Mismatched buttons and peanut butter

You know those days that you can't quite complain about but just feel a little bit… off? Like wearing a shirt with the top button accidentally looped through the second button hole. Nothing quite works the way it's supposed to and you're never sure what's going on. You can't decide if you ought to be bothered by it or just laugh instead.

That's how yesterday was. I led my first-ever focus group in the morning, after carefully grooming my questions over the weekend to be sure I was fully prepared. I was expecting about six or seven of our regular participants to show up. By nine o'clock, all of the regulars were in the room chatting boisterously and drinking coffee, and by the time I abandoned ship at ten, there were sixteen people in the room, including a cute little girl with braids and a very serious-looking baby who wished he could climb across the table. The most ridiculous thing about this situation was that half of these people I had never seen before and no one had invited them. I don't know where they came from! My professors at Covenant would have been thrilled to peek into the office yesterday morning and see me trying to conduct "sensible and helpful" research in an environment that was in exact opposition to my purposes. It didn't go terribly, and I actually thought it was quite funny, but there were far too many people and too much chaos for me to do really ideal research.

By the time I left work I still felt rather thrown by the focus group and by managing things on my own all day, with Hayden gone in San Francisco. I clambered into my truck and was about to start it, only to realize that I had somehow got peanut butter in the ignition. What?! This struck me as impossibly funny and I laughed mindlessly on the steering wheel for a couple of minutes. If anyone saw me it probably looked like I was weeping.

In an attempt to make sense of a very strange day, I did something completely irrational: I drove half an hour just to find ice cream. Suffolk's only very serious fault is that it doesn't have a single place to buy an ice cream sundae within half an hour of downtown. For a place that already reached ninety degrees in May, this seems completely unreasonable to me. My own homeland still struggles with the 50s in that month, and there are like four good places for me to buy a cone within walking distance of my house. Anyway, yesterday was the final straw. I was not going to put up with an icecreamless existence anymore. So I chucked research for the rest of the day and drove out to Sweet Frog for a sundae (Sweet Frog is actually frozen yogurt, so healthy, and Christian-run, so spiritual. Boom! I win!). Afterward I went to the gym and ran until I wanted to die. Yeah, all of my choices yesterday made a ton of sense, too.

But the ice cream and the run made me feel better. Can't wait to see what the rest of this week holds...

Somethin' Bout a Truck...

Yeah, I know every word to that song.
And here I am with the trusty pickup. You can't tell from this picture, but it has super cool camouflage detailing around the windows and hood, and hunting stickers on the windows.
I am pleased to find that I actually look somewhat capable standing next to it, and not as little and comical as I had feared.

Suffolk on the Move and my dear old 310 notes

It's Saturday afternoon. I was up at 6:50 this morning, after a night in which the dogs decided it would be a good idea to bark loudly at anything that moved-- the cats, a toad, a bumblebee-- and some things that didn't. The bumblebee must have stung Shagnasty (that is really their dog's name) when he tried to eat it, because he then sat in the sun room and smacked his lips loudly for about twenty minutes. Anyway, I had to be up early to pick up one of the HFS peeps for Suffolk on the Move, and then meet up with five more of the participants and Hayden's family for the one-mile fun walk down at Constant's Wharf. It was fun, as promised, and the weather was lovely for it.

I have the house to myself today because "my family" is at the beach. Last night I took advantage of this by spending the evening in their kitchen, blaring boy band music, having several loud Skype conversations, and using like every dish in the house to cook things. Now I'm curled up with my notes from Community Development 310 (Community Development Principles and Issues), getting ready for my focus group on Monday morning. Reading over these notes is really getting me pumped as I remember all the times I've left Corbett's classes literally trembling with excitement (sound like an exaggeration? Try extreme nerdiness). I love this stuff.

