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.