I have been cheating on this blog...

It's true. Here is the link to my entry about Little Village in the Amate House blog:
http://amatehouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/lil-vil.html

Becoming a Case Worker

Many things happened this week at work. I made it to another court with Kerry on Monday and Tuesday I went to two courts (sort of). On Monday Ann K’s dad came over for dinner, and it happened to be his birthday so Ann made delicious cupcakes. Tuesday morning I went to the building where there is immigration court but we ended up in an office that was not technically court. But now I know where to get there, which is great because I’ll probably have to go there again later in the month. Tuesday afternoon we went to the Daley Center (which is where a. they had the German Christmas festival we went to in December and b. I went on the solo accompaniment to traffic court last Friday). This time we were on the 28^th floor (much better view) for a foreclosure case. My roommates picked me up from work on Tuesday and we went straight to Mercy House, where there is another volunteer program structured like ours but they only have one house and all work for the same agency that has something to do with youth group homes. There are fourteen of them in our house and they were very eager to meet new volunteers and expand their social circle. We had a blast (they made us meatballs…so great) and got to know them and they showed us how to properly restrain youth when they fight. It takes two people for every youth involved in the fight. They had just learned this that day as a part of their job orientations. We stayed until 10:00, which is pretty late for us on a week night (how quickly I have become my mother…) but even the people that wake up at 5:00 agreed it was worth it.

                Wednesday was a big day because I started taking my own appointments by myself. I saw two whole clients. One I referred to the Mexican consulate and another I scheduled for a follow-up appointment. Neither were in my office very long and the rest of the day was pretty slow, but that won’t last too long. Since school is just starting, people are busy with that and will start coming back into the office soon. And, some of the other case workers are starting to transfer some of their caseload to me since they have lots of people. Thursday we had an all-staff meeting (we don’t have a huge staff, we all fit around a table). I know certain members of my family have had bad experiences working with nuns in the past, but I work with three and they are fabulous. Before we start meetings, we go around and share one or two words that reflect the state of our hearts and then, without judgment, share why we chose the words we did. How many bosses care about that? The rest of the day I went around with Jeanine, our MSW intern who actually was with us last semester as well, to a few different agencies and shelters where we tend to refer clients so we would know where we were sending them. The most interesting was the Pacific Garden Mission, an evangelical Baptist mission where people living in the shelter can enroll in a year-long bible study program. Our tour guide was enrolled in the program and told us how in living there, he discovered his gift for preaching. He demonstrated this throughout the tour and it ended up being much longer than I thought it would be. But, although I would never want to go through that program, it seems to work especially well for people who are homeless due to addictions because their new-found religion can keep them sober. I cringed every time he mentioned the architect of the building was Jewish (at one point he said “our Hebrew brothers” and I thought for a second he said “our heathen brothers” and almost threw a fit) but then he mentioned that his father was Jewish, so we had something in common.

Friday we didn’t have any receptionists so Sr Kathy put me in charge. Sr Theresa had a few appointments and I did get to take a walk-in (Sr Theresa took a turn at the reception desk) and was able to schedule a couple of appointments for myself on Monday and an accompaniment for Thursday. I’m excited about that one because we do not schedule appointments for Thursdays or take walk-ins, and since I don’t have much paperwork to catch up on or clients to follow-up with, that accompaniment will make the day go by much faster.

Saturday I finally took advantage of my membership at the Art Institute (thanks Uncle Mike and Aunt Carla) and took my roommate Michelle. We even got some free coffee at the member lounge and sat in the member-exclusive part of the garden on the lower level. After that we met up with a bunch of other Amate people and most of the Mercy Works volunteers in McKinley Park and played flag football. We actually had so many people that we had two games. After that I went with some roommates to the Taste of Greece Festival in Greektown, where we learned a few different types of Greek dancing and had some delicious Greek food. It was a great day, but I was glad to come home to my bed. I was even more glad to find that the mariachi band outside my window (the second in two weeks) had stopped playing for the night so I could actually go to sleep. Today (Sunday) is pretty chill so far, my roommates all went to a Jesuit Mass at St. Procopius in Pilsen but I’m waiting to go to Spanish Mass at 6:00 by our house. I think a lot of our clients go to that church, so it would be nice to make my face familiar to them.

