Wow

Today I nearly cried in class. Curt (Ami's grandfather and one of our teachers) was telling us about how we can't make God prove anything and how we can't challenge Him. But then he told us of how his very young son died of a brain tumor and I was shocked to realize that he's the author of Dinosaur Journal: Making Sense of a Young Son's Death!!! He told us of how, soon after his son Benji's death, he went to where they had buried him and kicked the stone in anger, telling God that he could have taken care of him and that He better be taking good care of him. He then told God that if his son was doing well that there would be a quarter in the phone booth in front of the Dairy Queen down the road (Benji always looked in all of the slots looking for change). When Curt looked he found 13 quarters.
I got really chocked up listening to this story and watching Curt struggling to talk with tears in his eyes. I can't believe that all this time I had no idea that this is the man who wrote the book of poems my mom loves and from which I got a poem for my Senior English Project! Wow!
And a few weeks ago, in John Trott's class, he started talking about a discussion he had with someone about tattoos and I got all excited because I had read the whole discussion in an old Cornerstone Magazine a few years ago! In fact, most of the articles that I've read from the many Cornerstone Magazines that my parents have were written by John Trott (which I knew already before I came here).
It makes it so exciting being taught by men whose writings I love and really respect =)

Last night's swing dance was a lot of fun :-) Cha and Michael are usually the two guys that I end up dancing the most with which is good because they're at my dancing level and they're the right hight for me (guys who are really tall make me feel like they're about to rip my arms off!). Plus, I always end up laughing A LOT while dancing with them. During last night's dance I also ended up dancing with almost all the kids that were there. I also danced with Nate (one of our teachers) and a man from outside. Both of them are better at dancing than me which was cool, but sometimes they expected me to do something and I had no idea what they wanted me to do!
Here's Nate's review:

Girl Scout's Autumn Swing A Hit!!

Review by Nathan Cameron

I've been to many dances and venues for Swing in the past 2 or 3 years that have all been enjoyable social experiences that have broadened my social network and introduced me to a larger understanding of dance. I don't think though that I have ever been to a dance that was simply this fun. The all ages dance was hosted by a local Girl Scout Troop at 920 W Wilson, The Friendly Towers Ballroom, to raise money for a trip to Peru where they would volunteer at an orphanage. Many of the attendees were the troop, their families and friends, but a few swing fanatics looking for anywhere to dance showed up as well. My partner and I, Jesse Phillips, were asked to come and teach a short class before hand and help out during the dance. The dance however took on a life of its own. Many of the dancers there were beginners but they didn't let that stop them from having a good time. The lively music spun by DJ Lampshades Marty, Jesse's husband, spurred the dancers into a frenzy of swinging arms and legs that spiraled around the dance floor. I danced with many of the girls from the troop and as I danced I saw the simple joy of the dance in them. They weren't out there to impress, they weren't out there to attract a guy, they were reveling in the spin, laughing in the twirl, singing with the music bringing to mind Mark Twain's famous quote "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth." To seasoned dancers who may have peered in, the floor may have looked like chaos that pretended the sophistication and art of dance but to me it was a truer dance that basked in the innocence of youth.

(The Girl Scouts were all girls that live in the community and the Friendly Towers is the name of this building.)
Someone is making a video of the dance and Jesse wants to put it up on myspace. When that happens, I'll put the pics and video up, too. I think I messed up every time I would see the video camera though. That happens to me all the time haha.

New Things

I'm SO glad that I finally feel better today! I was sick from Tuesday to Saturday and it was not fun at all.
As I've already said before, I really am happy with my family. Monday evening after swing dance class, I hung out with them and a few other people in the kitchen on their floor and Becki made smoothies that were really good =) Then last night we all hung out in their kitchen again and one of their friends made crepes with nutella and fruit! They were so delicious. It was nice getting to hang out with Becky and Matt since they're leaving us for 2 weeks and a half to go on a trip to Europe and Africa for their 10 year anniversary. That sounds like fun!
It kind of sucks that they live on the 2nd floor and I live on the 6th floor, but it's cool that we get to do things together anyway.
Today I finally met my mentor! I'm SO glad that we've decided to have our One on One time during lunch on Sundays. Everyone else is doing their One on One time during the week, but I prefer not having an extra thing to jam into our already very busy schedule! Today I had lunch with her in her room and then we went for a walk and she got coffee and I got tea (obviously =P). I had been kind of nervous about the whole mentoring thing with a person I'd never met before, but Kris is cool and we had a nice time together. It wasn't too hard to open up to her...but then again, I open up to pretty much anyone whom I feel comfortable with.

