Return to Church Choir! Yay!

Wow, it’s been a full month since the last time I performed as part of a church choir. Today was my first day as a choir member at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, and I enjoyed myself very much. I got to wear a choir robe for the first time since I volunteered to fill in for another choir member at St. Mark’s a couple of years ago. Today’s service featured a very nice sendoff for the church’s graduating high-school seniors, involving the distribution of personalized wooden walking sticks and a very beautiful choral version of “An Irish Blessing.”

I spent the entire rest of the day reading stuff on websites. Do I feel bad that I didn’t get anything more productive done? Yes, a little bit. I should really go to bed now. I might write more about today tomorrow.

Dundee Revisited

I slept in this morning, and ate breakfast and lunch here at the house. At 1:30, I left on my bike to return to the Deli at Douglass Loop (the one on Dundee Road) for another Script Frenzy write-in. I had learned after the fact that last Saturday’s scheduled write-in had been canceled due to a last-minute conflict. Today, on the other hand, everything worked out beautifully. I met two writing buddies named Angela and Meg, and we hung out at the deli for over three hours, writing and talking about anime, cosplay, and running. I wrote five pages of script today, plus two more in the evening, and I have definitely gotten into a good writing groove. I sure hope I can sustain it through the end of April.

I biked home through a light rain, which continued throughout the early evening, forcing Marion’s party into the house (instead of the backyard). We had a ton of food (burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, chips, and desserts), and I met several more of her friends and neighbors, and hung out with them for a while. I also spent a while working on the jigsaw puzzle on the side table in the dining room. I noticed for the first time that several of the pieces had somehow ended up on one of the chairs at the table, so I returned them to the table (and finally finished the outer perimeter of the puzzle!). It was a good day.

Of Baked Goods, Household Goods, and Good Causes

The Midwest had a rare, strong earthquake in the predawn hours of this morning. I felt it, and my reaction was, “Huh. We have earthquakes here?” Here’s an article about it.

At work this morning, Lee and some of the other regular staff had a staff meeting, leaving me with nothing to do except read and sort through email for over an hour. When Lee got back, she set me to the task of moving a whole bunch of donated clothes from our basement to one of the rooms on our first floor, probably in anticipation of the clothes giveaway we’re planning on having for our clients sometime next week. That wore me out. I had lunch afterward, then walked across the street to the church to check out the bake sale. I bought a cupcake, and some jam-thumbprint cookies and a brownie to save for later. The cupcake and cookies were good.

I spent the afternoon doing more data entry. Today’s data-entry tasks included not only data about refugees, but also estimates of the dollar value of items that have been donated to KRM, including furniture, clothes, and other household goods. This is a very tedious task. There are a lot of estimates to make, and I’m basing them on very brief descriptions of the donations and value information from a booklet that is now 8 years old. I will be finishing up this task on Monday.

I heard back from the president of NSCS at the University of Louisville today. She told me that their school year is actually just ending right now, and that they were doing their last activity of the year tonight: a service project at their university’s Relay for Life. I biked to the bus stop and got on the bus (which had those bike racks, just like the ones in Santa Barbara), eager to see the event I have such fond memories of participating in two years ago.

Many of the buildings on campus are built out of red brick and are old, just like many of the houses and churches around here. They were doing Relay in an unusual way. The “track” for participants to walk on consisted of several designated sidewalks near the Student Activities Center. One of those sidewalks ran past a rectangular lawn, which was where all the tents, tables, food sales, and activities were going on. They didn’t actually get started until 15 minutes after the scheduled time, which gave me time to go into the Student Activities Center and get myself dinner at Wendy’s. I was there for the opening ceremony, and walked the opening lap, which turned out to be the best part of the evening. I never did find any other NSCS members. Whatever their service project was, they hadn’t started it yet when I was there.

It felt strange to be back on a college campus. I felt like a bit of an intruder. I thought I hadn’t brought closure to my time as a college student yet, but it looks like I actually have, on a psychological level that I hadn’t even realized. It’s remarkable that almost a month away from college and a single week in an office have already made me start to think of myself as part of a work environment, not part of a student body. Of course, the fact that it was a campus I’d never visited before and I knew no one probably contributed to me feeling like an outsider.

I did do two other good things while I was there. I bought a Luminaria (donating $5 to the American Cancer Society) in memory of Joe Murphy, and I said hello to some of the members of the local chapter of InterVarsity, who were participating in the Relay as a team. It’s too bad they aren’t having any more meetings while I’m here; I would have loved to attend one.

Man, I’m tired. Tomorrow is another Saturday, so I plan to spend much of it working on this script.

