What makes my heart beat.

In my SMAD 311 Feature Writing class this week, we had to spend a class period writing an opinion piece on a topic we chose. I chose to write about sex trafficking, because there's nothing I'm more opinionated and passionate about. Read on to hear a bit of my heart for abolishing this epidemic and horrible industry.

It’s a trade of exploitation, manipulation and corruption, and it’s happening in suburban, urban and rural areas all across the United States—a place we unrealistically call “the land of the free.”

“Human trafficking is much closer to home than you think; victims, younger than ever, are just as likely to be the homegrown American girl next door as illegally imported foreigners,” said Amy FineCollins of Vanity Fair.

Women, children and young girls are held captive by their pimps or johns. They are beaten if they refuse to comply with his demands. They are often forced to take drugs, and they at times don’t remember the events of their nights.

They are scared into submission with acts of violence or threats of death. Their pimps tell them they are loved, promise them happiness and an escape from the struggles of their former lives, but then force them into a life worse than any they could have imagined.

They are made into objects of no value, stripped of their humanity and personality, alive only to make money for the man that owns them.

            Human trafficking is now the second fastest growing criminal industry, behind only drug trafficking, and children are approximately half of all victims, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

            It is a crime not often talked about, and its victims often stay silent out of fear of the repercussions from their pimps or johns. It’s not a lifestyle these women and children ever choose, but it’s one forced upon them out of desperation and trickery.

            Many victims come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect in their families, and they are seeking love and wanting to be wanted, and there are men waiting who know how to prey on them and play with their emotions.

            President Obama has declared January National Slavery Human Trafficking Prevention month in efforts to shed light on this illegal and immoral industry, according to the CNN Freedom Project.

It’s a step in the right direction.

            The FBI has also recognized the need for radical change, and states that they are “working hard to stop human trafficking—not only because of the personal and psychological toll it takes on society, but also because it facilitates the illegal movement of immigrants across borders and provides a ready source of income for organized crime groups and even terrorists.”

            Sex trafficking is an industry, and financially, it has been extremely successful.

            The Polaris Project based out of Washington, D.C. said “trafficking for sex and forced labor generates billions of dollars in profits by victimizing millions of people globally.” 

            The size and scale of human trafficking is sickening and horrible, and we need to take a stand against it.

            On average, victims are young children when they are forced to enter into sex trafficking of some sort. They can’t defend themselves against their johns, and we as a nation need to be their voice and their rescue.           

            The Shenandoah Valley Justice Initiative recently worked to create a JMU club called SVJI-JMU that works to involve students in the fight against modern-day slavery.

            Get involved. Don’t let this continue to be what the FBI calls “a problem of epidemic proportion.”

            These women and children are not criminals—they are victims of a horrendous crime. They should not be prosecuted—they should be protected. They don’t need pity—they need action and they need us.

Wednesday the 11th through Friday the 13th

Wednesday- last Writing in the Public Sphere class
We discussed 5 articles that had been my assigned reading for the week, and they were all about the public sphere in today's world with social media and the Internet playing a huge role. It was so interesting to see all the theories we've been discussing come into play in today's society. I had time halfway through to come upstairs and analyze my own Facebook and Twitter feeds and look at how many of the posts were about personal/private matters as opposed to matters concerning the general public or matters of public interest, and lemme tell ya, hardly ANY were really worthwhile. Makes you wonder about the point of it all, really.

Our outing was to the London Transport Museum (another outing we had replaced because of duplicates with my other classes) and we met up with Kelly and her teacher Judy (since their class is like ours, with just one student, and they were going there anyway).

