worky

for those of you who regularly read my blog, however few of you that may be, you may or may not have noticed that i have yet to describe my work. there are two main reasons for that; one is that it is somewhat complicated to explain exactly what I do, so I’ve been lazy about it, and the other reason is that my daily work is just now cementing into routine. i guess a third reason is that I am somewhat uncomfortable talking about the youth I work with in a semi-public forum. that said, I’m going to take a stab at it now, and not go into specifics about my students or anything.

during the school day, I work at a high school. it is one of the three large public school schools in LC, and there are over 2000 kids there. my job is to tutor at-risk students in their core classes. at-risk can mean a number of things—they have behavioral or attendence issues. or they refuse to do their work. or they come from tough lives outside of school and they need some extra help and encouragement. many are gang members that routinely get into fights. some have children. some may have problems with drugs, etc.

what i have found is that they are all interesting and friendly people who just need a little extra attention. and some can’t help but to get into big trouble. over and over again. they have been overall very accepting of me and welcome my help. i feel very fortunate in that regard, because before I started I was skeptical about how they would react to having a tutor. I didn’t want to embarrass them in their classes or anything.

I currently have about 18 students, although technically I am supposed to have 15 max. Everyday we get more requests from students who want more help. It is hard to tell them no, so we’ve started a waiting list for any new referrals or inquires that come up. For the most part, I work with my students them inside of the classroom. That way, they don’t miss anything that the teachers offer them. I work in a wide variety of classrooms, with students in grades 9-12. The most difficult part so far has been trying to figure out the logistics and the scheduling so that I can spend enough time with each student in the classes they need it most. At this point, I hardly have time to help with the classes these students are failing. most are failing all of their classes. hopefully i can help to turn that around for some of them.

i did get one interesting new student today—she only speaks french, and very little english. french speakers down here are extremely rare. so it’s really great for my french to work with her. she’s cool too. the majority of the rest of my students are ESL—Spanish being their first language. kinda wish i knew spanish, but at least my french isn’t going to waste either!

after school, i go between five or six different elementary after school enrichment programs. right now i am requesting donations for art supplies from a bunch of different businesses in LC. once i get some supplies, i’m going to be going from school to school with different art projects that i plan. it’s really fun to get to work with the littler kids after working with high schoolers all day! not that i don’t enjoy the high school, it’s just a good mix of the two right now. plus i’m really looking forward to integrating my art interest in my job. this week i am taking photos at each of the after school sites to put into a presentation about our AmeriCorps program for our state-wide AmeriCorps conference this October.

i’m also in a book club at the high school which means that there is a list of a bunch of books, and the librarians keep track of all the teachers and students who read the books and then connects them to talk about it. it’s all pretty easy reading, but it’s a cool way for me to be active in the school, plus put in a few extra hours for work. next up is 'ender's game'--to awaken the prepubescent sci-fi geek in me! just kidding--joe loves that book so i prob shouldn't make fun of it. anyway.

my job also requires x amount of volunteer hours, which i’ve been doing at the museums of las cruces over the weekends. i also am responsible to recruit volunteers for our program as well. plus we have weekend events and all sorts of things like that. so it all keeps me pretty busy. i’ve been working around 9 hours a day average. i was 14 hours behind two weeks ago (from my trip to MN) and i am already more than caught up. it’s work, but it’s not boring. and i get to move around a lot and work closely with people. so it’s cool.

check it

went on another hike this weekend. photos have been posted. we are hike-y people. also messing around with the camera so here are two (crude) instances of that:

o god.

well today i got myself a nice burned back o the neck, courtesy of a bomb threat called in to the high school i work at. we were forced to sit in a soccer field for two hours straight. no shade, no water, no nothin. during lunch time, even! in related news, joe's school was on 'lock down' yesterday due to (what turned out to be a rumored) shooting at albertson's (grocery). this all on top of that glorious threat letter, which indicated that "bodies will be dropping" in random shootings.

this is the culture of fear in motion. i don't feel unsafe, but all this is starting to get old!

cmon people now, smile on yr brother, everybody get together try'n love one another right now.

snipe!

nothing super exciting to report. nonetheless, i will bore you with details about this weekend. friday night, after working until 6:30 pm soliciting local business for in-kind donations, joe and i headed off to faith’s house for a party/art sale which was pretty fun, until we received word via a phone call to someone else about the threat to the city of las cruces. you may have heard about it (mom says it was on national news) but if not, here’s a link or two to the story. we didn’t know what was really going on, though, since there was no television or internet at the party. so we got reasonably freaked out about that, but decided to brave the outside world and headed to el patio, an old bar in mesilla, anyway. the bouncer there confirmed the rumor on our way out. turns out someone sent in two threats to city officials, demanding an undisclosed amount of money by an undisclosed date, otherwise this person would begin randomly shooting las cruces citizens. or something. yikes! but we’re just going about our daily business as per usual.

so saturday, i volunteered at the museum and then we biked out to old mesilla for a mexican festival; here’s a photo from that:



saturday night joe and i went to an italian restaurant and then went to see ‘little miss sunshine” which had some good, dark humor. it wasn’t amazing or anything, but i thought overall it was definitely worth seeing. sufjan stevens on the soundtrack.

today has been fairly lazy. joe went to the zen center this morning (before i woke up, even) and then we went to the studio for a few hours. i threw a pot, which i hadn’t done in years. other than that, we’ve just been lounging around the house, hiding from snipers. just kidding.