Catch-up post, or, Yesterday and Today

There is a good reason why I didn’t write a new post yesterday. Between making shortbread cookies for the bake sale that’s going on Friday and Saturday, and going to choir practice at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, I had no time at all after work for blogging. Before I get to any of that, though, I will say a little bit about what work was like yesterday.

Yesterday was the day we’d all been waiting for: Lunch and Learn. I spent the morning helping to prepare for it by adding more information to the folders we were giving out, hanging up those directional signs I made (which have been saved for the next time), and arranging baklava on a tray. When the time came, I sat at the sign-in table, welcoming guests and having them sign in (so we could get more people’s e-mail addresses and keep track of who was there), and handing out the folders. I was wearing my nice gray plaid jacket, pink sweater, and black skirt, and I felt very grown-up and professional. All but two of the 19 churches who had given us positive RSVPs were present.

The lunch consisted of food served buffet-style from a local restaurant called Simply Thai (except for the baklava, which was from The Grape Leaf), and it was all delicious. Carol, Lee, Shelley, Liz, and a few of the refugees who we’d invited to attend the luncheon spoke to the group about sponsoring refugee families. It’s too early to tell whether we won over any new sponsors for our refugee families or not, but there were some good, long conversations between our guests and our staff members after lunch, which I see as a hopeful sign.

The only specific thing I remember doing after lunch was printing out a series of directions from MapQuest, for the benefit of our furniture-donation pickup and delivery staff, collectively referred to as “the guys” by the office staff. On my way home, I stopped by the market to get plastic containers to put my shortbread cookies in.

This was, I believe, the fourth time I’ve decided to make shortbread cookies all on my own for some sort of event. I’ve had varying degrees of success. They come out best when they’re made using an electric mixer. We don’t have one in this house. I “creamed” the butter and sugar using a food processor, which was a huge pain, but much better than spending half an hour or more doing it with forks. The oven is a bit quirky, too (or so Marion told me), so all my cookies were either a bit underdone (if they’d been on the top rack) or a bit overdone (the bottom rack), but I boxed them up and took them with me anyway. I dropped them off at the end of the work day today (Thursday), in what had been designated as the dropoff location for cookies.

I actually made the cookie dough, then had dinner, then went to choir (leaving the dough in the fridge), then baked it when I got home. Choir rehearsal lasts from 7:45 to 9:15 P.M. on Wednesday nights; Marion dropped me off on her way to go play tennis. I was thrilled with the warm welcome I received from the choir, especially Barbara, the director. She had a folder full of music and a hymnal set out for me when I got there, and she had already assigned me a spot to hang my robe in the robing room. The rehearsal was fun, but it felt like choir on speed. We blew through each song once or twice, then moved on to the next one. Afterwards, a fellow member let me know that since the church cycles through the same set of songs every three years, just like we do with Scripture passages, most of the members already knew all the songs and were just reviewing them, hence the fast pace. I’m okay with that; I can handle it.

Today was a fun, mostly laid-back day. I got to go and observe another English class today. We have a preschool program that we run on some weekday mornings in the child-care room of the church about a block away from our office; while the children are in preschool, their mothers are in an English class. I got to observe both and meet the members of both, and I enjoyed doing it. Our English students are always so interested in talking to me. After that, I went back to the office, had lunch, and spent the afternoon doing more data entry and writing an article about Lunch and Learn. Lee, Liz, and Carol all looked at it and gave me feedback. I still have to revise it a bit more in the morning.

When I got home today, I spent far too much time reading websites and goofing off. What I did accomplish was contacting the members of the InterVarsity and NSCS chapters at the University of Louisville to ask what their clubs were up to, and whether I could come and participate. (In case you’re thinking, “Oh, no, not that again!”, my defense is that it’s an opportunity for me to get out and about in the city and have fun. Also, since the events that will bring closure to my time as a college student haven’t happened yet, I still want to do some college-student things while I’m doing grown-up things, to ease the transition.)

The First Day of Spring

Today felt like the first day of spring to me.  It was sunny all day for the first time since I’ve been here.  As I was bicycling home in the sunshine, Louisville seemed like a completely different place than it had when covered by clouds.  It seemed more inviting, more real and alive.

The things I did today at work included more data entry and folder-making, sorting of bedsheets, and printing out and sending thank-you notes.  I’d go into more detail, but I’ve stayed up too late working on creative writing, and really must go to bed.

Monday in the office

It was cold this morning.  I bicycled to work for the first time, and my fingers hurt when I got there.  It took a few minutes for them to warm up again.

