July 2011

Oh  my goodness, I have not been keeping up with this at all! Well here is a little update. On July 10th Bobby moved in to the house that we will be renting! It's an adorable 2 bedroom house with a little yard for Lucy to play in. It's got hardwood floors, a basement and a sweet little fireplace. We're both so excited to start our life there together in less than 2 months!

Wedding plans are coming along very slowly... I made the mistake of making my own invitations and since I'm so not on top of it, they are going to be very late... Ugh.

I don't really have any other news for you!

4 Months

Oh. My. Gosh. I am getting married in 4.. count them... 4 months!!!! I cannot even believe it! I have SO many things that I need to get done and have been procrastinating about! It's not even funny. I do have the important things like the place, the dress, and the man... I suppose I do need one more super important thing: The marriage license... But I have most of the most important things. Things have been good at work, I'm adjusting well and I'm almost done with all of my training classes (yay!). Not much else has been going on. Bobby and I have been enjoying spending our weekends together (He has Saturdays off, I work 2-7, and we have Sundays off). He stays at my parents house from Fri-Sun so we have a lot of time together. I'm still enjoying showing him around and showing him off to my friends ;). Last night we went to the Drive in theater and saw a couple of movies with Eben, Jonno and one of their friends. It was a lot of fun. Bobby's seemed to hit it off with all of my brothers and my brother in law so that's great! It's hard to believe how far we've come and that we'll be married in 4 months!

April

So this has been a busy month. My last day of Americorps was April 1st and Dad and Eben came down to get me on April 3rd. We drove to Pensacola, Florida and hung out there over night and swam in the ocean and ate really good seafood and then we began our long trek home. We stayed over night in Paris, IL with my aunt and uncle and then the next morning our van broke down and we got stuck there for a few hours. It was frustrating but it all worked out ok (and hey, it's not a Trygg road trip without a little car trouble right!?) We made it home without any further problems and I had a week to clear out Jonno's old room and make it mine (he moved into my old basement room). Bobby joined me here on April 15th. He drove straight through which was really tough and I'm so thankful that he made it here in one piece. I started work on the 18th with a week of orientation and then this week I just got thrown in. I'm working with adults with mental illness and/or traumatic brain injuries. The office that I work at is the step between a group home and living on their own. Our consumers are very independant and I pretty much just remind them to take their meds and then use the company car to drive them to any appointments they may have or shopping trips they need to do. It's boring and slow at times, but my bosses realize that its boring so we get to watch movies and play games and just do whatever. It's a pretty simple job so far. Bobby started his job this last week. He's still with Wells Fargo but he's moved from being a teller to a phone banker so he has a lot of training to complete.

The tornadoes in Alabama have really tugged at both of us. Tuscaloosa had an F4 tornado and that's the town that Bobby lived near and worked in. We spent a lot of time in Tuscaloosa. There's a video of the tornado heading toward the mall and you can see where Bobby and I had our first date and where we used to meet up and then the tornado went into the mall where he bought my engagement ring. Thankfully his family and friends are all alive and well. There was one friend that he couldn't get ahold of and worried about. His house was completely destroyed and he's in the hospital with a punctured lung and a smashed leg, but he's going to be ok. I'm thankful that I got out of Birmingham before all of that because tornadoes are way bigger there than they are here so it's pretty scary stuff.

In other news, Bobby and I found a place to live after we get married! A friend of mine is renting a little two bedroom house and she's friends with the owners. Her family has grown out of the house and they're looking for new renters. So Bobby and I are getting a great deal on renting an adorable 2 bedroom house! We're very excited!