sunday hike

*us testing out weird camera settings

joe and i went on an amazing hike yesterday up in dripping springs. this is only about 20 minutes outside of town too, but it's on the opposite side of the mountains from our last hike. this one also has ruins of a mountain camp/TB sanitorium/resort thingy from the turn of the century. there was also an amazing flowering meadow on the edge of the mountain range. but the best part was a hike a local told us about that was beyond a waterfall. we basically followed the water up the mountain canyon through some rough, bouldered terrain.



we didn't get to explore as far as we would have liked because we didn't bring enough water or food, but i'm looking forward to going back. after the hike we gorged ourselves with cheap enchilada plates and chile con queso.



we had a nice weekend overall. saturday i went for lunch with holly from the museums, after checking out the farmer's market that morning. we bought a tiny ceramic bust that is a planter with two small succulants planted in the head. then joe and i came home and cleaned the house and mowed the lawn. we went out to a pretty cool dive-ish bar that night with ilana and her husband, they recently moved here from DC. anyway the bar is a silo-type building with a circular bar and small half-circle booths all around the other edges. plus pints are $2.50 regularly. weirdest thing was that there was no music playing. also this weekend, we watched lots of arrested development season 2.

i posted tons of photos from the hike on flickr, so enjoy!

-m.

p.s. anna moves back to france tomorrow...so just wanted to send my love to her!

minnesota!

i have neglected the blog. it is somewhat boring to upload photos, so by the end of all that i just want to get away from the computer and do something else! hence, not enough blogging. but photos are better than words anyway.

i had a great time running back to minnesota last weekend, although my time there was really fleeting. i think i woke up about 2:45 am friday morning in order to get ready, drink lots of coffee and drive to el paso for a 6 am flight to minneapolis via denver. the plane to denver was teeny tiny, with only one stewardess and about 14 rows of seats. that was kinda weird. but the flight(s) went well. i met an army guy and hung out with him on my layover in denver, he had a double whisky at 8am! he was just so excited because he was going home to be with his wife who was about to have a baby. anyways it's funny who you meet on planes. on the way to san diego, joe and i were talking to this guy who joe swears was ray manzarek from the doors. i dont think so, but he was certainly a weird character.

back to the story...my mom picked me up at the airport and we went directly to International Falls. I literally went from one border to the other...jaurez, mexico is right next to el paso, and i could see canada across the river from the hotel we stayed at in IF. We got there at 6:30 pm friday, just in time to shower and go to the groom’s dinner at a resort where andy used to work. that’s where i took the photos of the houseboats. after dinner, which included wild rice....yea, minnesota! we went to a bonfire at andy’s dad’s place on rainy lake. i was exhausted by this point so my mom and i went back to go to bed early-ish.

the wedding was saturday at 6. it was a good size, and was outside in the gardens overlooking rainy river. the ceremony was short, sweet and simple, and luckily it didn’t rain at all (i know the rest of minnesota got lots of rain last weekend but we were so far north it missed us.) the reception was fun, with good food...even enough meatless options for me. i drank more than my fair share of gin and tonics, and danced a lot with my relatives, which doesn’t happen often enough. my cousin kim’s daughter, emily, stole the show though....she was dancing like crazy. a total diva...it was really cute. i posted one photo of emily and her brothers by the flowers outside. it was so nice to see everyone, and especially nice to hang out with my mom so much. and reece, he’s super well behaved too so it’s really fun to have him around. too bad joe couldn’t make it, but the flights were so dang expensive.


*reece is always this happy...which is why i just had to post this photo!

sunday we got up early again, ate breakfast and hit the road for the loooonng drive back to minneapolis. we stopped at the wellstone memorial on the way back, which is right by the place their plane went down...i think just outside evelyth. i posted pics of that too. i thought they did a great job with it, very tasteful. it reminded me of when it happened; we went to the memorial service at the U of M (the controversial one) but that was such a crazy thing that happened...it was really upsetting, right before the elections. my mom and i were big fans of wellstone, so that was a great thing to see. so then back on to my mom’s house...we watched ‘transamerica’, which was pretty good, then went to bed only to get up at 4:30 am to catch my flight back to NM. when i got in to el paso, joe was waiting in the parking lot nearby, but the jeep wouldn’t start. so we had to get a jump. good thing we brought jumper cables down here with us! by that time, i was ready to get home and take a nap.

so that’s that. i’ve been working overtime all week, trying to make up the hours i missed on friday. think i’ll be doing overtime for awhile. we spent three hours last night clearing the crazy weeds out of our driveway. some were literally 8 feet tall. there is a weed ordinance in the city right now because they are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and they give people allergies or something. west nile is a big issue right now down here. the rain makes it almost as bad as minnesota mosquito-wise. there are literally people on weed patrol giving people citations. so we figured we’d better do it. that’s when we found 2 praying mantises (manti?) in the weeds. that was super weird and we were really excited about it, hence the photos. but apparently they are normal here or something.

other than that, i have been working after school with elementary kids, which is a nice change of pace. i’ll write more about details about my job soon, it’ll take a lot of explaining. we’re going on another hike this sunday, so i’m sure i’ll have another photo album up soon!

a bientot

ZORAK !

zorak on the dirtiest glove ever. joe's hand.

wedding photos have just been uploaded! I'll write more about it later, but I wanted to give the heads up so anyone can take a look for now. good night !