A Sp-egg-tacular Easter

I am out of the ghetto apartment in Auburn! HOORAY! 

Over the past week, I've been moving back into Ginny's home, the woman I lived with when I first moved up here. Why did I leave my cute but hood single-self residence? I found myself chronically lonely for people although I am introverted (I've taken multiple assessments that have indicated this so believe it), I'm saving $200+ a month on rent and other solo-person expenses, and I have real furniture. No more air mattress, no more cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other pretending to be a dresser. I have a couch I can sit on, a table to eat at, and someone to sit with. I also have the internet and tv, which I had neither of at the apartment; not even basic cable. This is great because I have watched every movie I own at least 5 times and at most 20 times during my time living there. I'm closer to the schools I work at, so during the summer, I will likely walk to work each day. All in all, everything fell so perfectly into place with my moving here. I thank God for being here, though it's been a packed-to-the-max week getting everything together there when coupled with other events from this week. 

  Easter Sunday

 

I love Easter! Far from my biological family, I looked to my Maine family to celebrate this wonderful holiday with. I sang at church on Easter Sunday so I invited my AmeriCorps friends to attend service and then go to my apartment for an Easter lunch afterward. In all, there were 6 of us celebrating together.

The last act of socialization in my first place! Went all out and even had a table with chairs instead of making people sit on the floor. This room was formerly the bed chamber.

I had so much fun preparing this.

Adult Easter goodies for my friends - little bottle of wine and some chocolate covered fruits.

Enjoying each other

Following lunch, some of us went on a post-engorgement walk to shake down all the roasted sweet potatoes and deviled eggs we ate. I brought my camera with me and inadvertently had an Easter photoshoot, something I have done with my family for the past 4 years. It wasn't until we were in the middle of photoshooting that I realized the tradition was being continued! It was fun to play tourist in our own city/town.

Stopping to pose at a church

Discussing the hand-on-hip pose by the Androscoggin River that divides Lewiston and Auburn. Please note I am wearing a skirt. It was almost 60!

Our new band at the River Walk. I haven't seen this uncovered from snow in MONTHS.

Our sentiments

Jump shots in front of the Auburn Library

Posing with the sweet Easter things my mom sent me!

I couldn't have asked for a better send off from the apartment and my Auburn turf than to have done this. I will miss being able to walk to the river, the library, and Hannaford, but such is life.

The LA Collective at the AmeriCorps All-Member Conference

 

I believe I've mentioned the LA Collective in older posts - it's a community collaborative I co-founded with other AmeriCorps members serving in Lewiston with the mission to unite the youth we work with in service. I am proud of this group's work and its future plans. Each of our meetings is potluck style, so at our last meeting, we had all green food in honor of St. Patrick's Day. We are currently planning a summer youth service project that will engage hopefully over 100 youth in community gardening projects and end in a celebration of service with ice cream and water games in the city's central park.

No one ate that jell-o, KK. 

To share the capabilities and joy that come with being in a community collaborative, two other friends and I led a workshop called "Potlucks, Partnerships, and Problem-Solving!" at the All Member Conference of Maine AmeriCorps this week. We shared our story and how to start a community collaborative. We had a lot of fun and it was great to be able to stretch myself professionally for this. 

Post-workshop Posin. #LACPPP. Photo Cred: Lauren Ellemers

At the end of the workshop, there was a door-prize drawing at which I won a bag of 

fresh-caught-from-a-frozen-river fish called smelts in a gallon ziplock bag. I laughed so hard I cried that I won this, because only in Maine would you win something like that. A girl from FoodCorps asked if she could have them since I didn't want them and I bartered with her to send me a care package of homemade jams and baked goods in exchange for the fish. I look forward to getting that.

Me with the fishies I won. Photo Cred: Lauren Ellemers

Posing with other MLC members post conference. Two of these won prizes as well: $75 worth of Vermont cheese and a jug of family-farm made Maine maple syrup. We were lucky this day! Photo Cred: Lauren Ellemers

Once the La Crüe (the name we have for us who live in Lewiston-Auburn) got home, I recruited all of them to help me finish moving. It was the fastest and easiest move I ever experienced, and considering I've moved 13 times in the past 5 years, I appreciated that. 

And that's all of the hood apartment, folks! NO WIRE HANGERS! Photo Cred: Lauren Ellemers

We went out and ate Thai food at a place right by the apartment to reward ourselves for a job well done. Many of us had wanted to go to Thai Dish for quite some time; it was well worth the wait. It was pretty inside. There were giant fish tanks, white table clothes, and formal place settings at each seat. I had delicious yellow curry chicken with enough for leftovers the next day.

We had our waitress take a picture of us inside the restaurant because we are silly people. Photo Cred: Lauren Ellemers

Thus concludes the saga of living in Auburn, Maine.

Work

 

I love my work at the middle school afterschool program. For the next six weeks, I'll be leading an enrichment unit on the scientific method that will conclude with a science fair and prizes for top projects. The students really enjoy our science activities, such as the egg drop. Our students had to engineer a container that would protect an egg from dropping two stories down a stairwell inside the building.

Preparing to drop; their faces really aren't blurry in real life.

SPLAT.

Getting ready to drop from the third story because their egg survived the two story fall.

I'm looking forward to summer program with this group SO MUCH. I will be the "Director of Spirit" for our program, meaning I will coordinate all of the fun stuff that makes our summer school program feel like it's not school. I feel well-prepared by Young Life and volunteering at Freedom School to do this. I feel like it's a reward coming for enduring through the soul-numbingness of working at the elementary school. I will get to have some power, get to be creative, get to work with college interns, and get to be silly. I am so excited to prepare summer things for my students; I love them dearly.

Future Plans 

 

I just applied for a position with FoodCorps, a division of AmeriCorps that essentially does everything that I believe in. You apply to the organization as a whole and then rank which states you would like to serve in. I ranked the site in Wilmington (my favorite place and a good opportunity to transition back to NC if I end up going to grad school at UNC as planned) as my first choice, ranked Maine as my second (I am most likely to get the position here), and, very randomly, ranked Connecticut as my third choice (I assumed I could meet a rich man here). I am equally open to being placed in NC and Maine; as I said, I love my students dearly, so much so that I'd stay in Lewiston, a fairly difficult place to live, another year to continue working with them, just in a different capacity that better fills my professional goals and passions. We'll see what happens. I want this job SO badly, but if it's not meant to be, I'll end up somewhere that fits me better. As part of the application process, FoodCorps asks for a creative file. I chose to make a silly song called Where You Can Go (Put Good In) and stop-motion movie to go with it. Hopefully it will set me apart from some of the other applicants, as FoodCorps is highly competitive.

Love,

JB