My time so far in Church Hill has been wonderful, tiring, enlightening,
confusing, delightful, frustrating and quite possibly the most rewarding
experience of my life to date. Being here for a week with 20 of my college
classmates did little to prepare me for what I have discovered. When I came here with ODU I saw a community that was so full of God's love that one couldn't help but get infected by it. Everyone I met
and every situation I was in during Spring Break was in a group setting. That
was still wonderful, and more than enough to convince me to try my hand at a
summer spent here, but it was comfortable. Being here semi-long term and
without the slew of familiar faces is a whole nother animal. The first hurdle
to leap was getting to know my fellow college interns. I knew Doug well from
school but the rest of the interns were new faces and mysteries to me. I always
find it odd getting to know people who I assume I will eventually know very
well. It is tempting to spend our time together in thought wondering what our
interaction will be like in the future instead of dealing with the awkward
reality of actually interacting with them. We bonded fairly quickly though,
despite my distracted efforts.
A watershed in our inter-intern relationships occurred on the first Thursday
here. We spent the day painting the house of David and Joy Bailey, who are
moving into the neighborhood. This in itself was a great fusing event for us,
working together in small rooms with one or two people gave plenty of
opportunity for chatting, and or singing. What really completed the bonding for
me though was when we all ate dinner together. We told riddles and played a
game called Pogo, which any of the interns would be delighted to teach you, as
well as a game of Taboo. Being with the other college interns was never very
awkward from that point on.
I am really liking my extended stay here. The kids trust me more now
that I can tell them that I will be here all summer. When I was here for a week
several kids asked me when I would be back and I told them that I would only be
staying for a week. One child tried to make a bet with me after that. He said
that I had to pay him five dollars if I wasn't there for next week's tutoring.
I tried to make it clear to him that I wasn't interested in such a bet because
I already knew that I wouldn't be there but he wasn't about to let my
unwillingness to participate interfere with his money making scheme, normal
rules regarding the mutual participation of betting were cast aside. I then
tried a different approach and asked him how he expected me to pay him five
dollars if I wasn't around next week. He very exasperatedly told me that I
could just pay him the week after that. Then he ran off and I am fairly certain
that he anticipated his prize for a few weeks but thankfully he didn't try to
collect when I finally did return this summer. I have no plans to remind
him.
The first week here I helped out with Little Tykes Tutoring. I particularly
enjoyed watching the interactions of a pair of brothers, Daniel and Carlos. The
other kids call them Tick the Hustler and Snapper respectively but I have
trouble using those names with a straight face so I call them Daniel and
Carlos. Daniel is Carlos' older brother and he is really protective of him,
when he is not slapping him around that is. There is almost a tenderness to the
way Daniel boxes Carlos, but not so tender that I didn't tell Daniel to cut it
out. One really touching moment was when Carlos went to the bodily waste
collection facility and came out struggling mightily to properly fasten his
belt. Daniel just rolled his eyes and went over to help his younger brother. He
wasn’t much better at the whole belt fastening thing but the care Daniel had
for his little brother was very evident.
There are two types of college interns. The first type is paired with a high
school Street Leader and will help them with their entrepreneurial task. The
second, and much cooler, type of intern is paired with an apprentice. The
apprentices weren’t quite ready to participate in the full internship program
but they are given a chance to be involved by assisting the astoundingly and
amazingly awesome interns. I am one of those interns, along with Andrea and
Alecia. Together we are the A-team and we handle everything from unruly little
tykes to teenagers with attitude, and run things from cooking class to VBS.
Luckily though, unlike the real A-team, we don’t have to deal with South
American drug lords.
I was paired with Brandon. My first chance to get to know him was the
camping trip. The two day excursion to North Carolina was really helpful in
trying to get to know all of the kids. I went into it knowing barely any of the
names and I came out of it knowing more than I did. We spent almost the entire
Saturday in the lake. It was really, really hot so I appreciated the water. That
night I was in a tent with Brandon and two other kids. My tent and a few other
tents on both sides of us got into a pretty serious your mama battle which I
was powerless to stop. Brandon is fairly adept at them but I had trouble getting
them to understand why insulting other people’s mamas is disrespectful.
A lot of other meaningful stuff has happened the first three weeks, in fact
cool experiences happen just about every day. However I can only share so many
and I have to save some stuff to use when land on the talk show circuit.