Southern Firsts of the Week

1. Why didn't anyone tell me before now that barbecue can be vinegar-based?! This week I had my first experience with Carolina-style barbecue. Oh, the brilliance of a tangy sauce instead of a sweet one! I rescued all the leftovers and have been eating it as often as is reasonable for the past three days. You can just put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon like cereal. (Well, maybe you can't. I can. I might be alone in my desire to eat bowlfuls of sour, salty meat.)
2. I parallel parked that huge green pickup truck this week in the middle of downtown. I had forgotten that I can't parallel park, then realized that I've imperceptibly learned how, in a half-ton pickup.
3. This week in the community garden, one of the HFS women and I chatted back and forth for a couple of hours as we worked, fertilized, and pulled weeds together. Suddenly I recalled how overwhelming the garden had been on my very first day at HFS, as this same woman and her friend kept up a steady conversation that I could barely understand through their thick, Southern African American accents. I was thrilled to find that now I was chattering with her just as steadily, and hardly missing a word.

Moving right along

This has been a good week. I feel like I've hit a rhythm in my research. I have enough meetings to keep me busy and interested and I still have time for all the assignments I have to turn in. I feel productive, but not like I'm drowning or unable to enjoy those around me. I'm beginning to form what feel like real connections with some of the people at church, and I can drive around Suffolk and even through that scary underwater tunnel to Norfolk with nary a problem. I'm learning how to balance my needs to connect with people here, feel supported by people at home, and spend time by myself. I'm feeling where my limits are, emotionally and academically, but also trying some things that kind of frighten and stretch me (junior high youth group, anyone?). My first month of research is over, and I dare say I'm happy.

The Value of Bumper Stickers on One's Laptop

Yeah, I do that hipster thing. I have college, coffee, and Christian bumper stickers, one for frozen yogurt, and a backpack logo, all on the front of my Mac. It makes me look cool, smart, holy, adventurous, fun, and concerned for the environment, all at once. There's really no losing with these stickers, even though Dr. Mask told me once that he would be disgusted if his daughter did that to her laptop.

Plus, my laptop bumper stickers have invited some interesting conversations over the past week. A couple at the library stopped me several days ago to ask about the "Together for the Gospel" sticker that I got from a Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago, and we talked a while about our mutual faith and the work I'm doing this summer. Today in Rosa's, the little local coffee shop in downtown Suffolk, a friendly woman at the table next to mine noticed my Covenant sticker and asked about it. Turns out, her cousin goes to Covenant-- and her cousin happens to be one of the first people I met there. In fact, I had lunch at her house during one of my first Sundays on Lookout Mountain!

So there you have it. Another benefit to stickering up your laptop. You're cool, you're smart, you're holy, you're adventurous and fun and environmentally conscious-- and you'll probably have more friends.

Welcome, Week 4!

   The third week of the community development internship is known by my predecessors under a number of affectionate titles: "third-week freakout," "misery," "the week I cried every day." I'm not sure what to call it, but I'm glad it's over.
   About a week ago, Hayden began to ask me rapid-fire questions about how things were going with work, at home, at church, with my experience in the community. I answered with bland positivity until I realized the truth: I was overwhelmed by new faces, freaked out by my research, homesick for Michigan, and just plain crabby. Suddenly I kind of wanted to cry. I guess that's what Hayden was looking for.
   It was so good to have Hayden remind me of the normalcy of what I was feeling that week. I looked back over some school notes on culture shock and realized that's exactly what was represented in my glum thoughts: "Why don't you pronounce your vowels like 'normal' people? Dress like 'normal' people? Have a 'normal' fresh body of water instead of this stupid, salty ocean?!"
   I think that the worst has passed, although my birthday on Thursday made it a little better and a little worse at the same time. It was awesome to have people here who cared that it was my birthday and to Skype with my family and get emails or letters from my friends, but it was not awesome to also know that I'm still very much a newcomer-- there's nobody here who can recall celebrating any other birthdays with me.
   After a perfect Sunday, biking through the Great Dismal Swamp and chatting with Jay and Lizzie, plunging into the 3 feet of murky black water that is Lake Drummond (is it odd that this is an element in my definition of a "perfect Sunday"?), and coming back to a terrific Skype conversation with close friends, I feel just about ready for a new week. Now I'm going to join the family and some neighbors out by the fire pit to close out the day. Here's to Week 4.