Taller de Jose (my service site) is doing a fundraising campaign, I’ll probably be posting the details this week. If you are in Chicago, you can register for $5 and get a t-shirt to wear while you are running/walking around the city. If you aren’t in the area, you can donate money to someone (like me) who is collecting pledges. This will not be the only time this year I will be asking you for money donations, so don’t feel like you have to give me too much right now. 

Work Week 1

So, our jobs started on Monday. Crazy, huh? I am working as a case worker and this week was mostly devoted to training me. On Monday we had an orientation at work (because I haven’t had enough orientation lately. Just Kidding!). It was mostly explaining exactly what I would be doing and going over office procedures and such. The last hour and a half I got my office organized, including carrying a desk down for my computer (I now have two desks. My roommates, Ann P and Chris, have to share a desk with each other where they work. I’m spoiled, but most of you already knew that).

On Tuesdays we are open for clients from 1-7, so if we don’t have an accompaniment in the morning we don’t have to come in until noon. This felt really weird, I kept thinking I was a delinquent, especially because all of my roommates were away at work. I went for a run and as I crossed the street, the car that waited for me to pass before it turned was my boss. I really freaked out then but then I reminded myself that it was already after nine so I was okay. I got to sit in on a few appointments (it was slow at first because a bunch of people did not show up their appointments). All of the appointments covered something different, so it was nice to see the different cases we will have.

On Wednesday, I met Sr. Betty in front of the office (a new sister, I work with three) and we went to criminal court with one of her clients. Criminal court is conveniently  located within walking distance of my house. I told my roommates that if they commit any crimes, I could totally help them out. After court Sr. Betty and I drove around a little bit to see a couple of organizations we work with in Pilsen. In the afternoon I went to our new office in St. Agnes (the parish in the nicer part of Little Village) but since most people do not know we are there yet, we only had one walk-in. We organized a bit though, and talked a lot about the neighborhood and community living. Kerry lived in my house last year. I left a little early because we have community night on Wednesdays. This week it was just with our house and we talked about goal setting. We didn’t quite finish settling on how we want to word our goals but will hopefully do that this week.

Thursday we don’t take clients, but I went back to criminal court with Kerry (we walked straight from my house because she wanted to drop off her lunch in the fridge since you can’t take food into criminal court). Later in the day we went to the unemployment office in Pilsen. On Friday I had my first accompaniment by myself! I went to traffic court with a couple of clients downtown. We rode the eL together and I translated for their lawyer. Typical of court, it was a lot of sitting around and waiting and all we got was a new court date. But, I was really proud of myself. My Spanish isn’t perfect yet, but it keeps getting better and we could always understand each other. I do need to look up some words though, pretty sure I wasn’t using the right one for “trial” but the client still understood me. After that I went to a fair sponsored by “Mujeres Latinas en Acción” to hand out information about our office. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but it was outside so I got some sun. Then I had my co-worker drop me off at St. Agnes because it was registration day and we wanted to get the word out about our office. Since it is the nicer side of Little Village, I sort of had the feeling that the parents there did not need much of our help, but some had questions and most were parish members so they could get the word out.

Friday night was movie night (“Fly Away Home”, Jessie really likes geese) and Saturday we went to the beach. The beach we picked was 31^st street, closest to our house, which naturally makes it a really interesting crowd. There were families with cute kids, but also guys covered in tattoos complaining about how they forgot their weed but also talking about the merits of Montessori schools (“like, totally radical but not cultish like Steiner”). Saturday was also movie night (some people wandered around downtown but I felt no need). At the rate we’re going, we should run out of movies in a month, we might need to ask our parents to send more, or use petty cash to get a Netflix subscription (I am in charge of petty cash, and I have no problem with that).

Today we went to Mass a Tepeyac, which was nice but they had too many instruments and I couldn’t hear the singers. I want to try Spanish Mass there because I think they will be better at that, but I might have to do that by myself. I think I will start having appointments with clients by myself this week!