Another new thing that happened this week was that I did my first intake Friday morning! I was really not ready for it, but I guess you just learn things by getting pushed into them. I'm SO glad that I had Raye there with me. A few people in the office wanted me to do the intake on a 70 year old guy since Raye wasn't in yet, but I REALLY didn't want to since I haven't really learned what each form is for yet. Fortunately, they didn't make me do it, but when Raye came in she had me do it. I guess it could've gone worse....and the man was very nice and patient. So now I've almost learned everything for my job and will start it as soon as Raye leaves (which will be in December...so I've got plenty of time!). The thing I'm worried about is that I'm gonna have a lot of stuff to do and I'm going to have a lot of responsibility because I'm not only going to be an Intake worker, but also an Agency Technical Administrator! And there's also the fact that Raye does most of her intakes in the afternoon, but since I'm in Project 12 I only work in the mornings, so I'll have to make people come in then. The nice thing about my job is that all the people who work on my floor are really nice and I'm sure that if I'll ever need any help I can ask someone with no problems. The homeless people are also (almost) all very nice and a lot of them joke around with me or give me compliments when they see me every morning =) One of the men once said "ciao" to me instead of "hi" and then said "I'llBeTheSame" for "goodbye" haha

Ok, I better go practice swing dancing because tomorrow JPUSA is having a big Swing dance party from 8pm to midnight! I'm sure it will be a lot of fun, but I'm kind of nervous about it cuz Jesse (one of our teachers) told me that a lot of people from swing dance classes outside of the community have been invited! I've only had 4 lessons so I'm not THAT good at it! Oh well...I hope I don't end up dancing with a really good dancer...or a weirdo either!

Community Life

Community life is a very interesting thing...especially when it's a community of about 400/500 people! Just the other day I was talking with Carolyn and she told me that I've finally "ran into the wall". She said that it's normal when living in a community and that she "hit the wall" very hard when she first started living here, too (she's been living here for 4 years now). She also told me that one of the women here told her once that if someone is living here and loves it then they're not really living community life and they're not supposed to be here.

These last days I've gone through a lot....I've been having problems with all of the "girls and guys" rules and all the pressure and gossiping. About a week and a half ago I started hanging out with the guys a lot and, well, people aren't too happy about that. At first, we hung out just like I usually do with my guy friends, but then, after a few days, I realized that JPUSA has all these rules that I didn't really know about and so now I've become pretty much paranoid about everything. It's very annoying cuz I stopped being so worried about what others think when I was 14 and now I'm back to worrying again. I need to be careful with what I wear, I need to be careful with how I act with others, I need to make sure that there's always another girl with me when I hang out with the guys, I need to be careful with where I am and what I'm telling people....ugh!! It's driving me crazy! Fortunately, Michael (one of the guys I hang out with the most who's lived here almost his whole life) is really good at reminding me about the rules. I think it's silly though that there always has to be another person of your same sex. I mean, if there's a bunch of people with you it's not like something's gonna happen. Oh well. I'm trying.

Another problem these last few days has been exactly that which Linda Shreiner had warned me about...I let others burn me out. I have the bad habit of thinking of others more than myself. So, at night time, when I should go to bed early, if someone comes up to my room and wants to hang out, I tend to prefer hanging out then going to bed early. And when someone's depressed I tend to try to help them as much as I can, be there for them and get myself emotionally involved. Now, these last days, 3 of the 5 girls I hang out with have been very depressed and this has effected me a lot. For some reason, I didn't really realize that my feeling empty and drained out emotionally could have to do with them.

Unfortunately, because of all this (being annoyed with the rules and emotionally drained out) and then spending almost all day at the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) class downtown (which I need to go to for work), I didn't have the greatest of consequences. In fact, after spending most of the day in front of the computer, not digesting very well the asian food I had for lunch and getting car sick when coming back home, when one of the girls came up to me and told me that the girl that has been depressed over her close friend's suicide (which happened 3 months ago) had just found out that another friend of hers committed suicide, I just bust out into tears and spent dinner crying at the table.
This meltdown, however, made me see how fortunate I am because I have great people around me who really do care about me and love me. The thing I love about living in community is the whole sense of a great big family and how we've obviously become pretty close since we're always together and how I know that I can always count on my friends here. I've never really had friends like these before and it's just so nice that when I'm sad and sick they let me cry and that they take care of me. So in the end, the good is way better than the bad and I feel happy =)

Oct 11 - Oct 20

Thursday Oct 11
I had my first family dinner! My family is Matt and Becki Switaj's family. Becki is Ami's oldest sister. I really like my family. My "parents" are really nice, they're young, and I can talk with them very easily. I feel very comfortable with them. I also really like my "brothers". Micheal is now my brother which is funny because he kind of reminds me of my real brother Isaac...only he's not a little white blond boy, but a 19 year old mulatto haha. And I don't think he's a drummer. My other "brother" is Darren who just started Project 12. He's a nice and funny guy and he's my age! (So now I'm not the only teenager in P12!). The two Switaj boys are Lucas and Eben. They're 7 and 3. They're really cute!!!