I wrote a blog post for class about the outing and about my reflections of the class as a whole here: http://londonpublicsphere.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/week-seven-outing-london-transport.html ...so read that instead of me writing it twice :)

To sum it up, though, I was SO SAD to say goodbye to Nina after how incredible this summer has been having her class all to myself. She was SO affirming and encouraging throughout the outing, telling me repeatedly how glad she was that I didn't drop the class and how I'm a "real gem" and have been such an incredible student. I've never felt more appreciated, respected, and valued from a teacher. She became so much more than a professor to me over the past two months and I loved our time together so much. I want to soak up more and more of her wisdom and knowledge! Hearing her tell me that I'm brilliant and did incredible work this semester just blew me away and humbled me like no other, especially coming from her. It was a big love fest essentially, as Judy was just as complimentary of Kelly, and we were just as appreciative of them as our awesome teachers! We hugged goodbye at the museum gift shop after the outing and I definitely teared up. Best experience of the summer by far, and I'm so grateful that I had that class. SO thankful.

I spent quite a while browsing through the gift shop after Nina left, and found some cool things for people I still needed gifts for, which was awesome. Of course, when I left to walk home, it started to torrentially pour, and my umbrella flipped inside out about 5 times on the way. It was pretty awesome, lemme tell ya. I even tripped and almost fell flat on my face at one point too, so that was cool. Gotta love being by yourself and having no one to laugh with you when you make a total fool out of yourself!

I grabbed a sandwich on my way home for lunch, and ate when I got back to the house. I worked on writing some of my final papers and such for the afternoon. Made dinner at the house later on, had our group meeting and did our course/program evaluations, and then stayed in for the rest of the evening.


Thursday- no classes!
So weird that all of our classes are over and all that's left is final papers. Where has the time gone?

I woke up at 8 am to bombard Kyle with birthday love since that was when it turned his birthday in his time zone, and talked to him for a bit, and then went back to sleep for a few more hours since I had nowhere I had to be. When I finally woke up, I made lunch and worked more on my papers and got a bunch of random stuff done all day.

At around 6 ish, I left to go head towards the movie theatre where we had our group film night. It was raining like crazy again, and it wasn't the most pleasant of walks to the Soho area. I was trying to find a quick and easy place to eat on my own before the movie, but I wasn't super hungry and really just wanted a quick Pret sandwich. Of course, it was the first time in the entire time I've been here that I didn't see ten million Prets on every street...but I finally found one near the theatre and grabbed a sandwich really quick. Met up with the group at the theatre at 6:45 ish, and got our tickets to see "The Hunter."

I had watched the trailer for it and wasn't too excited about seeing it, but it ended up being a really well-made and intriguing movie. It was pretty intense and I was glued to the screen the whole time, and it made me cry too! Definitely a movie worth seeing, but not one I would need to see again. It was cool to see a movie at a London movie theatre too, since I hadn't done that yet! They have SO MANY commercials and previews before the movie started...like at least 30 minutes of them. Too much.

I came back from the movie and went to bed pretty early.

Friday-
Woke up early to head to St. Pauls again- there was a group of people who had wanted to go to the top of the cathedral when we went with class a few weeks ago that didn't get the chance to, so they were doing it today. Amanda and I wanted to go to the Twinings tea shop on Fleet Street afterward, so it made sense that I went with them and just waited for them to be done. It was a gorgeous morning, but got pretty chilly and really windy in the shade, but I stayed on the steps of the cathedral while they all went up, and then wandered around a bit to take a bunch of pictures of St. Pauls that I hadn't taken when we went the first time.

there's the group there!

After they all came back down, Amanda and I walked down Fleet Street to go to the Twinings tea shop again- I love that place! And wanted more tea for people back home. And Amanda hadn't been yet, so it was on both of our bucket lists to do before we left.

After a very complicated purchasing process (ringing things up more than once, than not at all, and us going back to fix it, the manager having to help us, etc), we finally got all the tea we wanted and were off in search of a Yo! Sushi for lunch!

One of my mom's coworkers has been reading this (Hi!) and recommended some new places for us to try to eat at, which was awesome since I've definitely been stuck in a Pret rut when I'm on the go. We ended up walking all the way from Fleet Street over to Brunswick Center to the only Yo! Sushi we knew of, and definitely worked up an appetite in the process.