It is August 22nd (My Grandma Sullivan's birthday) so I think I will go to an ice cream truck to spoil my dinner, since there aren't any ice cream parlors with Sander's hot fudge in Little Village. 

pics of my room

 

 

 

 

 

my bed and window, you can kind of see the ceiling.

This is mostly so  you can see my ceiling.

Orientation Week 2

Of course we could not finish orientation with just one week, but the second week has been considerably shorter. Some of the teachers have already had to go in and they wanted everyone to have a chance to find their workplaces. Mine is only two blocks away from my house, so it was pretty easy. I have run/walked past it a number of times. On Monday we talked about Social Justice at Roosevelt University. We had two speakers, one who talked more generally and one who talked about public housing. Then he took us to the potential future site of the National Public Housing museum (they are still looking for funding). It is in Little Italy and in the last remaining building of the Jane Addams housing project. We got to walk around inside and look out on the roof. It is pretty rundown right now but that is because no one has lived in it for several years. That night some people that lived in our house last year came over for dinner, which was awesome. We got to ask them lots of questions about the house and the neighborhood (any tips about the coffeepot? Cars? Gang colors we shouldn’t wear?). They went around our rooms to see who was in their old rooms and such. A former inhabitant of my room explained the ceiling damage (apparently it used to also rain inside, the problem seems fixed right now and I want to paint soon).
Tuesday we went to the Cardinal Meyer Center (offices and conference rooms for the Archdiocese) and talked about the faith tenet of Amate House. We got really deep and I think it was really good for our community to bond. After that, Jessie and I made black-bean burgers, which were delicious. Wednesday we had most of the day off so some of us went with Elissa to help her set up her classroom. We had community night at South House and talked about communication and conflict, which was good. We’ve kind of made fun of the approach a little bit (we keep asking people what their needs are and telling them to make requests) but I think it will be really helpful to help us resolve any conflicts that will inevitably happen when nine strangers live together. Thursday we did not have to start until noon. We went over to South House to have our pictures taken for the website. Then we had lunch (tuna sandwiches, it’s been a while since I have had anything meat-like). Afterwards we had our covenant signing ceremony. It was really nice but super hot, so after a quick picture with all of the Amate volunteers we headed home with a quick stop at Walgreens so Elissa could print up copies of our first family photos, from Millennium Park last weekend. Ann K has Part 1 of Season 1 of Glee on dvd, so we watched a few of those in the Oasis (what we have named the hammock room with air conditioning). Elissa and I slept there that night because it was so hot in the house.
On Friday a few people had errands to run or had to go to work so I figured that it was my best chance to paint my ceiling. There was a lot of water damage to the ceiling because the roof used to leak. They have fixed the problem as far as I can tell (we have had a couple of hard rains already and I have not seen any damage) but the ceiling was still unattractive. Now it is very attractive, because I painted it sky blue, which makes the room more bright and cheery. I only needed one coat (plus a few touchups) and the damaged part is mostly camouflaged. While I was waiting for the paint to dry before I did the touch-ups, I watched a few more episodes of Glee in the Oasis. I mean, how else would I wait for paint to dry? I was in my paint clothes so it is not like I was going anywhere. After I cleaned up my room and finally took a shower (I believe there was another episode of Glee involved, I had to finish the disc) I had some leftovers for dinner. A Time Out Chicago had been delivered earlier and Carlos and Ann P saw that there were some art galleries in Pilsen with free wine and cheese receptions. We went and it was so much fun. Some of the ‘galleries’ were just the artist’s loft studios or even apartments…Jessie and I really wanted apartments in that building, they had great views and the building had lots of character. We got caught in the rain but rather than reacting like normal people, we put our stuff in our car and then played in it. Carlos got really excited and yelled in a crosswalk “This is Chicago!” He got people across the street to join in too and then they tried to get us to say “Stop raining Chicago!” After we were through puddle jumping, we piled into the car and Carlos had a brainwave: going to Huck Finns (near South House) for Donut Delights. These are donuts with a scoop of ice cream on them and are delicious yet ridiculous. I shared one with Michelle (plain donut with spumoni ice cream) and we had a lot of fun, even though it was cold in the air conditioning.
Saturday was pretty chill, I went for a walk, did some yoga with Jillian Michaels (and a couple of my roommates) and rearranged some furniture (moving a couch to the Oasis upstairs). The rest of the day I basically just lounged around because the heat made me so tired. Two-thirds of my house went to this happy hour in Lincoln Park for some free beer but I was feeling pretty tired when they went so I just hung out with Michelle and Elissa at our house. We watched more episodes of glee and listened to the mariachi band playing outside our window. I’m really not kidding about that, school starts this week in Catholic schools so there were block parties all over Little Village celebrating the end of summer. People blocked off the roads with their cars so kids could ride bikes all over the street and they could have bands playing. We were not invited, though. I do have to say that the combination of the mariachi band, the ice cream truck jingles, the popsicle cart bells, the music from other food carts, and the soundtrack of glee made a very strange listening combination. And our windows were closed, too, because we had the A/C on in the Oasis. Such is life in Lil Vil (as we like to call it).
Work starts tomorrow! Wish me luck!