Friday Oct 12
We had Anneliese's 20th birthday party. It was an 80s party where we all dressed up and danced for 4 hours to 80's music...it was so much fun!


Saturday Oct 13
I finally slept in! Then that evening I had fun playing cards with my family.

Sunday Oct 14
This day was Eben's 4th birthday and Ami decided to take him to McDonalds for the afternoon and Michael made me go with them. We were a pretty big group. The "adults" were Ami, Michael, Darren, Rich (Darren's friend who also just joined P12), Susanne and me and then, other than Eben, we also had two other little boys that Ami was baby sitting. (The picture is of Eden and Eben. It's funny how they look like brothers. They're so cute!!)
The sad thing is that Eben doesn't like me =( Maybe he just needs to warm up to me cuz right now I'm just s stranger to him.
Here's Tyler and Michael wanting to be little boys again...haha

Afterwards, Sarah, Michael, Tyler, Darren, Rich and I went downtown which was a lot of fun. Those boys are so silly.

Monday Oct 15
I was very hyper but also very tired during the day which was pretty funny. That evening I went for a bike ride in the rain at 11:30 with Amanda Sue and Andrew. It was so nice! =) (even though it was kind of chilly out)

Tuesday Oct 16
I was finally able to talk to my family in Portugal on the webcam which was really nice.

Thursday Oct 18
It was Ben's birthday!! I called my parents on skype again since Ben was gonna be there. It was really nice getting to talk to him =)

Sat Oct 20
We had a wedding. It's funny how I usually don't like going to church or going to weddings, but here I like going to church and Bethany and Elija's Jpusa wedding was great! It's funny because I don't know the couple that was getting married, but all Project 12 students had to help out. The tradition for Jpusa is that when someone has a wedding, the couple doesn't do anything and the whole community does everything for them. Isn't that really nice?? The decorations and the cake were so cool!!! Becki and another lady made the cake. My job was to do the Bride's Brunch. I wasn't too happy about the fact that I needed to get up early on a Saturday, but it was nice having a very nice brunch and hanging out with the bride and the bride's maids and watch them get their hair and makeup done. I thought it was funny that I also ended up in the Bride's room where the bride and the maids were getting dressed and ready to go out. They'll probably look at the pics and think "who the heck is that girl who isn't all dressed up?" haha

Oct 4 - Oct 10

I'm so sorry that I haven't posted anything in so long! My internet wasn't working and I've been so busy lately...Here's yet again a very long post for you...

Thursday Oct 4
DM (Discipleship Ministry) was awesome. We had worship and it was soo good. I think it's the best worship time we've had so far! Then we prayed for Brian (Ami's husband) and Josh (Brian's best friend) who were leaving the next day to go to India.

Saturday Oct 6
Woke up earlier than usual to go to the shelter for the Roof Raising (or how they say here the "ruff raising" haha). It's really crazy because in all these years no one has actually replaced or fixed the roof, they just kept adding on layers to it. So now the roofers and whoever else wants to help (this Saturday was Project 12) are taking off all the layers which was supposed to be 14 inch deep but which is actually 18 inch in the middle and 24 inch on the sides!
However, Sue (who's one of the people that work in the office where I work) had me doing the hospitality and welcome. At first, I felt bad because I came there to work on the roof, but then when I saw that the people working on the roof didn't have masks on and they were all black from the stuff on the roof I was glad I didn't go. My skin is very sensitive and I have asthma so it wouldn't have been a good idea. So while everyone was working really hard under the sun and getting their skin very irritated, I worked in the office because Sue wanted me to do some things for her. Therefore, I just ended up doing what I do every morning during the week.
Here's a video of this Saturday with Project 12 (Andrew who's in the video also works in my office). If you go to the link of CCO (the shelter) you can see the videos of the other days.

