My Next Adventure

So while I was in Nicaragua, we went to La Chureca (the community in a garbage dump for those who haven't been following along) and while we were there Raul, one of the translators, told us that he had grown up 5 minutes away from La Chureca and didn't know people were living there until he started working with ORPHANetwork. That really hit me and got me to think about what types of places are there in the U.S. or even near my home that I don't know about. There may not be any horror as large as La Chureca in the U.S. (or maybe just not one that I know of) but anytime anyone has to climb into a dumpster for the night or to find food its basically the same thing. Nicaragua opened my eyes to the world beyond my neighborhood. It made me see that poverty is real, not just something that you see on tv as you flip the channel. I've looked into the eyes of poverty. When I came home I really struggled with going back to work at SPCC. The majority of the kids at SPCC have all that they need to succeed in life and my heart was just not in it. Don't get me wrong, I know that there was value to the work that I did at SPCC, and I loved the kids that I worked with, but from the time I was a teenager I always desired to work with inner city kids. Kids who were being set up to fail by the lack of support from their parents, by a failing school system and by the lack of having positive mentors in their lives. I didn't really know what I exactly wanted to do, so Eben told me to look into Americorps. I did a search and one of the first jobs that came up was a program called BirminghamREADS which is a literacy program in Birmingham, Alabama. When I read the description, I just fell in love with the job. It talked about working with at risk 2nd and 3rd graders to help them gain reading confidence and providing homework help. I applied, had an interview where they asked me what I thought of when I thought of at risk youth and I said that often it's single parent homes, the parent has to maybe work multiple jobs to keep afloat and therefore is not around for their kids to help guide them and help with homework etc. They really liked that answer and talked about how many of the kids will come to school in the same outfit for a week or their hair won't be combed or their parents are incarcerated and theyre being raised by a sibling or parent. I just fell in love with those kids as she was telling me about them. I didn't hear anything back for a really really long time and just assumed that I didn't get the job. Then 3 weeks ago I got the call that I got it and I needed to relocate to Birmingham! So here I am, in a city all by myself, away from my family, away from everything familiar. I never thought I had it in me to do this, but I did it! This week we're in training... Well actually, we'll be in training for the month of September, but next week we'll be assigned to our school and we'll shadow the reading coach and get to know the kids. I'm super excited for what this year holds.

Before I left, I asked my friend Rachel to give me advice. She spent a year doing Mission Year in Pennsylvania I think it was living in inner city and working ith churches but I don't really remember, it was a long time ago. Anyways, it was spending a year away from everything familiar and really digging in and getting dirty. The advice she gave me was so important. She told me to be present in the moment. Even the hard ones because one day even this will be a distant memory. She also went on to say "I keep thinking about how we only get to do this life one time, so enjoy it and learn from it and love big with big risks and don't be afraid to have your heart broken again and again because you kept loving even after it hurt. I am sure you will meet such amazing people and it will be tempting to just pass through, since it is a definite time frame--but don't. Really invest. Don't wait to invest. Really invest. Because I think that's what made it meaningful to me." I think that this advice will be so valuable to me this year (thanks Rachel!) and I'm so excited for this year and for everything that it holds, good and bad. I will try my hardest to update this as often as possible, but right now I don't have internet at my apartment, but today I'm sitting at a Starbucks, so hopefully I'll have more opportunities to do that. Love you and miss you all back home!