My car, your yard

Never, in all of the cities I have ever lived, visited, passed through, flown over, or slept in (haha - get it? No? Okay) have I seen so many vehicles parked in yards. Honestly... why? What's the point or the benefit to parking your ride in your grass? I understand that Seattle is cloudy and gray most of the year and therefore the grass gets little sunlight, but why kill even that by parking your huge, stinking, drippy, exhausty vehicle in your front lawn? I honestly don't get it. Besides the frequent "Grass Parkers" there are those who deign to just park their rides half in the street and half on the sidewalk. Fuckin tards.

Fuckin christ, it feels so good to be able to just let loose with the verbal abuse.

As you know by now, I work with kids. Or well, I will be. My team "Young Heroes" will be working with middle school students in a service learning and community building type of environment. Right now we are going through a lot of planning and recruitment needed to run a successful program. So, I've definitely got to start watching my word usage. Anyone who knows me also knows that I like to cuss. It's just there and it's natural. Sometimes there's nothing better than a powerful exclamation of the word FUCK. Or shit, or bitch, or bastard, or damnit, or cunt, or any other verbal attack you can think of. I'm working hard at curbing my tongue while at work. I still slip occasionally but I am getting a lot better at not cussing. However, sometimes I just need to let it out.

Sunday, I had tryouts for a gay league soccer team. I got asked to come back, which is fantastic, but it was a bit of a weird experience. I wasn't allowed to play rough (what the fuck, right?). A lot of the guys are also out of town in Argentina for a tournament so when they get back, the scouts get back for the more competitive teams. I'd love to play on a team that is a challenge. Sunday wasn't really that hard. My only problem was overworking myself. I also ended up getting beaned in the face with a soccer ball, a twisted knee, a blood blister the size of Texas, and a black toe-nail that I am sure is going to fall off.

Aside from that, I've been doing a ton of recruiting. Recruiting for Young Heroes means going to middle schools during special event nights and running a table while engaging students or going to schools during their lunch periods and basically ambushing students while they are eating lunch. The lunch thing has been the easiest for me so far. I actually enjoy talking to these kids, the 8th graders especially. I can't wait for the program to turn from recruitment into service, however. I think that aspect is what I really came here for although I can see how I will grow extremely from what I am doing now.

Library is kicking me out. Finish later.

First step is always the hardest

I spent the last three days at a camp outside of Seattle with the rest of the Americorps group that I will be working with in Seattle. Yesterday, Friday morning, we finally got our work assignments. It's been a long time coming and a lot of worrying about where people will be placed but I am very happy to say that I got my first choice.

I am going to be working with the Young Heroes program which is a team within City Year. It's focus is learning through service and the kids we will be working with are all middle school aged. Remember middle school? The hormones? The changes? All of the problems? Haha, I do for sure. But I am actually excited about working with Young Heroes. We were told it is one of the hardest, most time consuming of the teams in City Year Seattle, but I am more than up to the challenge.

In my opinion, the hard part is over. In two weeks, the real fun will begin.

5 Strangers picked to live together...

5 Strangers picked to live together…

5 Strangers, picked to live together, work together, and have their lives taped. Well, maybe not so much taped and there might actually end up being 6 strangers, but we were picked and we will work together, I think you get the idea and the reference.

It’s been awhile since my last post in which I finally let it be known that I got a job and will be moving to Seattle to pursue that career. Here I am, in Seattle, and man has it been a crazy ride. This post is extremely long, real book-like, so get ready. I haven’t had internet access until now and so a lot has happened.

Last Tuesday was the day my flight left from the airport to my first stop in Oakland, California. I only got about an hour and a half of sleep from doing something the night before (which was great and I miss that person already – cut to me being stupid and emotional again) so the drive to the airport was easy for me; I slept the entire way. My dad and my stepmom were the two people who took me there. I’m no stranger to airports as I’ve been flying from them alone since I was little. I actually kind of like airports. What I don’t like is being searched and the people at the security checkpoint most definitely searched me.

