The Zoo, sleep deprived children, and losing my mind

This week was a bit better than last week simply due to the fact that I wasn't arrested. On Tuesday we had the zoo come to camp and I think I might have enjoyed it even more than the kids did. They brought a porcupine, a python, some sort of flying squirrel thing, and a hawk. I had never seen a porcupine in real life before and they are surprisingly cute. Also the kids were terrified of it which made me laugh.

Zoo Lady with her Hawk

On Wednesday, for street leader night, we did not play basketball in order to allow the the gym to be used for dodge ball. Playing dodge ball was a lot of fun but I realized a couple things. 1. I am far two competitive to play games with high school kids. 2. Allowing grown men to play dodge ball with soccer balls is a good way for people to go home injured.

Thursday I had to pick 7 of my 8Th graders that would be able to attend the Jr. High all nighter the next night. Jeffry is one of my favorite camp kids and I really wanted him on the all nighter because it would have made it more fun for me. The problem was that he had been a pain in my ass all week and hadn't been doing his homework. It was a tough decision but I decided to leave him out so that more deserving kids could go. He assumed that he was going to be invited to go regardless of his behavior (which has always been the case since he is everyone's favorite) but he understood why he was not invited when I explained it to him. Hopefully the opportunity to be invited to future events will be a good incentive for him to behave in the future.

Hasi being crazy at the all nighter

On Friday night we had our all nighter. 60 Jr. high kids showed up and we loaded them into the buses at 7:30pm and took them roller skating. We were at the roller rink till about 10:15 and by the time we left, my feet felt like they had swelled to about 10 times their usual size.

After skating we loaded the kids back into the buses and took them to the bowling alley. Luckily I bowled well enough in all three games to not lose to any Jr. highers. We bowled until 1 am and then headed back to urban promise for pizza and just hanging out.

After the pizza, the kids were hanging out in the gym and the parking lot. Apparently someone complained about them being too loud because the police came. I went outside and talked to the police and told them we would keep everyone inside. It felt like I was back in college all over again (at least college prepared me for something I guess).

Albert Explaining the Bus Rally

At 4am (after drinking lots and lots of caffeine) we explained the rules of the bus rally and loaded the kids back into the buses. We then sped around the city in two buses racing to different locations to accomplish the tasks of the bus rally. Unfortunately my bus lost. We got back at about 6am had some breakfast and then started taking kids home around 7am.

Some kids couldn't hack it

On Saturday I slept from about 8am till about 11:30am.... I watched some basketball on the TV at urban promise and as I was walking back to my house to make lunch, some of the other interns saw me and invited me to go to Philadelphia with them. I went. They were going to find a coffee shop to use the Internet and write their support letters. We got stuck behind a dump tuck on the street in Philadelphia and I noticed the Michigan/Purdue game playing on ESPN inside a bar. I jumped out of the van and went into the bar. The other interns continued on to their coffee shop. I spent a few hours in the bar watching Michigan lose and then headed to the coffee shop to meet up with the other interns. When I got to the coffee shop they had finished their support letters and we headed to Dirty Franks (the sweet dive bar that we discovered a couple of weeks ago) for a couple drinks and some good conversation. After Dirty Franks, we went home and I went to bed.

On Sunday I woke up late and was lazy all day and just watched football. I was sad to see Brett Farve lose the way he did but that Vikings Saints game was a lot of fun to watch.

Sitting in the bar, watching the Michigan game alongside people who were clearly regulars at that bar, really made me miss having a social life outside of Urban Promise. We are stuck here in this little bubble where our entire lives revolve around Urban Promise and the other people who work here. Camden, being what it is, doesn't provide too many attractive options socially outside of Urban Promise and our internship is very intrusive into our lives. Because our schedules are so busy and always changing, we are expected to inform our intern director of any trips we are going to make or anytime we are going to be more than 20 minutes away from home. This is sort of a transition phase in my life and I know that this is probably not where I am making any sort of long time home (although i don't really know for sure). All of this is really starting to get to me. I love camp and my kids, but the rest of it is really starting to drive me crazy. I am really ready to move onto the next phase of my life. I could use a lot of prayer over the next few weeks/months for the endurance to get through May with my sanity (if i ever had it to begin with).

