just a little venting

I don't like the idea of Columbus Day, but it was nice to have a holiday yesterday. It meant we had a lunch group come in and prepare and serve the meal, which usually only happens at dinnertimes. They brought three of their children- sons that were about 8 years old- to help serve the food. It was nice to see and reaffirmed how I already felt about someday wanting to bring my kids to do volunteer work as soon as they're old enough. After lunchtime I had the rest of the day off and met Rachel, Beth and Paul for a picnic in Bushnell Park. Then we toured one of the luxury apartments on Main Street (we saw an open house sign and thought why not) and then stopped by the bbq La Paloma was having.

We had a little meeting with our landlord Emil that went a lot more smoothly than any of us thought it would, because he has the tendency to talk and talk and talk and all we wanted to say to him was that he needs to ask permission rather than coming into our apartment unannounced and leaving us notes about what he thinks is wrong. It's funny how he picks and chooses- he'll spend ten minutes explaining how proud he is about changing one or two lightbulbs, and meanwhile there are some gaping holes in walls and huge cracks in the wooden floors. It's an old, old house but I love it anyway.

I was thinking about how lately I've tried to only write really nice things, because my first few posts were such downers, but to be realistic I'll name a few things that do bother me- one is Emil, but he was nice last night and apologized for having come in and said he'd call ahead of time from now on.

Another is the women who work at the church above Community Meals- it is so clear that they don't want our soup kitchen there. We interact with them mostly for little things, like helping some clients use the elevator and getting Greyhound travel vouchers approved, and they are consistently rude and patronizing. They treat our clients as one big "they" instead of as individuals (I think that a lot of people think of the poor this way- and it's hard not to unless you have an opportunity like this one to get to know individuals). I think I assumed they would be friendly and helpful because they work for the church, but that's not the case at all and it's pretty disappointing.

Another thing is a lot of the local men on the streets. I thought I was used to hearing cat-calls from spending four years in the Bronx, but sometimes Hartford feels a lot worse. And I realized I've never gotten "used to" it, because it still makes me feel horrible a lot of the time. It's hard to explain to someone how it feels to have someone scream "How much?" at you as they drive by. Some people really do just want to say 'Hello' or 'God bless you' or some kind of G-rated compliment, and that doesn't bother me too much. But honking and yelling and especially hissing (and any kind of noises you'd make at an animal and not a person) are awful. I always wonder how these men were raised- wouldn't they hate if another man disrespected their mothers or sisters or girlfriends in that way? But it makes me feel better that I know a lot of wonderful people who couldn't even imagine doing things like that.

Oh! And one more thing is having no, no, no idea what I want to do next year. I know I have plenty of time to think about it, but then again if I'm going to start applying to grad schools then I want to start soon. And if I'm going to get a Masters in Public Policy instead of Social Work, then I'll need to start studying for the GREs. Right now, all I want to do is live on a farm.

So! Aside from little things like those, this feels like one of the happiest times of my life. I really love the work I do, the people I live with, my co-workers, JVC in general, my clients, and being able to meet new people all the time.