Friday, August 7, 2009

The following piece was written following an exciting YAC experience. Our writers had an opportunity to meet with Justin Ellis and Sarah Corbett (see July 28 and 29 entries below). These two journalists shared their writing experiences with us. After our discussions we hit the streets looking to answer the question, "who are the people in our neighborhood." Thank you Kiernan for sharing this with us!

Torrents of Tourists

Tourists, if you like them or not, bring money to our shops. I knew that before I did this article, but I always thought that tourists couldn’t understand Maine culture. Never in a million years did I think that each one had an amazing story to tell.

Joel Wilts is from Connecticut and is extremely fond of his pup, Maya. Mark and Mary-Lou are from Ontario, Canada. Although they are not from America, they do have political opinions for their next-door neighbors. Their thoughts on government agree with most, but not all of the Obama administration. They believe that Canada has much better health care, but patriotic pride is something Canadians lack. On the other end of Mark and Mary-Lou there is Mimi and Giles. Mimi and Giles who are both from Virginia are here visiting family, but that’s the end of the normal tourist story. Giles is a graduate student in urban planning. She enjoys beehives, bike rides, hiking and tennis just to name a few. Mimi is a historical architect and has two cats. Together they have some pretty interesting ideas like public transportation being a human right or organic food being the same price as non-organic which are coupled with some main-stream ideas such as pro-choice and supporting our president, Barack Obama.

Tourists may never understand what it means to be a Mainer, but tourists have amazing stories to tell and are from totally different backgrounds. This article changed my mind about hating tourists because each one has a unique story to tell.