We went to the Tenement Museum to meet Victoria Confino. The Tenement Museum is located on 97 Orchard Street. To get there we took the F train to Delancey St. and then walked from there.

The Tenement Museum is a place where you can go to learn about immigrants and where the poor once lived.

When we arrived we split up into group A and B. Megan and Molly (Maeve’s mom) were with group B. Deborah and us were with group A. Group A went to meet Victoria Confino while we learned about her. When half an hour went by we switched. Group B went to meet Victoria Confino and group A went to learn about her.

We went to another building to meet her. We were told she was from Ireland and we were supposed to pretend that we were an Italian family fresh off the boat. We were with a guide. Victoria had a strong accent. She had us sit in her parlor she had 3 rooms in her tenement apartment. One was the Parlor, one was the kitchen and in the back there was a bedroom. She had 2 boarders sleeping in the bed in the parlor head to toe. Victoria is one of the older siblings out of many siblings. She lives with boarders, her siblings and her parents.

Then we started asking our questions about what it was like to live in America and then we also tried to learn things about her. When she came to America and went to an American school she didn’t know how to read, write and speak English. She was put in a second grade class even though she was about 13 years old.

Her family doesn’t have a lot of money. Now she does some sewing as a job. She told us that boys and girls had different jobs.

She took us to her kitchen. She let us smell and look at some of the food and spices.

It was really surprising they fit about 10 people into that small 3 bedroom tenement. The whole tenement apartment together wasn’t much bigger than Deborah and Megan’s classroom.

It was cool to see an actor playing an immigrant and making it really feel like we were actual immigrants. We learned a lot about the life and history of immigrants in a really fun way. It makes us really think about about what we have now and what other people had to go through to survive now and back then. This was only our first time going to the Tenement Museum but there are many more trips there to come.