Last Week

So this was my last week with BirminghamREADS Americorps, and it couldn't get over with fast enough. I made bookmarks with my kids and since that didn't take very long I did a lot of sitting around doing nothing which is, of course, the Americorps way.... Ha ha... I didn't really feel that attached to any of my kids so I thought that saying goodby wouldn't be that hard, especially since they didn't really seem that attached to me. But then there were a few moments with certain kids that made me laugh or made me realize that they'd miss me and it made me a little sad. One little boy wrote "Thank you for letting me read Ms. Trygg" on his bookmark which was a big awww moment for me. My after school kids are going to be the hardest to say goodbye to. A couple of weeks ago Tracy was going through some stuff and I wanted to cheer her up, so I had the after school kids make cards for her. They said things like "gone" and "it hurt" and "I love you so much and I miss you but I know that you're gone" and it made me see that it does hurt them when we come and go. So I made sure to talk with them about my leaving and they all wanted to know if I was leaving to get married and they were disappointed to hear that my wedding isn's until September. One even asked "When you get married is your husband gonna make you pregnant the next day? Cause that's what you're s'posed to do. Then your  belly gets bigger and bigger and bigger until a baby busts out." Ha ha. They have such a way with words... Today will be my last day with them and Tracy is going to make an appearance and it'll be a bug reunion and a bittersweet goodbye. I'm very excited to go home but there are many kids that I will always wonder about. I promised my after school kids that I would give the librarians my email address so that they can write me notes and everthing. I also plan on sending them cards and postcards as well. I also have to email them a few wedding pictures because they are obsessed with my wedding!

I don't really know what I was expecting to get done this year, and I had fully expected to be here until September. I am glad that I came here and I feel like I learned a lot this last few months about myself, about Bobby, about Birmingham and about my family. I learned that not every place is the same as home, even in the U.S. there are places and kids that are suffering. I don't have to fly across an ocean or even the Gulf of Mexico to find someone who needs to be loved on, they are right here at my doorstep. I've learned how broken our education system is and how dangerous it is to the kids involved when adults shrug their shoulders and say "this is just how it is, deal with it.". I've been united with the love of my life. I've promised to marry him and share my life with him. I've learned that my family will drive across the country on 2 weeks notice so that I can be at home with them again. That's real love. I've learned that I can talk to my mom on the phone for 3 hours and not run out of things to say. That's real friendship. I've learned that being apart from your first niece for the first 7 months of her life is torture. I've learned that even with all the ways that I had a hard time really falling in love with Eagle Brook Church, that now I miss it and I can't wait to get to go back every week.

I'm excited for all of the things that are to come this year and in years to come. I'm starting a new job in 2 weeks! I'll be working with adults with brain injuries or mental illnesses and teaching them life skills such as doing laundry or making and keeping appointments. The company I'm going to be working for also always has openings working with open child protection cases which is what I've been wanting to go back to school for. So I'm excited to go to school and then move up into that job. I'm getting married in September and starting the greatest adventure of my life with the man that I love (and my little puppy!). I've been really feeling more and more interested on going to Haiti with EBC. It sounds like an amazing mission trip. I love Nicaragua, and it will always hold a special place in my heart, but I want to see and experience other places as well and I definitely think that Haiti is next on my list. So stay tuned to my blog because I will definitely keep writing!

Home Sweet Home

Well, my Spring Break is almost over, it's been really wonderful, but I'm anxious to get back to see my fiance. The beginning of my week home was super busy. On Saturday we had my niece's dedication, I went to church and then hung out at Nate and Jenn's for dinner and games. Sunday my mom and sister threw a Bridal Shower for me. It was so fun! I wasn't sure if I'd be home again much before the wedding, so I invited everyone to this shower so there were a ton of people crammed into my parent's house. I loved it. It was so wonderful to see everyone and the food was delicious! Monday I got to spend the day with my niece, Amara... She has changed so much since the last time I was here! She's getting so big so fast! She recognizes me now and gives me lots of smiles and giggles. She even napped on my chest for awhile (I fell asleep too) and it was super sweet. On Tuesday I spent all day with Bryn and Amara. We ran errands and tasted cake at Cup Cake. They only had us try 3 cakes, which wasn't really a good representation of what they had so Bryn ended up buying a dozen just so we could try them :)

On Wednesday I hung out with my mom and then I went over and visited my friend Linnea and her little guy, Caedmon. He's 14 months old now and so much bigger than when I last saw him! (They were out of town last time I was home, so I hadn't seen him since last summer!) It was so good to catch up with them. On Thursday Eben and I went on a brother/sister movie date. I finally got my Shamrock Shake as well! (I've been craving a Shamrock Shake all month, but McDonald's in Alabama doesn't have them! They look at you like you're crazy if you ask for one!!) Today I just chilled mainly. I went for coffee with my mom, aunt and uncle which was really fun. The big news for this trip is that Bobby got the job at Wells Fargo in Shoreview, MN that he's been interviewing for! He starts on April 25th! He'll be making a few dollars more an hour as well which was a HUGE weight off our shoulders. So the plan is for me to move home the first weekend in April and then he'll move here as well two weeks later. I'm very excited for us to finally be able to spend more than one day a week together and to put Birmingham behind me and move forward into the next phase of my life!