It was such a cool place- a conveyor belt wrapped around the bar area and had color coordinated dishes that indicated the prices, and you just grabbed what you wanted and ordered other things from the waiter as well. I grabbed edamame from the belt, and ordered a veg noodle dish and dumplings too- best meal ever. So, so good.

YUM YUM YUM

Thank you so much for the recommendation, Amy! I can't wait to try Leon next. Let me know if there's anything else you suggest :)

I was pretty tired after all of our adventures, so Amanda and I came back to the flat. A horrible migraine promptly hit and decided to make my day suck, so I spent a lot of time trying to nap and rest and get rid of it, with no luck at all. Slept for a while but really needed to be productive, so I just decided to suck it up and catch up on my blog and get work done. Everyone else is out at a bar celebrating two birthdays of people in our group and I wish I was there...but sometimes you gotta just take it easy. Oh well.

Off to bed, hopefully my head doesn't hate me so much in the morning!

Monday/Tuesday, the 9th/10th

Monday- Media and Politics
We had about an hour of lecture, a break to go grab breakfast, and then no outing, but instead we watched the Prime Minister's questions online! The Prime Minister's questions is a weekly, 30-minute really energetic and amusing interrogation of the PM. Basically, people ask him questions and he avoids them very skillfully while everyone hoots and hollers and makes a ton of noise and gets very worked up. It was interesting to watch and definitely VERY different than politics in the US!

We got our papers back and got information about our final essays that will be written in class- it's the only class I'm really anxious about in terms of the final. I got a B on the paper, which was a little disappointing after all the work that I put into it, and even more so because everyone else wrote theirs the night before and got the same grades or better. Oh well. His comments were that my quotations were too long and I didn't include the page numbers in my citations...so if that's why I got a B, I at least feel good that my argument and writing was good, and it was just little things that docked my grade down.

We got out of class super early since we didn't have our outing, and I've spent the day doing readings and writing papers and getting stuff done for all my classes and just overall being productive!

When Amanda got back from her class, we went to the grocery store to get food for the week, and came home and made dinner (an omelette with lots of peppers for me, and fresh fruit). Have been working on writing my final paper for Media and Society all evening, too.


Tuesday- Media and Society
We talked about film and talked more about our final papers and watched two different movies for our class time, and then were off on our outing. We went on a walk around Soho that was pretty random, but we saw a bunch of record shops, saw where 20th Century Fox is located, went to the Radha Krishna Temple, went down a street where brothels used to be very popular, saw the Palladium, went to a record shop, and just explored the area basically.

Palladium

our professor leading us through the streets of Soho

I'm constantly being surprised by how many new things I keep discovering that are right around where I've been living all summer- London has so much more to offer than I'll ever be able to see and explore fully.

After Soho, we had time before Culture By Design, so a few of us came back to Madison House to eat and kill time before class. I made a quick lunch and then we were back off to the FSU building for class.

We had a guest speaker instead of a normal lecture- the Film Adaptations professor (who is also BFF with our professor) came to talk to us about TV shows and the contrasts between similar types of shows in the UK and US and such. He was a really awesome professor, and I loved his lecture. We watched the teasers (intro scene before the opening credits) of a variety of pilots of TV shows from here and from the States, and it was really cool to see the differences and similarities between them.

After watching the clips, we got in groups and had to plan/write the teaser of our own cop drama show. At first, we had no idea what to make ours about, but we eventually came up with a pretty cool idea about a cop show set in suburbia. Our basic idea was a parallel between kids playing chase/cops and robbers on a playground and that scene switching to a real life chase between a good guy and bad guy in a neighborhood and then back to the kids, etc, as the two scenes echoed each other, ending in a shot being fired by the real good/bad guy right as one of the kids pretends to shoot another kid, and then the kids turning around because it turns out the real chase is on the street near where they are playing, etc.