Drive slow in Virginia (or at least have super nice ex girlfriends)

Last week was our first week of camp and it went very well. My class was well behaved and there isn't too much to tell about the happenings of the week. It was good to get back into the routine and fun to be playing basketball and just hanging out with everyone again.


Thursday after camp I went left to drive down to Tennessee to visit my ex girlfriend (Samantha) as we had sort of started to rekindle the relationship. It's about an 8 hour drive from Camden to Johnson City Tennessee and at about 11:30 pm (when I was only about 50 miles from Samantha's house) I was pulled over by a county sheriff. Apparently a Virginia state police officer had seen me and called ahead to the county sheriff who was waiting to get me on radar. When the officer pulled me over, he informed me that I was going over 20mph over the speed limit which is a misdemeanor and that California does not honor Virginia's arrest warrants. He informed that this meant that, if he did not arrest me and force me to post bail, I would have no incentive to return for my court date. So the officer arrested me and took my to the station where both the County Sheriff and the State Officer each issued me separate tickets for reckless driving (over 80mph) and then had me taken to county jail where I would have to post 1,500 dollars bail to be released. Of course Samantha, being a college student, did not have the money to bail me out, so my parents had to wire her the money. After a whole fiasco of trying to get the money, she finally got it and then had to meet with a bondsman to get me out of jail. Basically she is an amazing friend (or whatever we are/were) and managed to get me out at around 10am on Friday before I was booked into population (meaning I was in a holding cell by myself the whole time).

Amazing girl who saved me this weekend

Once she picked me up and took me to get my car, we drove back down to her house in Tennessee. She was quite displeased with me to say the least (and understandably so), not for everything she had to go through but more because I was driving so fast and being irresponsible. Because of this she decided that I could only stay until Saturday rather than Monday like originally planned. It was still nice to hang out during the time that I was there and we ended up talking about a lot of stuff that needed to be discussed. In the end we decided that we needed to go back to being just friends for now, for a number of reasons, and I headed back up to Camden.

Relaxing with June, glad to be free

I got back to Camden just in time to go to a concert at a bar in Philadelphia with a couple of the other interns. I enjoyed the show but was exhausted from not sleeping either of two prior nights. We got back from the show around midnight. I slept until early afternoon on Sunday and then spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching football.


Monday I woke up, went to lunch with some friends, and then Chad and I piled about 12 kids into a van and a car (thanks to Jesus (Castro not Christ) who let us barrow his van) and took them to the skate park. Angel, the 8th grader from my class that I gave his first skateboard 3 months ago, is now better than me and is on the skate team with the other kids that are trying to get sponsored. After spending a few hours at the skate park and collecting a sufficient amount of cuts and bruises, we brought the kids back to Urban and hung out and watched all the video Chad had taken of the day. For those of you that have Facebook, Chad will be editing the footage and putting a video up on my Facebook page at some point. There will be lots of footage of me eating it... hard. After the kids went home I watched some Anamaniacs and went to bed early.

Even though my weekend didn't go quite as i had hoped, I am really glad that Samantha and I talked about the things we did and that I was back on Monday to take "team haze" to the skate park. I'm looking forward to an uneventful week of just hanging out with kids and getting back to my normal schedule.

Below is a video the kids put together of themselves skating. I don't think it really does justice to how good they have gotten but enjoy it anyway, If you cant' watch the video, click the link to YouTube below it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKPCsob5JFE

Guess Who's Back

My Christmas break was incredible and relaxing and it was great to see everyone. I would like to thank all of those that made it a great experience and making it exactly what I needed to return to Camden refreshed and ready to finish out the year.

I've been back in Camden for about a week now. The last week has been filled with meetings, workshops and team building activities, followed by a retreat on the weekend. It was somewhat relaxing and was a nice way to get settled back in.

Flying out of California where it was 78 degrees and into Philly where it was in the teens was definitely not the most enjoyable experience (especially since I wasn't thinking about it when i left and was wearing a jersey). All of the interns who had arrived before me came to pick me up from the airport when I arrived. We then went to get dinner and drinks in Philly which was a lot of fun despite me being absolutely freezing. I got to catch up with everyone and find out about everyone's Christmas break.

The second day I was here, the rest of the interns arrived. A few of my kids heard I was back and came over to say high. I showed everyone my new tattoos and everyone seemed really stoked on the Camden one.