Most of what I did today was further preparation for Lunch and Learn.  I made place cards for the guests who will be joining us from Sarah’s ESL class, created the directional signs to lead guests into the building, retyped a flowchart and made copies of it, and assembled some information on Bhutan onto one page and made copies of that.  I also tried and failed, twice, to use an inkjet printer to print on dot-matrix sticky labels.  (It feeds just fine, I just can’t get the text to line up right with the labels.)

However, I did do one other thing that was fairly interesting.  I learned how to enter refugee data in our database program, and how to create case files in hanging file folders.  I know this doesn’t sound exciting, but these were my first real responsibilities. Baby steps, I guess.

I stopped by Walgreens to pick up more food on my way home, but it turned out I didn’t need it.  Marion was generous enough to prepare dinner for me as well as the boys.  We had bacon-wrapped round pieces of steak, potatoes, carrots, salad, and crescent rolls.  It was very good.

A Sunday night out on the town

Today was even more laid back than yesterday.  (My blog post for yesterday is in progress, and will hopefully be posted soon.)  I spent most of the day in the house, Net-surfing, working on a jigsaw puzzle of Marion’s, and writing.  I finally finished and submitted an article I’d agreed to write about the Province VIII gathering that happened two weeks ago.

At 4:45, we went out.  Marion dropped me off for the 5:00 service at her church, while she went and set up for her gig.  She got some of her church friends to give me a ride to the gig, which was at an Irish pub and restaurant.  The band played Celtic music while I enjoyed fish and chips for dinner, and wrote, typing on my laptop. This would be more detailed if it weren’t for the fact that I really should be in bed right now. I have work tomorrow, so I had to rush through this.  Sorry.

A very fun Saturday, or, “You’ve got to go to Dundee for it!”

(Note: Most of this was written after the fact, on 4/14.)

I slept in today, and spent the morning goofing off on my computer. Marion invited me to come with her to a concert of baroque music in the evening, and I agreed to come. I had plans for the afternoon, though. To my great good fortune, the local Script Frenzy participants are having their weekly Saturday meetup right here in my part of town, at a deli. I rode off on my old, borrowed beach-cruiser bicycle (which actually would have fit in at UCSB much better than the last bike I had there!) to find the meetup.

The deli was on a street called Dundee Road, hence this post’s subtitle. Unfortunately, when I got there, the deli was closed. I was a bit disappointed. There was a large coffee shop nearby, though; I looked around in there, but didn’t find any other participants. I decided to get lunch from another nearby restaurant, then stay in the coffee shop and write. I made some progress on my script, and had a good time doing it.

We went out to visit one of Marion’s friends, and then to the baroque music concert, which was in a local Episcopal church (not the one she goes to, a different one) and was enjoyable. When we got home, Thunder Over Louisville, the fireworks display that kicks off the pre-Kentucky Derby festivities, was going on. I had a partial view of it from the upstairs balcony, but it was just too cold to stay out there for very long, so I came inside and watched the rest of it on TV.

Moving Day, or, there should be sunshine after rain

This morning, I got up and got to the office even earlier than yesterday.  At KRM, we have all-staff meetings every other Friday morning (hey, kinda like my mom’s school!) from 8:30 – 9:30.  We all gather in the conference room on the third floor of our building and talk about the latest news and developments in our individual jobs. Some of it was interesting to me, and some of it got me completely lost because, like any line of work, ours has its own lingo, and I’m new, so I don’t know much of it yet.  At one point, we got on the subject of database software, which led to me volunteering to research the benefits of MySQL and what it would take to get it working in our office.

The meeting was followed by light breakfast food in our kitchen and lunchroom, which is also on the third floor, diagonally across the hall from the meeting room.  After grazing on muffins and raspberry danish, Lee and I took the company Dodge Caravan out to an apartment complex where many of our refugee clients live. The apartment managers had contacted KRM and asked us to come and take what we wanted from a former resident’s discarded stuff.  As it turned out, there wasn’t much we wanted: an ironing board, an iron, and a few clothes and shoes that we intend to pass on to Goodwill.

On the way back, we stopped by Marian’s house so I could pick up my house key from her before she went out for the afternoon.  She showed me around the house, which is another older, probably historic house, but larger and more recently updated than the one I was previously in.  I have my own room and half-bath in the basement, which is spacious enough for a bed, nightstand, TV (not that I’m going to watch it), a couple of chairs, and even a couple of old recreation tables. I even have a closet (which I still have to buy or borrow hangers for) and a chest of drawers all to myself, which is great. The household now consists of Marian, her two sons, two cats named Pepper and Jasmine, and me.  The master bath is now the “girls’ bath;” I get to use the shower up there.

