Anecdotes of a Week

I hope anecdotes is the right word...probably not.

I had alot of things in the last week that I wanted to blog about but I think I've forgotten most of them...but expect this to be alot of randomness anyways.

One day this week I was on the bus to work in the morning as usual and it was a pretty crowded bus. Randomly I overheard a conversation start a few rows back between an old white guy and some younger black people. One of the young guys was telling this woman (I think he knew her) that she needed to smile more and he was like "See this guy's got it right" b/c the old guy just had this huge smile on his face. It was great b/c a whole bunch of random people got into a 2 minute conversation about being happy and starting your day off with a smile no matter what b/c it makes you feel better. And it was awesome and made me smile b/c I love when strangers bond like that. It makes me happy with the world.

Even though the teens are still somewhat rude/demanding/etc. I really enjoyed program on Thurs night. I've gotten into the habit of letting my boys go up to the gym to play soccer at 7:30-8:15ish and I have to be up there watching b/c they can't be alone on a certain floor of the building. Usually this isn't my idea of fun especially since as of late I've just been sitting outside the plexi-glass doors to the gym and watching by myself. I mean, I usually get into it and end up enjoying myself b/c it's nice to watch them just have fun with each other doing something they love and it's also pretty hilarious to watch them try to play soccer in a gym with 6 columns in the middle and their powerful kicks (much better for a wide open soccer field) which cause the ball to wildly ricochet off the ceiling/walls/columns making them duck for cover (this always causes me to laugh out loud b/c it's just so humorous haha). But this particular night I saw that one of the girls was making patterns with the Battleship boards by herself while the other girls played foosball or watched a movie. I told her that I'd love to play with her but I had to be upstairs so if she wanted to bring the game up there and sit in the dark hallway outside the gym I'd play. So she brought up Connect Four and it was awesome to just sit there and play for a half hour. Most of the time we were silent b/c she had her headphones in, but I would ask her questions occasionally b/c I love the chance to learn about someone one-on-one, especially my kids, and so she took out one earphone and I got to learn alot about her in between the silences. She came here from Liberia in 2004 and I asked about her family, her English, and her school. When one of her friends came up and asked if she wanted to play foosball or stay, she said "No I'm gonna stay here for awhile." Even though I think she just didn't want to play foosball, it meant alot to me. I loved having the one-on-one time that I can never get with the teens b/c there's just too many of them. We laughed every time one of us won the game to the other's surprise and just enjoyed each other's company even though it was silent alot of the time. It was just nice.

This weekend was awesome. Erin from last year's group came up for the weekend. Friday night we went to our local neighborhood bar, Weber's, b/c it re-opened after being shut down Monday for not paying taxes. It was fun to go back again and we met some people from Mary and Matt's worksites. Saturday I got a library card....haha. I'm including that in my significant events of the weekend b/c reading more was one of my "goals" for this year since I was so excited I'd have so much more free time than I did at school. I haven't read a book yet and we're like 2.5 months in. So I'm glad to finally have all these books at the tips of my fingers and I started one of them tonight. Saturday afternoon me, Matt, Mary and Erin went on a wine tour (Ash was sick and John and AJ were gone for the weekend). I didn't expect to enjoy myself as much as I did. We discovered that wine tours are a CHEAP way to hang out and have fun and get out of the house and I'm so excited to do it again! I was the DD so I only drank at the first out of 5 stops but I found out that there are actually wines I kind of enjoy so I'm psyched to do it again some time! Afterwards we went to Nate from last year's house for dinner (he lives right by the wineries). His family was awesome and fed us great food and we enjoyed 3 hours of really great conversation before heading home exhausted and drunk (minus me). This morning Bro Jim took us out to brunch and it was great to finally catch up with him after all the recruiting he's been doing. The rest of the day was phone calls, playing a game, reading, shopping, making dinner, and going to mass. Definitely a good weekend.

I felt like I was falling into a routine last week at work where I didn't want to plan anything anymore b/c the kids hardly ever appreciate what I have planned. Tonight John led prayer and he talked about the Jesuit phrase "Go set the world aflame!" and asked us each to talk about how we felt we could do that at our worksites this week. It got me excited for work again and now I feel ready to go there and try new ideas and make a difference in these kids' lives and come up with some really great stuff for them to do. I'm ready to live up to the challenge again. I hope it'll be a great week!