That first plane ride was pretty long but I again slept through most of it. It was strange to be flying so far west as I have never been out this way. I saw mountains rising up out of the clouds, we flew above a storm, and I could almost even make out the blackness of space above us. Arriving in Oakland was pretty cool. I was told by someone that the Oakland airport wasn’t that big. Yeah, I wonder what airports they are used to. It was a lot larger than the ones I usually use. It was incredibly obvious that I was in a different part of the country. The landscape, the plants, the air, everything was different and new. It was awesome. I only got about an hour, however, to explore before I had to go sit at the gate for my connecting flight to Seattle. I caught it, and aside from some turbulence that left me a little shaken, the ride was much like the first. I’m sure Heath and David remember what I turn into when my fear of heights starts kicking in.

Arriving in Seattle is where the fun begins.

Seattle/Tacoma airport is huge. Luckily, I was able to follow the rest of the passengers to the baggage claim area where our luggage would be dropped off. After a bit of worrying that my bags would be lost (because that would be my luck) I had all of my possessions and was ready for the next challenge: getting to somewhere. I say somewhere because I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go. The day before I talked to one of my original two roommates, Willy (yes, he actually goes by Willy). I found out then that the landlord that we had been counting on to rent to us backed out and stated that he would rather rent to girls. Willy, my third roommate who I had never talked to at that point, Ian, and I were out of a place to live. So, honestly, arriving in Seattle was the last of my planned activities. Everything else was up in the air.

I stood outside of the airport for a bit in the passenger pick up area. I had two suitcases and two carryons. I am sure I looked real cool dragging all that around by myself. I tried calling the number Willy gave me (he doesn’t have a cell phone) and that number turned out to be Petaki’s, one of our bosses, cell phone numbers. But I didn’t get an answer. I called the office and still no answer. So I called my pops and although I wasn’t panicking in the least, in fact, I wasn’t worried at all, which is strange; I could tell that my dad was. I think he was a bit mad at me at that moment. For many things, for not planning, for leaving my hometown, for going to a place where he can’t come to the rescue immediately, etc. This is what I wanted though, the freedom, the experience, everything. My dad had luckily given me some money in case I needed to take a cab. It’s good that he did considering that was what I ended up needing to do. I had to ask around to find where the cabs picked people up at and was eventually led to the right area. I found a cab driver, asked him if he could get me to the office address and how much it would be. I had the money and he said he could do it, so I went with him. It was my first time ever riding in a cab and I was a bit excited. Plus, I got the chance to see some of the sites of Seattle as we drove by. The ride from the airport to the office cost $43.

There I was, with my entire luggage sitting outside of the City Year office and I thought, okay, I will just go in and find someone who will be able to help me out with where I can go. Ha, nope. The office was closed and no one was there. I was suddenly without anything or anywhere to go sitting outside of this office with my bags.

I talked to my friend Heath for a bit on my phone until I got a call from another one of my bosses, David. Apparently my dad had looked up Seattle/King County’s City Year website and found David’s email. He had emailed David that I was out here and with nowhere to go. David then called me to find out where I was. He suggested that I should wait in the Starbuck’s across the street until he could pick me up and take me to where Willy was staying. So, I gathered up all of my crap, headed down to the intersection, waited for the “okay to walk” sign, and walked across the street (jaywalking is apparently heavily enforced here) to the Starbuck’s.

I am not really a coffee drinker, but by this time of the day, I was pretty hungry. I ordered a muffin or something and some tea mixed with lemonade. I had to have the cashier lady explain it all to me; however, as I am not sure I have ever even bought anything from a Starbuck’s before. But, there I was, with my luggage sitting around a table drinking something weird looking and eating some even weirder looking. One guy, with a bald head, Einstein looking haircut, a small grey mustache, dark skin, and skinny as a rail, came up to me and begged me for some coffee money. I told him I would buy him a coffee but when I offered to actually go up and get him one he backed away and left the store.

Eventually, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was Willy calling from the phone of one of the girls that he was staying with. He was crashing in an extra room that three girls we will be working with had. Their last two roommates hadn’t arrived yet. Willy and Rhonda offered to come down and help me with my bags in order to get them to their house. I was offered a place to stay until Willy, Ian, and I could get our own place.

