I survived my first full week of work at the AIDS Foundation! This place is even better than it sounded in the interviews. I have attended several meetings during which I have been absolutely amazed by the extent of work the Foundation does. They help coordinate direct care programs to help people get through their current struggles but also do a lot of advocacy to change the system that created the problems in the first place. They work with HIV/AIDS from prevention for those who don't have HIV/AIDS through extensive care of those with HIV/AIDS(beyond just medical to things like housing)and back to prevention for those who have tested positive for HIV/AIDS. They plan, fund, organize, and support projects that work extensively with the community (HIV/AIDS clients, care providers, agencies...).
As if it doesn't sound enough like I am living a fairytale, even the job I will be doing sounds great. They have indicated many projects I will be helping with, some making existing programs better, and some brand new for the Foundation. So far, I have done a mix of the usual intern work (I think paper cuts are an intern's required scars) and stuff that seems more involved in actually planning stuff. I helped address and stuff a series of letters helping Illinois pharmacists understand a new syringe law, another highlighting several housing laws proposed to make life better for low income individuals, and another to gather information that we will put into a database so that housing advocates can more easily match their clients to housing. I have looked for studies on the impact of supportive housing (reduced health care costs, lower crime recidivity, better health, stable or rising property values!...) and on home sharing, a program common among the elderly that we hope to initiate for people with HIV/AIDS here in Chicago. I have attended conferences and meetings galore, and even read about the epidemiology of AIDS (did you know that more and more women -esp African-Americans- are being infected through heterosexual contact?).
The people I work with are an absolute riot! They eat together at lunch and seem to work together a lot. I felt very welcome from the day I came. They also look for any excuse to party, so it has been an interesting week... I really like my supervisor. She knows so much and yet is very willing to share her knowledge and to take it from others. She has a lot of energy and is really dedicated besides just being really supportive.
On the home front, our house met for a meeting Monday and got some decisions made about dinners (we will rotate who cooks and will eat together 5 times a week unless we have a work meeting), grocery shopping, chores (rotate which part of the house we are responisble for each month), community nights (Mondays after our dinner unless we come up with a cool activity better suited to a different day - this week we are throwing a party for one of our housemate's birthdays), and a responsible person for this month's faith night. It is really hard for me to go from living alone in a large apartment to living with four others without even having a room to myself. Fortunately my awesome roommate is there to calm me down at the end of the day!
Beginning of another week, and it looks to be a busy one here for the folks at AFC. This week we are having a site visit by a bunch of evaluators looking at our case management system. Ours is a pretty unique system that serves as a sort of test case/model for case management for people living with AIDS. Unfortunately I am not too involved in the system, so I might not have a whole lot to do this week. Everyone will be too busy to give me work! I can't wait until I actually know what is going on enough to give myself work. Having nothing to do is probably my least favorite and most frustrating challenge in life (yes, I obviously have a wonderful life). I do have a few things to work on here and there, and was told I would be trained on something else today, so hopefully I will have some work to do. This Saturday I am going to walk in the AIDS run/walk that supports AFC. Should be fun, and only 5k, so I should survive. Only problem is I have heard rumors of rain and cold for the end of the week... hopefully not Saturday!
On the home front, being away from home is really starting to take a tole on members of our community. Several of us are getting a little lonely and wondering why we left friends and family behind to go to a city where we knew very few people. I've uprooted and replanted several places before, but it doesn't make it any easier. I am sick of constantly leaving friends behind and feeling so alone until I finally find some new friends in a new area. It doesn't help that I have yet to find a church home, my major source of friendship and activities. I have tried a few UMCs in the area but neither one have seemed to be a place I can fit in. Last Sunday I went to Christ Evangelical Lutheran, our support congregation, since we were being commissioned. They were a very friendly congregation that is doing a lot. They've also given us lots of food!
Our community night is tonight. I think we are going to decorate the mantel over our fireplace. We had scheduled that activity much earlier, but one of our members ended up having a meeting for work. I hope we also have a "business meeting" because I'm not so sure everything is working quite like we planned at the last meeting... ah communal living, they warned us this would be the best and worst part...
P.S. Anybody know why the Mexican independence day is celebrated with CONSTANT horn honking??? We are about to go crazy because for the last 3 days our neghborhood has been awash in HUGE Mexican flags and a bunch of honking Mexicans and Mexican-Americans (literally, as in car-horn honking). Definately a cultural experience :) I wonder what happens on all the other holidays of all the other ethnic groups in our neighborhood????
