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Amish Town - Intercourse (8 Jan 2000) |
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Intercourse - a town with an interesting name and even more interesting people. Where does it get its name? I have no idea. In fact it was previously known as Cross Key. Anyway, 2 hours from Philadelphia is this town called Intercourse. Of all the Amish town, this could well be the biggest in America. Most of the movies or TV shows about the Amish people are usually filmed here, e.g. Witness. Thanks to my good friend Alvin and his lovely wife Fun, they took us to see the “country”. This sure is different from New York City. Vast land and open spaces. Small town with one main street named “Main Street”. Man, this is the country area. Plantation still dominates this Keystone State. When we finally got to Intercourse, we were quite pleased that we came. You can actually see the Amish’s buggies on the road. These horse carriages are used as it is the only transportation allowed by the Amish people and the practice hasn’t change for hundreds of years. This town has about 20,000 Amish people. Their way of life is very simple and there are many restrictions. Firstly, you can’t marry outside the community. Once you marry outsiders, you will become an outsider. Therefore, you can never marry into the community. Either you are born an Amish or you are not. You can’t marry in. Second, you can’t use luxurious items or facilities like electricity, cars and other modern equipment. Till this day, they still live without electricity and process their own water supply. We went into this guest house where they run a 15 minutes tour. It’s quite an interesting tour explaining the lifestyles of the Amish people and why they are the way they are. For example, they are not allow to use buttons because soldiers use buttons. They usually marries in November after the harvest. All women wear an apron. Married women wear black apron while single women wear white. Single men has to be clean shaven while married men are not allow to shave their beard. Since the dress code is similar and the colors of their clothes are similar, they look kind of like each other. All Amish only go to school up to the 8th Grade which is at 14 years old. No science subject is taught. The teacher herself has only studied up to 8th Grade. They follow a basic Christian faith and very conservative in their beliefs. It is in their belief that they are mean to be good farmers and housewife so they do not venture too much out of the basic life style. No doctors, no engineers and no politician. Just normal old-fashion jobs. They pay their taxes but never uses any of services provided by the government. They stay within their community and expect others to stay out of their community. They are harmless peaceful people with simple lives. They still live the way they did 2 hundreds years ago and probably will remain the same for the next 2 hundred years. Being in this town is like being back in time. A definite must-visit if you are ever in the neighborhood.
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