Okay, time for a real update.
I've been here for nearly a week and a half. The first few days in an unfamiliar place are unlike anything else one can experience, with every sense heightened by unfamiliarity, and this time the newness is highlighted further by the fact that there is not a single person or place here that I have seen before. Even during freshman year at college or May term in Uganda there were a few familiar faces, but not here. It is at once exhilarating and lonely, and I am riding the waves back and forth between the two. I knew to expect that, though, and even the loneliness has its attraction as part of the experience. Overall I'd say I'm adjusting very well and I really like it here.
I held the preparation for this internship lightly, knowing that things might change at any moment. One weekend I thought my internship had fallen through, and I've watched it happen to a couple of friends this year. So I arrived in Suffolk with few expectations, and my only nervousness was to hope that Lizzie Dorschel, the 19-year-old daughter of the family I am staying with, would like me and that my internship supervisor would be nice.
Here are my first impressions of the Dorschels: Lizzie running to greet me from the front step of the house. Discovering that my room has a door in it that leads to the roof. A cookout with family and conversations around the fire pit until after dark. A room above the garage, with wisteria-climbed stairs leading up to it. Talking about community development, disability, and the hospital stays and chemo that Lizzie and I have in common from our childhoods. Hayden accidentally knocking a picture frame off the wall as she carried a bag upstairs for me when I first arrived and Mary Alice's stern but smiling response to her apology, "Things like this do NOT bother me, Hayden!" Mary Alice's garden and the way that its beauty and comfort reflects what the whole house is like-- tasteful and full of personality, but not in a way that makes you feel like you can't touch anything. In fact, "you can touch everything," she said. Jay teaching me how to drive the Vespa, and praying for me the first night I was here. They couldn't have possibly known what Lizzie's quick conversation, Jay's prayer, Mary Alice's response to the cracked picture frame, and funny little things like the fire pit and the room above the garage and the roof door meant to me. But it all delighted me and set me immediately at ease.
At work I've planted onions and melons in the garden with Hope for Suffolk participants and they've taught me how to make recycled paper with ground-up church bulletins, dye, and flowers or string. (You can buy HFS products here, by the way.) I've done some office work, gone to meetings, met a lot of people, and asked Hayden lots of questions as I've followed her around, watching her in her role as director of HFS.
Suffolk itself charms me. I've driven my big pickup truck and rode Mary Alice's bike around town to get to know the place, and I love the small town Southern dynamic and being less than a mile from the calm center of downtown and Rosa's coffeeshop. We're also right next to a river and I can see it from my window. In my attempt to become a part of this place, even for just a short time, I've joined the 20-something Sunday school at Westminster and attended the youth group on Wednesday night. I'm getting a library card and yesterday I joined the rec center in East Suffolk. It's two and a half miles from the Dorschels' house, so to ride my bike there I cut through the middle of downtown, which is full of signs telling bikers to stay off the sidewalks. That made the ride a little more exciting than I was anticipating.
Now that I've gotten my feet wet, I'm beginning to set up interviews and meetings. Next week, the research will hopefully begin in earnest.
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