The 5K AIDS run/walk this weekend was amazing. We had BEAUTIFUL weather, and a huge turn out. I'll try to get actual numbers for you, but as a participant it was really cool to see so many people. The walk was along the lake and then we turned and came back along a path just beside the one we came north on. We were walking in about the middle so as we turned we saw a mass of people in front of us, a really amazing sight. It was also neat for me to see teams from different agencies that work with us. I have seen their names a lot, but to actually see people from the agencies was kinda neat. All of my housemates went with me, two ran, and two volunteered/cheered. It was really cool to have friends there from outside of work. They also got to meet the co-workers I talk about all the time.
Last week's evaluation of the case management apparently went very well. Although it was nerve racking and intensive for those involved they all seem to think that our system was well showcased and really shined. I guess there were a few major changes suggested, so there is probably a lot of work ahead... I wonder if I will be involved in it?
My supervisor (Norma) is out again today. Unfortunatly I also finished up the projects I was working on Friday, so I am hoping I will be given some new ones by others that are around today.
Had some interesting discussions in the house over the weekend about our role in life. It was cool knowing I'm not the only one wondering what is going on. My part of the conversation extended from a visit to Broadway UMC. They were a neat church, but I sighed and thought "gee, another middle (upper middle?) class, white, liberal church talking about social injustice". Then I realized, oh yeah, that's right I'm an upper middle class white liberal talking about social injustice. A lot of questions for me right now about whether the actions we rich white liberals take in order to try to do more than talk really help anything or whether we end up just making situations worse for those who aren't rich, white, liberals. Sigh.
Also some frustrations are beging to show as our placements aren't quite living up to expectations - not organized enough, too organized, not enough work, too much work... you know, the usual complaints as you are trying to adjust and learn how things work.
As we were describing our LVC experience to someone, they said something like "oh, like survivor!" (as in the tv show, for those of you who like me are not reality show junkies). We were then asked, "do you vote people out". We laughed and then we joked were ready to vote ourselves off! Hmmm, I hope we were just joking... where's that honeymoon feeling when you need it? -- ok, really I'm not doing that bad, it is just interesting to see what a difference a week can make in how you feel about things.
Let's see... Last week at AFC I did finally find some work to do! We currently have a manual that describes housing law for case managers, I have the assignment to translate it into a manual for clients themselves. Has been fun so far. Pretty difficult since you have to make sure there isn't jargon in it, everything is explained, and it is written in easy to understand language (for some shocking statistics on literacy check out the National Institute for Literacy's website . I also helped enter some information into our case management system. Early last week I helped process donations from the walk/run. My job was to copy EVERY piece of money that came in. I copied the checks. I copied the bills. I copied all the little coins. I spent almost 16 hours in front of the copy machine. I never want to look at a copy machine again in my life, let alone use it! I guess this AWFUL activity was neccessary for some auditing reason, but it sure seemed like a HUGE waste of time, and was certainly not the most exciting thing I have done.
Had a very interesting conversation the other day with a fellow LVCer. Found out I am not the only one that goes through culture shock when entering back into average US society! When I came home from Ghana I landed in the LA airport. I spent the next week (even months or years really) totally overwhelmed and shocked by the amount of stuff and waste that goes along with what used to be normal life for me. While our LVC year isn't like living in a "developing" country, we also find we are having some culture shock just going between LVC land and normal USA. In LVC we live in a community with a goal of simplicity and we spend our time working for social justice. This leads you to consider everything you eat, everything you do and its impact. When all the sudden you find yourself back in the real world it can be overwhelming. I realized this the other day when I was eating lunch here at AFC. Everyone was talking about a new restaurant that opened up around the corner with good food at "cheap" prices. I looked at the menu and I agreed "wow great selection, and good prices!" Then I thought about it some more and realized one dish from the place was nearly two days of my food budget! It is also hard now to buy stuff. You can't help but think who made this? what could I use the money for instead? who isn't able to buy this? This is really difficult to deal with when the rest of US society depends so heavily on buying things (think about Bush and his tax cuts for stimulus - the more we spend the better the economy right?).
Well I better get to work on that manual...Keri