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.