planetarium (?) and one is lighthouse.  So parts of Belle Isle was seriously trashed over the holiday weekend.  The next place we went to go post signs, I think I found a bottle of urine.  At least it looked like urine and when I was kicking it, the lady with us said, “you don’t wanna know what’s in that“.

I didn’t take a picture of that bottle ….OR DID I?!

That’s me in the picture btw lol After that, the people which is me, students and the lab manager put up a sign by ourselves without the Michigan state people.  When we got there, there was no good place to post the sign except on a light pole.  I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to do that but oh well.  When we started to put on the sign, found out SOMEONE put on the metal bracket wrong.  Of course, in blame game, I point out that the lab manager put it on wrong.  Which technically he did and even acknowledged it.  Then the rest of the day when putting on the brackets, he double checked with me to see if he’s doing it right lol.

After Belle Isle we stopped  in another place, which was a slightly nicer slice of Detroit with big houses and nice park area.  It was a pretty nice nature habitat and park area that we went to.  We were all hungry so as we were putting up the signs we were talking about our favorite type of meats.  I pointed out that I actually don’t like catfish or chicken.  A girl in our lab is from Dubai and she apparently loves chicken and sushi.  Another weird girl that talks a lot said she likes turkey and chicken.  The other adults said they like catfish, hate deer and love salmon…but I think we all loved salmon.

After posting the signs at Belle Isle, we stopped for some lunch at McDonald’s.  After complaining about how I don’t like chicken, I ended up getting the chicken sandwich at McDonald’s I think I just got it only because others got it.  Anyways, it taste good only cause I soaked it in a lot of packets of ketchup.  The last place we stopped was the dirtiest place.  The only glimmer of hope was this migrating bird which was outgoing enough to approach us and we gave it some food.

After we left there I felt like something was in my eye.  I kept scratching at my eye, then it felt like I had a bump on my eye that kept rubbing against my eyelid whenever I blinked.  Luckily, this all happened towards the end of the trip when we were on our way back to school.  I also managed to drive home with one eye.

Eventually I decided I needed to go to the ER.  When we got there, the lady put some cool yellow dye on my eye and did a brief swipe of the black light to see where the injury was. In the end, all she told me to do was take so eyedrops.  So, we headed over to the local Rite Aid and got my prescription eyedrops.  During the wait for the eyedrops I shopped around the store and got assorted colors of nail polish and lip gloss.  Anyways, so that was my day in the field working in the city of Detroit.  It wasn’t that bad, it was actually fun.

I wanted to blog about my other days but I have too many pictures and crap so I have to create another post fast, before I forget what happened!  Toodles!