Well, I did it. I lived at a Boys and Girls Club in Farmington, New Mexico for 2 months. Every once in awhile I have a really strange feeling and I'll catch myself thinking, "what in the hell am I doing?! I live, work, play, eat, do EVERYTHING with 9 random people from across the country. Right now I'm in a random town in New Mexico scraping scotch tape off of windows, or running around with a hula hoop as a car, or begging some kids to get down from the tree, or knocking on a random apartment to survey a 90 year old woman, or having a jump rope contest with a bunch of 7 year old girls, or trying to make a 14 year old boy understand why he has to follow the rules too..... How did my life end up here?" I've been having these thoughts ever since training the first month back in Denver, I definitely had them in Joplin, and of course I've had them here. It really makes me stop and think.
I'll tell you what, it's pretty awesome though.
It sounds cliche, but I'm really starting to understand the idea that life is made up of a bunch of experiences and different interactions with new people. It's a neat thing to be aware of, because then you can really start to appreciate each thing you do. In general, this is a really sad town. The Native American, Hispanic, and really all the populations are living in EXTREME poverty here..there is just sad story after sad story. In fact, on my last day at The Club I was proofreading a 5th grader's composition about what she learned from an assembly at school. The assembly was about meth use and all the negative affects it has. In the composition, the girl pretty much tells her story about how her dad used meth, began beating up her mom, screamed at them, basically went crazy. She used exact quotes of things that he said and everything...then I started thinking about her and her little sister who is only 7 but has some SEVERE problems. I can only imagine what all went on in that household. These are the types of things that you hear stories about, but when you have a personal connection with the children invovled and you can put faces with it, the story becomes so much more real. Unfortunately, this is the reality for the majority of the kids that I got the honor to meet while I was here. I can only hope that I made some sort of difference in their lives.
So my point is that inspite of the bad circumstances here, I've met some amazing people as well. I got the chance to learn about so much while I was here, it's weird to think about how 2 months before this I was uncomfortable being the minority in a room full of Hispanic and Navajo kids. And I can say the same thing about being in Joplin. The people that I met there are just as incredible. It makes me so happy to know that there are such good people all over the country. I think that it happens too often that people are SO hesitant to trust people or are SO paranoid about something bad happening that they start to believe that in general, people are out to get them. or that in general, people are bad. I am not saying that we should be careless, because of course bad things happen. But when we just assume people are bad or deceiving and we stop putting effort into trying to get to know people, we deprive ourselves of all those wonderful people out there. It's like we don't maximize the potential of our lives. Ok sorry, those are just my deep thoughts of the day/past 2 months.
Anyways....we leave tomorrow morning. Early. It's so weird to be leaving, we're so comfortable here. We thought we'd get to see the kids to say goodbye today, but they had a snow day and the club closed too. So we were pretty upset about that. There were definitely a lot of kids that didn't even know we were leaving. On another note, I can't wait to be back in Denver!! It's sooooo fun to be reunited with all of the other teams again. The campus is just buzzing with news and gossip during transitions weeks..and of course lots of partying. Everyone just gets so pumped to come back!! I also am excited for the next project at the assisted living center in Denver! I think it will be a lot fun. I'm a little nervous about the new team but I'll actually be with 3 of my teammates from this team anyways..so thats pretty neat.
So...March 6th marks the halfway point of the entire Americorps program. So basically, I've made it halfway. And looking back, it's sort of just like a huge blurr! I cannot wait to see what the second half brings!!! :)
xoxo
Abby
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