The top of what is now a half sleeve


Camden tattoo before i added the clouds


The next day we got started with the team building activities by going bowling. I bowled a 126 both games (which is exceptional for me) and had a good time catching up with everyone. We then had some meetings and workshops. My favorite workshop of the week was one about literacy. The workshop was great except for one thing. About half way through the workshop she handed out pages from the sports page in the news paper. She did this to illustrate all the ways that we could use something as simple as the sports page to create reading activities for our kids. The problem is that you can't hand me the sports page and then expect me to listen to anything you have to say. What I got out of the first half of the workshop was great... and the second half... well I learned how biased Philadelphia sports writers are towards the Eagles as well as how frustrated they are by the 76er's.

Speaking of the 76er's: One of the activities of the week was attending one of their games. At the game I was lucky enough to sit next to Jessie and Lizzie who are the only two interns who know anything about basketball and would not be annoyed by my giving the biography of every player on the court (which is an impulse that I can't help but act on). Though the Sixer's blew a 20 point lead and were seemingly out of the game as it approached its end, our interest was held by the fact that the crowd would be awarded free big macs if the Sixer's reached 100 points. They then proceeded to go on a scoring drought and fell 3 points shy of buying my dinner.

76er's game

On Friday we had nothing scheduled until we had to leave for our retreat at 6pm, so we headed into Philly to find some entertainment. By searching the Internet I found a suggestion for a dive bar called Dirty Frank's. We got the address and parked near bye. But when we got to where it was supposed to be located, we couldn't find it. I then noticed what looked like and abandoned building on the corner and there was writing the door. The writing said "no one under 21 allowed" so we pulled the handle and it opened revealing one of the coolest little dives I have ever seen. The bar was small but had ample seating and there was jazz music playing on the juke box. It being around lunch time on a Friday, there was only a small crowd and they all seemed to know one another. The drink prices were great and we managed to make some new friends in the short time we were inside.

We then left for our retreat which was at camp Haluwasa. The retreat was for the interns and peer leaders (the high school age managers of the street leaders). The camp was beautiful and had snow on the ground which made it even more so. We had a few activities and lectures that we had to attend. We went ice skating (which i do exceptionally well for some unknown reason) and had a scavenger hunt. My favorite part of the weekend however, was sitting around a table with a couple other interns and a bunch of street leaders, playing a game called "the ungame". The game is just a series of cards that ask questions such as "when was the last time you were embarrassed?" and "what sort of things make you depressed". It really allowed me to get to know many of the people at the table a whole lot better. Interestingly, every one of the street leader's answers to the latter of the above questions was a specific example of a close friend who had seemingly been on the right path but is now in a gang or selling drugs.

Today was the first day back at our after school program and it was great to get back into the swing of things and see all of my kids. The first day of camp went great. We now are doing picture prompts (putting up a picture for the kids to write a story about) for the kids that do not have homework. This is a huge help in keeping the class orderly during homework time. Also, creative writing is something that I have always enjoyed so it was fun to help the kids with their stories. The few kids that didn't have homework wrote some very entertaining stories and my class was extremely well behaved today. One of my favorite kids at my camp is a 5th grader named Quincy who is always freestyle rapping when no one is paying attention (and he's pretty good at it). I purchased Tupac's poetry book, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete", over the break and put it in my classroom. Quincy noticed the book on the shelf and started reading it. He struggled a little at first, as its not exactly 5th grade level reading, so I started reading the poems out loud to him. At the end of the day he didn't want to go home because he wanted to hear more poems. It was cool to see a kid so excited about something that is both artistic and academic.

All of the kids were incredibly excited to inform me of what they got for Christmas. Many of them got skateboards and the parking lot had twice as many kids skating today as it usually does. Angel ,whom I had given a skateboard to, was one of the kids that got a skateboard. I told him that he had to give the skateboard that I had given him to someone else who doesn't have one. He seemed excited about the prospect of being able to do for someone else what I had done for him. Also, one of the kids from the main group that skateboards in our parking lot got a video camera for Christmas. They have been recording themselves skating for the last couple weeks and there are multiple companies that are now interested in sponsoring them (meaning they would get free stuff and get to travel to competitions). I am extremely excited for them.

Gio: age 16, Incredibly talented skater

soon to be sponsored skate team

All in all it feels great to be back in Camden and back in the swing of thing. I love it here and can't wait to have an incredible semester.

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared." -Tupac Shakur