Then, after lunch, they had me go to the other building where they serve food to the homeless. At lunch time, they serve those that live in the shelter, but then from 1:30 pm to 3 they serve whatever homeless people from Chicago come in. That time is when I served. I had no idea that I was going to serve for so long, I thought I was just serving for an hour, but I enjoyed it. It was kind of weird cuz most of the people didn't look like they were homeless and they were all very nice. There were just two or three men that gave me problems, but 2 or 3 out of the 200 that came in is really good. While I was working Miss Cadillac kept telling me what to do which kind of annoyed me (even though I knew she was right and I knew it was good that she was telling me what to do). So when she came up to me later, while I was helping clean up, and asked me if I could come back Wednesday, it really surprised me. Annaliese (who grew up and lives here) said that's really rare. That made me happy.
Then that night we had the coffee house which was really awesome! =)

Sunday Oct 7
After church, Hannah, Susanne, Michael, Marco and I went to the lake to hang out which was a lot of fun. (click on the pics to make them bigger)

Then that night we went out for a Mexican dinner and Darrell and Lyle came with us (they're part of the P12 staff).

Monday Oct 8
I kind of had an emotional breakdown. I was really tired and, like most dinners, there was mostly meat and since I'm a vegetarian and I wasn't really hungry I decided to wait and have the rest of my burrito from the night before later on. However, when I then went to the kitchen on my floor and looked in the refrigerator, my burrito was gone! I was SO mad! I couldn't believe that someone had eaten it even though my name was written on it!
Later on, after I calmed down and decided to go back in the kitchen and find something to eat, Scott told me that he had eaten it. I was very mad because, of the 40 people that live on my floor, it was one of the few people who actually know me that ate something that was mine, but he was very sorry and funny and dramatic (as he usually is) so it was hard for me to explode and bite his head off (though my friends ended up doing it anyway =P)

Tuesday Oct 9
As soon as Scott saw me he gave me money for my burrito and I went out for lunch with Sarah and Dora to get a sub sandwich cuz they didn't want to have the lunch at the house.
Since that night was the last night we were gonna see Marco, a bunch of us went out to the lake and Bethany flew a kite hehe (the picture is of Dora, Marco, me and Hannah). It was really nice having fun after RL (Redeemed Lives) cuz it's the only class that I don't like and that night the lesson had also been really intense.

Wednesday Oct 10
Marco left for England!

Death Is Such A Mystery

I hate crying on my own, I hate crying in front of others, but there's something about crying with someone else that feels good. Maybe it's the fact of giving some sort of support to another in need...I don't know. During orientation I cried with one of the girls when she told me about her friend who hung himself about 2 months ago and tonight I cried with Bethany and Hannah when they started talking about their brothers being in Iraq.
Can you believe that half of the people in Project 12 (10 people) have relatives and friends in Iraq?? And I had no idea that now, since the U.S. is in war, the military can keep soldiers over there longer than they should. So some people that should have served for only two years have now been there for three and aren't completely sure when they're gonna get to go back home! That's horrible.
Speaking of war, almost every time we have movie and discussion night (which was tonight) we have the discussion about wether or not it's right to kill another person. Some say that it's right if you're defending your life or the life of others while others say that we must turn the other cheek and die instead of killing.
These are a few things that were pointed out by different people on what we find in the Bible:
* One of the Commandments are "Thy shall not kill"
* God ordered people in the Bible to kill thousands of people.
* Jesus says to love your enemies
* Jesus says to turn the other cheek
That's just so confusing to me...but as Ami said this night, not everything is black and white and it's impossible for us to completely understand the Bible and God. She also said that our concept of death and God's concept of death are two different things.
I hate how so many things are beyond our understanding.

Twirling Around With the Wrong Kind Of Shoes

I just got back from my first swing dance lesson! It was so much fun!! One of the girls came up to me at the end and told me that I must've been having a great time cuz I was smiling and laughing the whole time =) During the lesson I ended up with the guys who had no idea of what they were doing, but then I stayed after the lesson was over and danced with Marco and Nate (the teacher) and it was SO much fun. They spun me around so much it was crazy! Of course, not having the right kind of shoes I kept tripping. What I learned though is that the important thing is that the guy knows what he's doing since he has to lead.
Soon Amanda Sue's gonna come over and start teaching me how to sow and help me start patching up my shoe! Yay I'm so happy =)

Here's the slide show I said I'd put up =)

And here's a video I did just for the heck of it (I'm not that good at this, but I'm learning) Song is Swan by the Italian singer Elisa =)
Unpacking in my new room

Oh yeah, during lunch I got to hear a bunch of spooky stories about one of the elevators. I only use the elevators when I'm tired or in a hurry...Unfortunately, every time I'm in a hurry the elevator will bring me down to the first floor, stop, not open the doors, and then go up to the 9th floor!! I guess the ghost doesn't like me haha