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I got sick last night. Stomach hell. Ugh... I called out from City Year today even though there was so much to do. Every time I tried to get ready for work, I felt nauseous. Ugh.
Yesterday some of the School District team met at Gratz High School to work with Urban Tree. Some people potted plants in the nursey while Jacob and I planted painsies in the front of the school. Jacob and I had a rather gardening day.
Before we went to Gratz we worked with some Furness students in a community garden where they will be building a rain collection system. First, though, we had to clean up the large amount of trash which accumulated since last summer. Gina Caruso, who runs the garden, told the students that the reason that there was so much trash thrown on the lot during the winter is because there is no presence of an owner there. I thought this was really important for the students to know for two reasons. First, it introduces the idea of a neighborhood watch or the presence of community members in the neighborhood. It has been noted that the more people who sit outside on their porches and walk on the streets, the less crime is likely to occur. Second, there is the need for sustainability in this project. The students asked, "Why do we have to clean up if people are just going to throw trash here again?" They didn't believe that they were making a difference. They assumed that taking care of the garden was a one time occurence. They never thought that they might come back to see how the garden was doing or that maybe someone else might want to continue the garden after they left. I feel like there are a lot of holes to fill in the students' minds. I really don't know what their teacher is doing to fill these holes. Not much, probably. Once again, it falls on City Year. Though I think it is more appropriate that City Year service learning teamlets work on sustainability and community involvement then the actual curriculum. Unfortunately, we usually end up doing both.
In other news, the girl I have a crush on said that she was gonna call me today. I hope that I'm not too sick to talk. That would suck. Ugh... Updates later...
So I've just had a rather interesting week... Weird stuff... It started last week when I got this crush on this girl who I work with. Then this other girl began to pursue me when during our conversation she found that I was single. I went out with the latter girl and hung out with her all week. Then today I told the girl I was crushing on that I had a major crush on her. Then I told Jackie. It was all very weird.
Weirder still is the week as a whole. Life has been working in mysterious ways. Things are happening for a reason. I see that way too clearly. First, less than a month after my girlfriend and I break up, someone already is interested in me and I go out on a date. Wasn't planning on that happening let me tell ya. And an attraction which I pushed aside because I was going out with Jackie came back stronger than I expected. The strangest part was the relation of all of this to Jackie. First, I had to tell the girl who likes me that I have a crush on another girl and I can't control these feelings. Then, throughout this whole week the server has been down so I haven't written anything up here since last week. Thus, it happened that I told Jackie what was happening in my life and how I was feeling on the telephone instead of by webjournal. It was a very helpful conversation. She was in a lot of pain because of Maya. She called me for help. We both realized that our situations had switched somehow and this helped us to "walk in each others' moccasins." Vibes were better between us than they have been in the past few weeks. In fact they were quite nice.
An update from City Year: This past week was the week of Camps. Camps had to be the most fulfilling and most difficult week of City Year yet. I know that I already miss the kids in my group. (I was a team leader for four of the five days.) Though sometimes they were off the wall, they were so much fun. The theme was Space Jam, the movie. My group was the Larry Johnson team. My kids were third graders ages 8 through 10. We played basketball (with the enormous leadership of Denisha), made Spanish flowers, watched Space Jam, ate lots of hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, had pie eating contests, sang camp songs, played Twister, and exercised in Physical Training CY style. I hear that we're going to have a Fall Break Camps week next semester. I can't wait.