Friday, November 09, 2012
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Reason #452 why I will miss Denver
My co-workers are amazing. Today they threw a going-away party for me in Swansea park, a short walk from our building. Everyone brought such delicious food, from strawberries to gorditos (this lives up to its name of 'little fat ones' - meat and and potatoes fried in thick hand-sized tortilla shells) to macaroni salad to ice cream cake, which Griselda bought not even knowing it was my favorite! My contribution was Ants on a Log, that classic mom-treat that I was pleased to share with the Mexican-American children who had never heard of it. They were just as thrilled to be eating ants as any red-blooded US child. And it started an interesting train of conversation about who has eaten the strangest things ever.
I wish everyone in the world could meet all of my co-workers! My boss, Eric, wrote a farewell song and serenaded all of us on his guitar:
(My two favorite stanzas):
She started by helping the students
At the homework help club after school
Soon she had lots of kids learning knitting
At Swansea now, knitting is cool.
Bethany's made lots of friends here
And there's a sad part in our good-bye song
But as she moves on to her next adventure
We send lots of good wishes along.
Rosario presented me with three red roses that she had put in the freezer last night, not realizing that they would suffer acute freezer burn, and look quite droopy.
Sonia and her girls, who I tutored after school, gave me a lovely striped journal and a signed card.
My workplace as a whole presented me with an official 'staff' T-shirt (even though I'm not paid!) and money towards a new camera, since my digital one is no longer working.
But of course, gifts are an expression of love, which is the true reason to celebrate. I will miss all of these people dearly. They have certainly been an integral part of my service year, teaching me what it means to serve the poor while affirming their dignity, how to integrate family life and work, the riskiness of investing yourself in your work, but how very inhuman it would be not to do so.
Goodbyes are hard.
I wish everyone in the world could meet all of my co-workers! My boss, Eric, wrote a farewell song and serenaded all of us on his guitar:
(My two favorite stanzas):
She started by helping the students
At the homework help club after school
Soon she had lots of kids learning knitting
At Swansea now, knitting is cool.
Bethany's made lots of friends here
And there's a sad part in our good-bye song
But as she moves on to her next adventure
We send lots of good wishes along.
Rosario presented me with three red roses that she had put in the freezer last night, not realizing that they would suffer acute freezer burn, and look quite droopy.
Sonia and her girls, who I tutored after school, gave me a lovely striped journal and a signed card.
My workplace as a whole presented me with an official 'staff' T-shirt (even though I'm not paid!) and money towards a new camera, since my digital one is no longer working.
But of course, gifts are an expression of love, which is the true reason to celebrate. I will miss all of these people dearly. They have certainly been an integral part of my service year, teaching me what it means to serve the poor while affirming their dignity, how to integrate family life and work, the riskiness of investing yourself in your work, but how very inhuman it would be not to do so.
Goodbyes are hard.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Oh the Joys of Homemaking!
Yes indeed - we had quite a feast of a fiesta last night.
The menu:
- Chicken breast, both BBQ and A1 marinated
- Skish-ka-bobs of yellow squash, tomato, mushroom, and green pepper
- Baked sweet potatoes
- Fruit salad, including yellow watermelon! Who would've thunk!
- Peach pie
- Homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
Out of that menu, only the chicken breast was purchased at the store. Most else was leftovers from Broadway Assistance Center food bank, where I work on Fridays. I glean after 60 families have gone through the line and filled their baskets with fruits and vegetables. I wonder how anyone is hungry in Denver, with what we throw away for lack of anyone claiming it.
The cookies were from Meg's mom, who was visiting with her dad and Meg's sister-in-law, from Minnesota which, she tells us, is just now starting spring. And yes, she does listen to Garrison Keiller, which I find Perfect.
Good food, good company (Meg's family plus all the housemates minus one), good conversation, good decoration (fresh-picked flowers from our yard) = amazement.
Afterwards, we biked downtown to an Art Walk held every first Friday, where galleries are open, bands play live music, and the streets are crowded with people on cultured dates.
The menu:
- Chicken breast, both BBQ and A1 marinated
- Skish-ka-bobs of yellow squash, tomato, mushroom, and green pepper
- Baked sweet potatoes
- Fruit salad, including yellow watermelon! Who would've thunk!