It was really cool to hear the other groups' ideas and to discuss what was hard about writing the teaser, etc. I really liked that we actually got to do it for ourselves instead of just watching real TV shows, and it was a really fun last class.

We got out pretty early since we didn't have an outing, which was nice. Came back to the flat and had time to kill again before we went to see Matilda!

We had to be at the theatre at around 6:30 pm, and it was just nearby in Covent Garden area, so we all walked there together to meet Rusty. We got our tickets from him and took pictures as a group before heading in to the theatre.

Our whole group with Rusty and his daughters!

I was getting SO excited for this musical- I loved Matilda as a kid and read the book several times and saw the movie and just love Roald Dahl's work, so I was really excited to see it come to life! When we got in and saw the AWESOME set, I got even MORE stoked about it. It was just so cool!

seriously, how cool is this?!

Liz, Kelly, me, Nora

The show was absolutely wonderful- the kids did SUCH a good job and the girl that played Matilda was excellent! It was so fun seeing the story come to life and to catch all the things geared at adults that would have gone over the kids' heads. The songs were so good and the set was just incredible the whole time, I loved it. Such a great show! Ahhh.

Came back to the house afterward and crashed! Tuesdays are always SO LONG.

Wednesday May 30

Today was the day I had my class where I'm the only student. It was in the flat below mine instead of in the FSU building, which is really nice and convenient especially when it's just me. My professor is an awesome Canadian/Dutch woman who is so sweet and "really lovely" as Charlotte said. She kept commenting on how brave I was to stay enrolled in the class even though it's just me, but I really loved the dynamic from the start.

It's definitely different in a one-on-one setting, with all the attention on me. The class is Writing in the Public Sphere and we talked a lot about how I personally defined the "public" and how I think it has evolved over time, and we had a really good discussion about the distinctions between the public and private spheres. It was interesting with only my input, and not the ideas of other students to bounce off of, and it's going to take some getting used to. It went really well though, and she had lots of good feedback on what I was saying.

She asked me a lot about my personal interests and passions and I'm going to have a lot of say in shaping how the class goes. If there are outings I don't want to do or will be doing for another class, she gave me the total freedom to think of other things I want to do, and to think of ideas for how we can go about the class assignments as it's just me. I'm going to be writing a separate blog for that class to reflect on the outings, so I'm excited about that.

Our outing was a Bloomsbury walk, and I was really hoping it would be new sights and information, because we have done quite a few walks around the area already. It was focused on public, semi-public, and private spaces, so we stopped at all the squares (park areas) and learned their history and backgrounds, stopped at homes of various famous characters in history, saw many education sites (University of College London) and ended at the Wellcome Museum (a free museum totally open to the public with AWESOME body/health exhibits that we explored separately to look at museums that are free and what is associated with them).

At one point, we were stopped at one of the squares where there was bus bombing a few years ago and we were talking briefly about it when a man who worked nearby stopped to talk to us. He had been standing on the street when the bombing happened, and he was describing exactly what it had been like in those horrific moments. He has first aid training and was able to help right at the scene and it was incredible and devastating to hear his personal experience with something that seemed so far away from anything that could ever happen in the serenity and beauty of that square. It was incredible hearing his story and so unexpected. Londoners are awesome and have such cool stories when you can meet them and hear about them.

It will be such an awesome class and I'm really glad I stayed enrolled. It's going to be a really unique experience.

Amanda and I finally made it to Paperchase after I got back from class and had some lunch- it's an incredible three level store that has tons of journals and stationary as well as books and art supplies and gifts and home decor and a cafe, etc etc etc. I spent forever in there, even after Amanda left to get to her class. Such a cool place.

I took a much needed nap for a bit, am working on this blog, and tonight there's an optional group outing to Trafalgar Square for a showing of the Royal Opera that hopefully we will go to- weather permitting! I think it rained during my nap, but hopefully it's done for the day/night.

London is home already. It feels like this is where I live, 100%. Such an incredible, amazing, unforgettable experience, and it's only been a week since I left the US.