The New Adventure Begins!

Welcome everyone to my new blog as I begin my year of service! For those of you who followed my previous blog when I studied abroad, I can pretty much promise to not write as much or as often as I did before. Partially because I will eventually settle into a routine and not as many new things will happen. And, partially because I will be staying in the same place and my job deals with sensitive information that I should not post on the internet. So, this blog, if it works the way I am envisioning, will be mostly reflections on the experience and is more likely to talk about things I do away from work that are less sensitive.
As many of you know, I am in the Amate House program in Chicago and will be living with eight other people in an intentional community while we all go out to different service related jobs in the city. I have been here for a week and so I am halfway done with orientation. It has been an intense, long week. We still don’t know each other and are trying to feel around each other and see how our community will work. In the mean time, we have been thrown into an intense together-ness with these almost perfect strangers and are expected to be a community. It is a bit much and some of us are struggling with it but we know that there is of course a reason for what we are doing and that eventually we will be grateful. On the one hand, we are looking forward to starting work but at the same time we know that work will be even more intense. We have been going around between the different houses and other locations (Greater Chicago Food Depository for a morning of re-packaging cereal and DePaul University for a talk) to talk about the various tenents of our program. So far we have talked about Community, Stewardship and Service. We also spent Friday afternoon on the beach (a much needed break).
Do we have the weekend off? Sort of. There are not necessarily scheduled activities but we do have to spend Saturday as a community exploring the city and Sunday we have to be introduced at a Mass and then have a grocery store shopping challenge- we get $15 per person per week to spend on food. Saturday morning we explored our neighborhood and then came back to our house for grilled cheese and tomato soup. We took a digestion break and then used our Amate-provided-1-day-CTA passes and went downtown. We went to Millennium Park (where we saw a few wedding parties taking pictures, much to the delight of the girls) and took pictures at the bean, of course. Things were crowded with Lollapalooza. We then walked up Michigan Ave. to the Ghirardelli shop for free samples. We then headed in the direction of Navy Pier and stopped at the beach there for a little relaxation and then headed home to regroup. After re-packing some snacks (why have dinner when you can have two rounds of snacks?) we met up with South House at a park in Pilsen to watch “Where the Wild Things Are” outdoors.
Sunday, we were introduced at St. Agnes of Bohemia, a parish whose school has been served by Amate volunteers every year and I think the vast majority of its staff is former volunteers. The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping. How long would you think it would take nine people to grocery shop for a week? Try five hours. We planned out our whole menu for the week and talked about thinks like buying canned or dried beans, and also our feelings before we were even able to shop. We get $135 per week (that’s $15 per person) for groceries, which goes surprisingly far. We shopped at Food 4 Less, which appeared to be somehow connected to Kroger since it mostly had Kroger generic brands. We got everything on our need list for $122 and then were able to get a few wants, and this even included stocking up on a few bulk items. The boys cooked breakfast for dinner and after that we finished off the gallon of ice cream we bought on Friday and watched “Saved”. The second week of Orientation is halfway over, but I will write about everything some other time.