I returned to the office and spent much of the afternoon completing the task of calling all those churches, then sending an email to the addresses I’d collected (about eight or nine of them) inviting people from said churches to come to the luncheon we’re having next Wednesday.  I’m very pleased to have finished that task.  The time I didn’t spend on that, I spent having lunch and participating (a little) in a meeting with Lee and two other staffers about that luncheon, in which we hashed out the logistical details and divided up responsibilities.  Both of the meetings I attended today went remarkably smoothly; from what I’ve seen so far, we work together really well as a staff.  I volunteered to be the greeter at the entrance to the room at the luncheon, and to create directional signs to show people how to get to the dining room where we’re holding it.

Carol, who had all my stuff in her car, gave me a ride to Marian’s house after work, stopping by the grocery store on the way so I could buy supplies for the next week or so.  She also helped me carry my groceries and luggage inside.  When I got there, no one was there, so I spent the rest of the evening goofing off on the Internet and preparing and eating a frozen dinner.  I also finally finished and turned in the BAC meeting minutes.

Marian is friendly and easy to live with.  So are the cats, especially Pepper, who likes to follow me around the house and tickle my legs by rubbing up against them.  (I’m not suffering too badly from allergy symptoms at the moment.) I love watching them move, and petting them.

I’m back on my own computer for the first time since I’ve been here. Once again, I can get Internet access via some neighbor’s wireless router. Thankfully, this time I can use it while sitting comfortably at a table inside, not on an outdoor flight of stairs.

Oh, yeah – a thunderstorm started up last night, so it rained on and off most of the day, but the sun started to come out when I went grocery shopping. That’s what today’s subtitle is referring to.

My first day at KRM, or, my Spanish iz pastede on, yay.

Just for a change, instead of going through the events of the day in a linear fashion, I’ll start this entry with one of the nice things about today: Special K is really good with fresh blueberries on it.  Asparagus is really good with Parkay and just a hint of orange juice on it.  These are both things I learned from eating breakfast and dinner at Carol and Bill’s house.  Carol’s a great cook and made a delicious dinner of asparagus, salmon, orzo rice with peas, and bread.

After breakfast, Carol took me to the office, where my very first task was to alphabetize file folders. I’m good at that, and it didn’t take long, so I was happy.  Then, I was invited to go down to the first floor (our building has three floors plus a basement) to observe the English classes.  I sat in each of the four classes (each at a different skill level) for varying lengths of time.  All our teachers are very good, and the students were energetic and engaged.  The majority of the students are either Iraqi, Cuban, or Karen (pronounced kuh-REN; an ethnic group originally from Burma, if I recall correctly, that has been in refugee camps in Thailand for some years). I interacted with some of the students and found myself gravitating toward the Cubans, because I could speak to them in Spanish.  That’s the reason for the subtitle of this entry.  It’s a sarcastic bit of Internet slang meaning that the noun in question is inferior in some way because it is artificial or feigned.  I had a bit of an awkward time coming up with Spanish words for some things and putting sentences together, especially at first, and I code-mixed in Japanese words and had to forcibly push them out of my mind.  The more I talked in Spanish, though, the more easily it came.  I hope I can use it a lot more while I’m here.

The teacher of the last class invited her students to ask me questions during the last five minutes of class, and one of them asked, “What is Japan?  What kind of culture is it?”  I had been in language classes for over two hours at this point and was in a language-education groove, so instead of actually talking about the culture, I decided to teach the Japanese equivalent of an English sentence (“I lived in Kyoto for four months”). I could have handled that better.

After that, I looked up and printed out two articles (this one and this one) about the Vaishya caste, some members of which are coming to join us in Kentucky.  That reminds me: I asked why refugees come to Louisville, and was told that it’s largely because Louisville has a fairly low cost of living and a relatively good job market.  I’ve also learned that this is one of the established centers to which the arm of the federal government that handles incoming refugee cases (I think it was the State Department) sends refugees.

I had a PB&J and grapes for lunch, and then got to work calling churches in the area to invite their pastors to our lunch next Wednesday, when we’ll be presenting information about sponsoring families.  I did this for about an hour.  It was a little boring and a little stressful, but it got easier with every call.  Some offices had closed by the time I got started (about 3 in the afternoon), so I left a lot of voice mails, but I got through to some people, collected a number of e-mail addresses, and even received a positive RSVP from one person.

I went home at about 4:15 and spent the afternoon and evening reading websites, reading a book, eating dinner, answering email, and finally getting started on typing up and compiling the Bishop’s Advisory Committee minutes from our last meeting in March.  I plan on finishing them tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I get to see the apartments where many of our refugee clients live, and also move into my own apartment. Also, there is a big airshow and fireworks show this weekend that I hope to go to. I’ve got plenty to look forward to.