This was the first time I had ever seen Willy. He was a tall, skinny, dark haired guy with glasses and what I thought was a birth mark on his cheek but which was actually something he acquired by burning himself accidentally with a cigarette. Rhonda, who came with Willy to help me, is a shorter, smiling, happy, black girl. We walked the few blocks from the Starbuck’s up to their house where I met the other two girls, Aja and Siena. Aja is a pretty talkative Asian girl and Siena is a bit kooky, really skinny white girl. They had been in Seattle for about a week and Willy had been living with them for three days already. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that these girls were going to allow both of us to stay there until we found a place of our own.

Willy and I later went down the street to the house that he and Petaki had been looking at. It was larger and nicer than the one we didn’t get, according to Petaki. This one had 4 bedrooms and we picked up another potential roommate, Nick. The house looked good to me on the outside as I never had the chance to see its inside. It wasn’t that far from the girls’ house and therefore not far from the office. We had some problems with this house though because Will and I couldn’t get the landlord to meet with us. I think that the owner was a little put-off by renting to us for some reason. I never got to talk to him; however, Willy always acted as the contact using my phone.

When we were just at the house I finally understood what real boredom was like. I am used to having things to do and places I could go. But here, there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. All we did was sit around and do nothing. It was the most boring experience I’ve ever had. I kept thinking, “so this is what makes people start doing drugs…” the girls could go places as they knew the city and the transportation system and because they had an address, they could get things like library cards and were able to use the internet. Willy and I had nada. I always say that I hate being bored but this was boredom to the max.

The next day, we met up with Ian, who is about my height and build with dark hair a perpetually scruffy looking face, to fill out an application for that house and we also went with Aja and Siena to the barbecue for work. This was my first time using the bus system in Seattle or anywhere for that matter. Aja, Siena, and Ian seemed to know what they were doing, so Willy and I just followed along. We learned from Petaki that day that she had found a place that she thought was even better for us and that if we were to take it, we would have to have a 5^th roommate as the new house had five bedrooms. She also already had another guy in mind, Matt. Later, Ian, Willy, and I went with Petaki to visit this other place. We met the landlord outside just as another family came to view the house. I felt more than a bit awkward about looking at the house with a family also looking at it. However, Marlo, the landlord was cool with us renting it and was even willing to waive the credit history fee that is normally required of landlord’s here in Seattle. He didn’t have any of the applications so he would have to get them to us at another time. Eventually, we decided that just faxing it to the office the next day would work out and that’s what we went with.

That next morning, Willy and I went to the office to pick-up the applications and found out that the fax machine was down. I had to call Marlo and let him know. He said he would leave an application in the mailbox of the house and that we could come get it that afternoon. That’s easier said than done. Willy and I tried to get out there, but the bus directions we used ended up being horrible. We got terribly lost in Rainier Valley when we wanted instead to be going to Beacon Hill. We walked for miles and hours just trying to get back to a place we knew. Eventually, we found the road that the office was on and I knew how to get to the house from there by just walking. We decided to go for it, since we had already been in the middle of nowhere and headed out. The walk wasn’t bad, and I was able to verify that I knew the way by calling my dad and having him pull up an aerial view of Seattle and using some directions to get us to where we needed to go. Finally getting to that house and picking up the application was such a relief. Besides, we knew that the bus that picks up near where we were would take us back into town near the office.

Or so we thought.

We rode the bus back into downtown Seattle and got off about 11 blocks from the office. A woman on the bus said that if we crossed the street and caught a different bus, it would take us closer to where we needed to go. Someone must have been mixed up as that bus started taking us straight to the area where we got lost the first time. As soon as we saw signs for the area that we were lost in earlier that day we got off the bus. We had to walk back into downtown to find our way to a place that we recognized. Eventually, we found the office again and knew how to get back to the place we were staying from there.