- Peach pie
- Homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
Out of that menu, only the chicken breast was purchased at the store. Most else was leftovers from Broadway Assistance Center food bank, where I work on Fridays. I glean after 60 families have gone through the line and filled their baskets with fruits and vegetables. I wonder how anyone is hungry in Denver, with what we throw away for lack of anyone claiming it.
The cookies were from Meg's mom, who was visiting with her dad and Meg's sister-in-law, from Minnesota which, she tells us, is just now starting spring. And yes, she does listen to Garrison Keiller, which I find Perfect.
Good food, good company (Meg's family plus all the housemates minus one), good conversation, good decoration (fresh-picked flowers from our yard) = amazement.
Afterwards, we biked downtown to an Art Walk held every first Friday, where galleries are open, bands play live music, and the streets are crowded with people on cultured dates.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
On the Up and Up
Well, faithful blog readers (and you know who you are!), as you can no doubt tell, there have been many things that have distracted me from posting recently, some pleasant and some not as much. To begin with the latter, I seem to have contracted a bizarre stomach bug-thing during our time in Moab, which resulted in a comically distended (I'm looking for the fancy word for 'bloated' here) tummy, an absolute lack of appetite, and rather strange noises from my GI tract. Praise God, after a week the bug vacated my interior and I feel just bursting with energy and appetite, both of which I've put to good use already!
On the pleasanter side of things: this past week was the final one of the school year for the kids I tutor, so there were many festivities. I went to the fifth graders' "continuation" ceremony on Tuesday. There seems to be quite heated opinion in various quarters whether a continuation ceremony is a) unnecessary; b) redundant; or c) charming. I whole-heartedly affirm option c, insisting that there's never a reason too small for a celebration, and that having been an eyewitness in the fifth grade classes this year, continuing really is a cause for joy. I got choked up multiple times at the sight of girls and boys rising to their full stature in minituare suits and dresses, belting out R. Kelly's "World's Greatest" (Hey, I made it! I'm the world's greatest!) and parents scrambling to get shots with wind-up cameras of their kid shaking the teacher's hand. Plus, the cake frosting was amazing, not too sugary.
In other news, literally, I had the chance to do an interview with a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver's two main papers. You can read it here. Pretty cool, huh?
The excitement just goes on and on:
One of my coworkers, Yesenia, and eight months y pico (Spanish for 'just a little bit') pregnant with her fourth daughter, Lupita Alba Nunez. Her other girls are 9, 7, and 2, and just the most splendid people ever. The eldest, Christina Maria, invited me a week or so ago to accompany her on an overnight camping trip with her 3rd grade class, her very first experience of camping and sleeping away from home. Of course I said yes: the combo of being with her, hiking, and sleeping outside is, naturally, irresistable. The trip was this past Friday and Saturday, at a Denver park at the very edge of Denver, called Genessee. Feeling quite distended still, and sleeping only un pico the night before, I took a deep breath, prayed, and went anyway! I'm so glad I did. I mainly stuck with Christina and her little friends Araceli and Esmerelda the whole time.
Best moments: Twilight. The setting sun kissed the curve of the mountains pink and purple, and backlight a grove of aspen trees in our campsite. The fire was roaring by this time, and a gaggle of 3rd graders crowded around, happily roasting two, three, four mallows at a time, and mostly devouring them right from the stick. The lighting was absolutely perfect, and seeing such joy bouncing up and down brought a lump to my throat (if you can't tell, it doesn't take much to emotionally move me). Several families had come along, enjoying the woods with their children. I turned around, and at the picnic table was a little brother, Angel, who had roasted a mallow but then apparantly ran out of energy before he could eat it; his little head had fallen, plop! on the table and he was fast asleep, his chubby hand still holding a stick with a burnt mallow on the end of it. You just go, go, go, and bam! you're done.
Other best moments: seeing Christina happy. I feel very maternal toward her, and she has taught me what kind of deep, deep joy it is to see a child happy, dancing around, giggling bent over, both hands over her mouth. She became fascinated with moss during the trip, and plucked probably too many chunks of thick green 'carpet', meant to be a gift to her mom and siblings, but forgotten at our tent. And! She used! the outdoor non-flushing toilet! It took about a half hour, and the immanent threat of shame from wetting her pants, but she did it!
