It's About Time for a New Post, Right???!!!!

This was written on October 26, 2005.

So I must start out by apologizing for my absence of new posts. I realize that you all would like to know what I am up to. But the fact of the matter is that City Year and Trader Joe’s take up most of my time. Please don’t mistake this as complaining because it isn’t. just a reminder that if I don’t post often it isn’t because I have forgotten about any of you. Also, for those of you you who may be interested, my email and phone number are still the same. If you don’t have my number but want to call me just shoot me an email and I will call you.

Ok, now on to what I have been up to. Well City Year takes up about 45 hours of my time, and TJ’s take up the weekends. As far as my experience with city year so far, I would say that it has been positive. For most of these past 2 months, we spent our time training. We learned about what City Year is and what it does. It’s role in Philly and in the world at large. We did lots of team building training and even learned how to spot child abuse and how to help these kids who might be dealing with abuse.

It was very intense sometimes and fun and lighthearted at times. We have a really interesting group of people. We have a woman who worked teaching kids in South Central LA for 2 years, a guy who started law school and realized it wasn’t what he wanted to do. Ex-army, athletes, musicians, singers, cancer survivors, kids from the streets of philly who just want to make a difference in there own neighborhoods. It is simply put, an extremely diverse group.

So, you might ask, what do I do for city year? Well let’s see. I am a civic engagement ambassador who will work to recruit new corps members; I work during the day for simon gratz high school here. It is a mostly African-american school with lots of good kids who need a little guidance and some help with academics. That is our main job. We will also be running an after school program for youth and helping with our schools student success center which is a resource for college and job needs for the high school kids.

As of late I am journeying out of my element and trying different things. I worked on the mural team, which about 2 weeks ago painted around 30 walls and different murals as part of serve-a-thon 2005. We cleaned up a rec. center. We painted these murals and cleaned the baseball diamond, the playground, ripped up the tile floor so that new tile can be installed, removed trash and garbage, and generally had a good time.

I am especially of the way several murals turned out. They were my babies. Basically we spent Friday in the rain, griding the wall and sketching the design, and then in the morning we finished the other mural. It was exciting and was definitely not something that I was comfortable with at first. Now I am thinking about doing more art. Perhaps working on a smaller canvas than a 12x16 foot wall.

Lately I have also been into music. But not just listening to it. While I enjoy it greatly I have been writing lyrics and rhymes and have been trying my hand at making beats and composing some rudimentary songs. Its really fun and I want to pursue more of this. I never really wanted to do art, but now that I have had a taste I like it. I plan on playing the drums and making more music and art.

A new favorite of mine is jazz. It actually came about because of my cousin, Giga Shane, who here is my plug for him. He just put out a new cd, giga shane, and can be found on his website www.gigshane.com. Check it out. He plays jazz guitar and is really good. We actually went out to a jazz bar and he performed with some friends. It was really neat. Not exactly what I expected. I never really gave jazz the time of day. But after hearing it live, I realized that it is really good music with lots of soul and something that I need to listen to more of.

That's it for now. Love you all and let me know what you think. Hearing from any of you would be fantastic!!!!