Spring Break

Spring break is finally here! (almost) I'm going home tomorrow and I'm so excited to see my niece!.... oh and everyone else... But Amara is definitely the star of the show! This week has been pretty uneventful. I served at a Parent Camp yesterday which involved pointing people in the right direction and then hanging out and chatting with my fellow Americorpees. It was a time waster, but I enjoy hanging out with the other people on the team so it was a good time waster. Plus we had free breakfast and lunch.

Yesterday I was at my afterschool program where I'm supposed to tutor the kids. Since Tracy left the kids have been poking there heads in and saying "Where's Ms. Tracy?" and I say "She's not here anymore" and they stare and say "....well..... I already did my homework" and then they leave. So I've been pretty bored in the afternoons. Yesterday one of the kindergarteners sat back there with me and I read her a few books and then she proceeded to talk my ear off. She told me a long drawn out story about how this girl isn't her friend and all the reasons why. Here is a snippet of her story: "... And then she said 'little girl, get your stanky butt out of my face' and I was soooo mad. So I got my whole crew together and we jumped her after school. I done slap that girl in her face." It was hard not to laugh as I tried to talk to her about how that's not how we solve our problems...

Home sick

I want to go home. I’m ready to just be done here. Bobby applied for some jobs in MN and had one interview that we’re waiting to hear back on. I just want to get out of here. I can’t stand Alabama. I can’t stand this program. All I do is sit around and waste time all day. I don’t even get enough time with the kids to really invest in them. I just sit and sit. I can feel myself get lazier and lazier every day. I hate it. Its gotten to the point where I shower in the evening so that I don’t have to roll out of bed until 6:45 and then I run out the door looking and feeling like crud. I would feel so much better if I actually took the time to put myself together, but I just have no motivation for it. Tracy’s last day is today so I have the next 6 months of being here all by myself. I thought that in the summer all the Americorps members would be together doing a summer camp, but I found out that we’ll all still be at our schools. I’m going to be all by myself in this horrible place. I can’t do it anymore. I just want to go home….. Ok rant over…

Happy Valentine's Day!

I’ve been pretty discouraged lately. The teachers frequently call parents to come and whoop their kids. So I saw plenty of parents in the hall yelling at their kid with a belt in their hand. I never saw any of them hit the child though, so I wasn’t able to do anything about it. It’s so frustrating standing by and seeing all of this. Tracy and I try talking to our bosses about this and are just brushed off and told “you’re in an urban school district. This is how it is.” Well what about trying to change things? What about not just making excuses? I’m seeing now that my bosses are just as much a part of this problem as everyone else. They just shake there heads and are content with saying “well that’s how it is” and letting that be that. Its so frustrating! I just want to be done and go back home. I did have a fun time at the end of this week making Valentine’s cards at my after school program. They will be given to kids in the hospital and to a nursing home. We had a ton of adorable stamps and fancy pens and stickers and markers. It was a lot of fun and a great way to unwind at the end of the day.



Friday was my 4th anniversary with Bobby. We celebrated by going out to dinner at a place called Cypress Inn. We shared a plate of fried crawfish tails which were super delicious and then for dinner I had a seafood linguini that had scallops, crawfish and shrimp in a lemon dill sauce. It was SO delicious. We had such a wonderful evening.

