La Vida Del Verano Interno

Estoy solo en una casa pacifica y estoy escuchando a Glee. Esto trabajara mejor con los puntos cortos.

- A/C IS BACK!!!!!!! It came back on in the afternoon on Wednesday! So, I'm back in the office with the resources I need at hand.

- I'm doing some of the home calls for Children of Inmates (trying to sign up families who have a member in the Everglades Correctional Institution for a bus trip there), but it's really hard to get a hold of these people and I have until MONDAY to get in touch with them AND get their paperwork submitted! It looks like be a caller for Admissions came in handy

- I send an email out about my research plan to the directors of the other mentoring programs and I got a LOT of responses! I mean, some said 'no, we don't mentor', but others said they looked forward to hearing from me! one agreed, but in exchange I have to help them set up a meeting with FCFC.

- one of those emails resulted in MY FIRST INTERVIEW! on MONDAY! with Big Brothers, Big Sisters! so I'm going to do my interview with Amachi mentoring first as practice for BBBS.

- God TOTALLY confirmed my choice of major! FCFC had someone from some corporate office of one of their grants come for 2 days and lead them in some brain storming exercise. The one I was invited to was an Asset Mapping exercise. They had a poster for the five asset categories (individuals, places, associations, institutions, and economic) and for an hour just wrote names down. I contributed a few, but my main job was helping them distinguish between associations and institutions. At one point, the head of COI (Travis), looks at me and goes, "You enjoying this?" and I replied, "oh, yeah!" and he said, "I could tell, you've been smiling this whole time".

- I came to terms with the uniqueness of my internship. I've been comparing myself to the other domestic interns, and started feeling bad when I wasn't as involved in the local community as they are. Then I realized that they have to do that for their research. For my research, I'm completely involved in mentoring programs (including trainings, matching events, grant writing, etc.). Which made me feel a LOT better about me reading an article about why men aren't interested in mentoring instead of sitting and talking with our neighbors (who only speak Spanish).

- I had a lovely dinner with the Mannuels! The Mannuels used to be at my church in Cape Coral years ago and they've been pastoring here in Miami. They gave me a lot of good information about the churches in Miami and the kind of work they tend to do.

- I had my first conversation in Spanish! it was with the store clerk at CVS.
"Hola, Como estas?"
"Bien, y tu?"
"No mal. Tienes un tarjeta de CVS?"
"Si, Aqui"
(silence as I pay by debit card)
me: "Grasias!"
"De nada!"

I know, it's out of like a 2nd graders text book, but I actually SAID those words! It was a major break through!

Ruegue:
- For friendships at the church I'm going to and the small group
- responses to the emails
- the bus trip to the jail is on Wednesday, 1-I'm going. 2- I need to get in touch with this families so they can come, too.
- Focus on the school work side of this internship. I've got papers and notes to type out and send but they're not nearly as exciting as interviewing or reading up on mentoring (or even studying Spanish, for that matter)

Vaya con Dios!