Finally, the garden has consumed a good amount of my time lately, sans distended-tummy-era. I just staked up the snow peas, and some morning glory vines for good measure. What the garden is growing now: Seedlings: small, medium, and large tomatoes; eggplant; hot and mild peppers; broccoli; large onions; carrots. Looking mighty fine: spring onions, turnip tops, bok choy, basil. Yet-to-sprout: corn, cucumbers, oregano, more basil. Hooray for spring and growing things and love and new life and God's mercies which are fresh every morning!
Peace to you all, take deep breaths, enjoy all the goodness in this world!
On the pleasanter side of things: this past week was the final one of the school year for the kids I tutor, so there were many festivities. I went to the fifth graders' "continuation" ceremony on Tuesday. There seems to be quite heated opinion in various quarters whether a continuation ceremony is a) unnecessary; b) redundant; or c) charming. I whole-heartedly affirm option c, insisting that there's never a reason too small for a celebration, and that having been an eyewitness in the fifth grade classes this year, continuing really is a cause for joy. I got choked up multiple times at the sight of girls and boys rising to their full stature in minituare suits and dresses, belting out R. Kelly's "World's Greatest" (Hey, I made it! I'm the world's greatest!) and parents scrambling to get shots with wind-up cameras of their kid shaking the teacher's hand. Plus, the cake frosting was amazing, not too sugary.
In other news, literally, I had the chance to do an interview with a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver's two main papers. You can read it here. Pretty cool, huh?
The excitement just goes on and on:
One of my coworkers, Yesenia, and eight months y pico (Spanish for 'just a little bit') pregnant with her fourth daughter, Lupita Alba Nunez. Her other girls are 9, 7, and 2, and just the most splendid people ever. The eldest, Christina Maria, invited me a week or so ago to accompany her on an overnight camping trip with her 3rd grade class, her very first experience of camping and sleeping away from home. Of course I said yes: the combo of being with her, hiking, and sleeping outside is, naturally, irresistable. The trip was this past Friday and Saturday, at a Denver park at the very edge of Denver, called Genessee. Feeling quite distended still, and sleeping only un pico the night before, I took a deep breath, prayed, and went anyway! I'm so glad I did. I mainly stuck with Christina and her little friends Araceli and Esmerelda the whole time.
Best moments: Twilight. The setting sun kissed the curve of the mountains pink and purple, and backlight a grove of aspen trees in our campsite. The fire was roaring by this time, and a gaggle of 3rd graders crowded around, happily roasting two, three, four mallows at a time, and mostly devouring them right from the stick. The lighting was absolutely perfect, and seeing such joy bouncing up and down brought a lump to my throat (if you can't tell, it doesn't take much to emotionally move me). Several families had come along, enjoying the woods with their children. I turned around, and at the picnic table was a little brother, Angel, who had roasted a mallow but then apparantly ran out of energy before he could eat it; his little head had fallen, plop! on the table and he was fast asleep, his chubby hand still holding a stick with a burnt mallow on the end of it. You just go, go, go, and bam! you're done.
Other best moments: seeing Christina happy. I feel very maternal toward her, and she has taught me what kind of deep, deep joy it is to see a child happy, dancing around, giggling bent over, both hands over her mouth. She became fascinated with moss during the trip, and plucked probably too many chunks of thick green 'carpet', meant to be a gift to her mom and siblings, but forgotten at our tent. And! She used! the outdoor non-flushing toilet! It took about a half hour, and the immanent threat of shame from wetting her pants, but she did it!
Finally, the garden has consumed a good amount of my time lately, sans distended-tummy-era. I just staked up the snow peas, and some morning glory vines for good measure. What the garden is growing now: Seedlings: small, medium, and large tomatoes; eggplant; hot and mild peppers; broccoli; large onions; carrots. Looking mighty fine: spring onions, turnip tops, bok choy, basil. Yet-to-sprout: corn, cucumbers, oregano, more basil. Hooray for spring and growing things and love and new life and God's mercies which are fresh every morning!
Peace to you all, take deep breaths, enjoy all the goodness in this world!
Thursday, May 08, 2008
So much to look forward to
So our own indefatigable Betsy secured the very last campsite available at Moab, Utah for Memorial Day weekend! Woot! It's called WindWhistle and looks absolutely amazing. All of the companions (11) are going, from early Saturday morning to late Monday night. I had hoped to explore more of the West while being in Colorado, and now's my chance! Apparently the star-gazing in phenomenal in Moab, giving me a chance to brush up on my rusty astronomy knowledge =)
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