That night, Willy and I decided that some fun was in order because of how rough our day was. He was trying to quit smoking so we decided to just go find some booze. I like hard alcohol and have been staying away from a lot of beer since that semester where Heath and I would get trashed off of cheap beer every night of the week. We had a blast then, but man, all those empty calories went straight to my gut. The closest liquor store was about a mile away, so we walked it out and got us some cheap rum and some soda as a mixer. We then went back to the place we were staying at and proceeded to play drunken war. It’s like the card game war only with drinking involved. That day, one of the girls’ roommates, Casey, and his boyfriend (I forget his name) got in and all them were out doing things. It was only Willy and I at this house boozing. Needless to say, I got trashed. The last real thing I remember was wondering why Siena was mad at me and then nada. I woke up the next morning with someone’s towel as my pillow and someone’s blanket draped over me. I took a shower and met up with Willy to go to the office for our registration stuff. Willy told me that the night before I had thrown up on my sleeping bag and that Rhonda had cleaned it off and put it outside to dry. I’m such an idiot. My body was run down from all the walking around Seattle we had done during the day as well as a lack of food. Siena had made us some pasta for dinner and that had been all I had eaten that day. I had no food of my own and felt really bad about eating the girls’ food so I kept away from it. Drinking on a tired body and an empty stomach was a hugely bad idea.

That day was our first day of doing things with City Year. We had registration and we learned some things about the organization. Willy, Ian, and I also got to meet Nick, a tall, skinny dark haired guy, and Matt, a shorter buzzed dude. We finally met face to face everyone who was going to live together. We also got fitted for our uniforms and registered to get food stamps. Our living stipend is pretty poor and it is common for City Year corps members to use food stamps while they are with the organization. Some people even have to get night-time jobs to continue living in the lifestyle they are accustomed to. I applied for my food stamps but I haven’t been able to complete the print out forms yet. I still need to find out some information to do that. It’s kind of weird saying that I will be living off of food stamps because I’ve never done it before and have always associated it with extreme cases of poverty. I don’t consider myself poor, but then I’ve always fallen back on my dad’s support to get me by on everything.

After registration, Ian, Willy, Nick, and I went about trying to get our housing situation finalized. Nick said he needed to go back to his place to get something he needed for the City Year staff and said that it would take about an hour. The three of us still needed to finish applying for food stamps and to get fitted for our uniforms so we just decided to wait at the office for him.

Three hours later, still no Nick to be found. He also wasn’t answering the only number that Petaki and I both had for him. A number we had assumed to be his cell phone. We were even able to get Matt, our 5^th roommate, to come in even though he was working to fill out the application for housing and to give us his share of the deposit and first month’s rent. Still, no word from Nick. We busied ourselves helping some of the staff members put together some invitations (the entire thing was very PSP-service like – it brought back memories). The entire time we were making jokes about Nick dropping the program or forgetting or getting lost or even getting run over by one of the metro buses. The City Year office people all heard us, they laughed with us, and they would talk with us about more than just our weird housing situation.

Yet they still failed us.

Ian, Willy, and I left the office for ten minutes in order to go to a Red Apple grocery store nearby to get money orders for our land lord. It turned out that the store couldn’t do Willy’s money transfer from his parents but Ian and I were able to get money orders for our shares. When we got back to the office, the first thing we heard out of someone’s mouth was, “Nick was just here. He went down to 28^th.” We were dumbfounded. The only time we step out of the office ALL afternoon and he comes and then leaves. In addition, the employees who heard us complaining the entire time LET him leave. What the fuck? It really pissed Ian and me off. Willy is such a pothead that he wasn’t really fazed, but we two were a bit heated. Willy went up the street to a place that had a Western Union to get his transfer and almost missed the landlord coming to the office to meet us. Petaki actually had to drive up there to get him so that he wouldn’t miss out on paying the landlord. We convinced him, Marlo, to take the 4 applications we had (Nick still had his) and the money from us four (Matt, Ian, Willy, and myself) and allow us to get the place. We were so happy that he agreed. Willy and I were even able to convince him to let us move in later that night. Matt, his brother, and his brother’s wife also agreed to pick up Willy and me from the place we were staying at and bring us and our luggage to our new house. Nick was even able to meet us there and to finally get in touch with the landlord himself.

It seemed like so many things kept happening that was meant to keep us from getting our place. Maybe that was fate’s way of telling me that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be or doing what I was supposed to be doing. All I know is that I am in Seattle because I am supposed to be and I am hoping that the reason will become clear soon rather than after I’ve already fucked up my life beyond all repairs.

For now, I'm just going to go with the flow and remember: 5 strangers picked to live together...