In other news, I am VERY excited for my trip home in March! Thanks to my wonderful sister who bought my plane ticket. <3

Some days just suck

I haven'e been very good about writing on here... Today really deserves an entry. The speech pathologist came into our room crying this afternoon because she had just witnessed something incredibly horrible. There was a boy sitting outside the front office. His mom had been called because he had called a girl a bitch. His mom came into the school and immediately punched the boy in the head. The boy's head hit the wall and he looked like he was going to go unconscious. The mother repeatedly punched the boy in the head while everyone in the office just stood and watched. The Speech teacher didn't know what to do. She wanted to intervene, but she didn't want to get punched. She ended up just busting into tears and walking away. She went to the principal to express her disgust with what had happened and the principal just said "Well, its a common occurence. You need to get thicker skin." I don't understand how someone can become so jaded when they see a child being so severely abused. It's like they aren't even human anymore. I don't even know how to process this and I didn't even actually see what happened. I can't imagine being in the shoes of the speech teacher. My Americorps bosses don't help either. We tell them these things that we see and they just shake their heads and say "well you're working in an urban school district. That's how it is". NO! That's not a valid excuse! Standing by and letting it happen because "that's how it is" is not why I came here and it doesn't help anything. It just keeps this cycle of abuse and ignorance be passed from generation to generation in a neverending circle. I'm so ready to be done with Americorps and to be done with Birmingham and to go home.

The Warming Station

So I know it’s been quit a while since I last wrote…. My trip home was AMAZING. I had so much fun seeing my family and friends (most of all Amara…) and the holidays were wonderful. Now back to reality…I had one fairly uneventful week at the school. Same old same old… This week, however, Alabama was hit with a huge snow and ice storm… Huge for Alabama standards at least… I was in Tuscaloosa visiting Bobby when it started. He quickly got me on the road headed for home to try and beat the worst of it. The drive that usually takes me 45 minutes took 2 hours. I saw 73 cars off the road on the freeway. There was a huge section of road that was pure ice (incidently, the places where the cars were off the roads were not the places that were the iciest… weird). It was kind of scary for a bit but I made it home in one piece. On Monday the schools were closed. I slept most of the day which felt amazing. Tuesday the schools were still closed and I watched way too much tv. On Wednesday schools were STILL closed, but I had to go into the district office for a couple of hours. For some reason Tracy and I thought it’d be a great idea to sign up to work at the Red Cross Warming Station downtown from Midnight to 7 am Thursday morning in addition to working at our schools from 7:30-4:30. I packed a bag and headed to Tracy’s to hang out. I just absolutely adore Tracy’s family. They are all just so kind and affectionate. I love spending time with them. We put together a bag of snacks and made a thermos of coffee and headed to the Boutwell Auditorium totally not knowing what to expect at all. We walked into a huge room lined with rows and rows of cots holding sleeping or resting homeless people. Tracy, Charlie (her brother) and I spotted Daniel, another Americorps member and sat at a table with him. After a while a young woman came up to us and sat at the table with us. She sat and just started talking and told us bits and pieces of her life story. From what I could put together she was 21 years old. Ran away from a family with abusive step brothers and a mother who she fought with all the time because she’s white and likes black men. She’s dating a really nice guy right now who won’t try and choke her like the last guy she dated. She has a son who is a year old and she thinks she could possibly be pregnant again. As she was talking a man walked up to us and simply said “I just wanted to say that I’m really lonely tonight. My mother died last week and we were really close. I miss her. That’s all” and walked away. He really got to this young woman and she started to cry and said that she feels bad that her relationship with her own mother has been so destroyed. It’s getting late so she decides to go to bed.




We all sat and just processed the conversation when another man walked up and said “do you like poems?” we told him yes and he pulled out a notebook and proceeded to read us a poem that he had written while he was in jail. It was a beautifully deep poem and he proceeded to read a few more, all of them were so incredibly deep and just made you contemplate your life and the world and the universe.



A little while later another guy came and sat down across from me at the table and challenged me to a game of checkers. We played a few games and he talked and I listened. Another guy came and sat down and started talking with Daniel so the first guy left. This guy proceeded to tell us basically the story of how he survives and who he sometimes stays with. He talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and then all of a sudden just was done talking and went to bed. “I think he really just needed to say all of that to someone” said Daniel. The first guy came back and told us a little bit about his situation and how he has a car that he lives out of and he had originally been displaced by Katrina and had never really gotten his feet under him since. He’s been looking hard for a job and just that afternoon his twin brother had gotten really drunk and had been hauled off by the police. He started to cry as he told us that he had really just needed to talk to someone tonight and that we had been there for him and he thanked us and went on his way.



All of these people just needed someone to listen to them. It was such a fulfilling evening. We went back to the Warming Station that evening for a few hours and met even more amazing people. I can’t wait to go back again!