Cheese Steaks and Prison

Today was a day of early rising and we walked down the street to the bagel shop across the street first thing in the morning. The bagels were really dense but it was still very good. We had some small talk and it was a very pleasant time being together in the morning for the first time in a while. At one point I just started laughing so hard I probably would have snorted my orange juice if I was drinking it while some of the jokes were being told.

Evan speaking with Ben Franklin

Then afterwards we went to UPenn to go to the site visit. The admissions officer, Kim, was very nice and engaging. So was Louis, the student taking us around on a tour, but Penn didn't speak to me as much as Vanderbilt honestly. It's just a little too much on the urban side for me. Everyone else seemed to like Penn more than Vandy though.

After a quick lunch near the campus we went to the Eastern State Penitentiary and had a tour with a tour guide named Angelina. She was very nice and knew exactly what she was talking about. Probably the most interesting fact I learned today was that Al Capone was actually held in this prison.

One of the towers at the penitentiary

As we were leaving the penitentiary to go to Spruce Harbor Park, we saw a taxi cab that had the number (215) 666-6666 on the side of it, which we decided to dub "the taxi cab to Hell." It became the running gag for the rest of the day, honestly.

Once we were at Spruce Harbor, we hung around by the water with a snack and just had a conversation about what we did while at VSA as we played games. It was quite interesting hearing about what everyone else had done, because we were all in different classes, groups, and houses. It was especially funny how everyone's group chats from our respective proctor groups were blowing up and giving us more conversation fodder before we went to go to dinner.

Evan and Ms. Hansen playing giant Connect 4.

Dinner was delicious. We had cheese steaks and I was really surprised with how good they were. They were just everything a hot sandwich should be and it was really nice. After dinner we just stopped by the bookstore before heading back to the hotel, and that was the day in summary.

CHEESE STEAK.