This is madness. THIS IS SERVICE!

On Friday the whole corps went to a community living center in uptown for service. It is a few blocks from my house. I was assigned to cleaning an apartment with 10 other people. It was an apartment used to house single mothers who were getting back on their feet after addictions and abuse.

The walls were stained with ciggarettes and thecarpets ahd burn marks all over them.

We scrubbed the walls throughout the house, and cleaned the kitchen thoroughly. We moved back the oven and the walls were so splattered with food that I had to use steel wool to scrub it off. Some paint came with it. It was nasty. I got service on my boots. meaning they are stained with cleaning solvent.

Here's a picture of me and the wall behind the oven:

also I got a haircut last week.

Saturday was CTA service day. I rode the holiday train from Howard on the red line to 95th. Those are on either end of the red line. I handed out candy canes. Two little boys sang me the chipmunk song, and then shook my hand when they left the train. There was a flatcar on the train that santa was riding, and you could get your picture taken with him. It was pretty cool.
I have a picture of me on the train, but it won't upload.

I was wearing an elf hat.

Last night I went to a GirlTalk concert, which was some of the best music I've heard in a while. It was loud, though. I got in with the first 250 people so I got to be on the dancefloor, which was way cooler than sitting in the seats. For those of you who don't know, GirlTalk samples music from a bunch of different songs and puts them together to make new ones. He is really good at it.

You're gonna make it if you try.

I saw a mouse in my kitchen Wednesday.

I stepped on it and killed it Thursday night. It was gross.

Life moves forward. I'm slowly figuring out how it works.

It's been a roller-coaster of a week.

I'm losing my mind, that's why I'm fine.

so there's this little round girl in starfish named Josselyn. she's in third grade but looks like she's four. she says things like "boy, i'm gonna smack you if you do that one more time!" She's a very angry little girl, but she's also the most adorable thing I've ever seen.

She walked into an empty room and grabbed her stomach and told no one that they better not hit her in the stomach again. no one.

she likes to dance, and has grabbed my hands and started to sing and dance with me when i'm trying to get her to sit down and do her homework during homework help. It's so hard to keep a strait face.

she opened her mouth wide open once to show us that she had chapped lips, but she didn't say this. she just opened her mouth and pointed to it.

I was helping her with her homework, and it was time to take a bathroom break. she didn't believe me that when we got back I would help her again, so she wrote a note "Mr. Bennett better help me with my homework when we get back or i will not come to city year again." I'm keeping that forever, even though she ripped it up when i came through on my promise.

once she was picked up by her grandmother and Nosa told her to tell her grandma what she had been doing all day, to which she replied "arguing..." her grandma told her she better not argue with us.

the next day she was much better and ran up to her grandma and yelled "I didn't argue today!"

it's things like this that get me though some days. and the hope that is in most of their eyes, no matter how much anger and hurt accompanies it. and there's plenty of those two to go around.