colleen comes to visit!

This weekend was my last weekend of visitors, probably for the year. It's the third weekend of having someone visit, which I thought was going to be a lot more stressful than it was. Colleen flew in Friday night and then left Sunday night.  She has friends from Ireland that are studying abroad at Boston College (weird!), so she spent Saturday afternoon with them, but other than that, we were able to hang out all weekend. Friday she met me at headquarters after a rough day.  We had gotten yelled at for not paying attention after getting yelled at for going to the wrong room, even though we were just following the schedule. It was annoying and I was glad to leave and see someone not in City Year.
Saturday she met up with her friend during the day, but then I met up with them that night for a late dinner and just wandering around the city. It was a lot of fun and they are from Ireland, so it was hilarious to spend time with them.Sunday we went to Cheers to get her dad a Tshirt and then got a mid day meal (at 4:00) before she had to catch the train. We didn't do a ton of sightseeing, but I was happy just to chill and hang out.
Today was wild. I don't like saying that a specific day is a "bad day" because I think the fact that you are here and have another day makes it a good day, but I do think that there are some days that are better than others. Anyways, today. The day was going by pretty fast, so fast that I didn't have time to get a lot of stuff done. It was 2:15 before I knew it and had to leave my class to go to enrichments. I am doing an ultimate frisbee enrichment with Sam and Arthur and the middle schoolers seem to really like it. They can see the similarities to soccer and football and all of them are pretty athletic. There is one girl in there who usually has a bad attitude, but today she was like "Ms. Russo, will you catch for me?" during warm ups and then was like "I'm a better catcher than tosser."  so I could tell she was somewhat invested in it. So after warm ups, we started playing an actual game, which is pretty normal for them. Before I knew it, one kid was getting so annoyed and yelling at Arthur because he thought Arthur was only calling fouls on him, when in fact, he was the only one really committing any fouls. He was having a complete meltdown, screaming and crying (mind you, he's in sixth grade) and couldn't cool down. Luckily, it was almost time to go, so we wrapped up and walked out. Sam and I went ahead with the rest of the boys and Arthur stayed behind with the one kid. As he and Arthur were leaving, he apparently picked up a rock and threw it onto the playground where all of the elementary school after schoolers were. COOL. Needless to say, he'll be getting in trouble tomorrow morning for that one.
Then, I went to Course Coaching where JA had a complete attitude and was just like "I hate City Year and Course Coaching. I'm not coming any more. I don't even want to be here. blah blah blah."  I'm glad I can see through her and don't take these things personally because I would have been down and out if I did. My favorite line was "I'm going to drop out of school," to which I replied in the most sarcastic voice possible" Okay cool, so you're going to drop out, have to get a job and take orders from a boss since that's so much better than coming to Course Coaching where I don't talk to you if you come in and do your homework. Makes complete sense." Needless to say, it was not the best afternoon in Course Coaching.
Afterwards, I was so annoyed because of all of this.  Recruitment was having an awareness event at an ice cream shop in Cambridge, so Erica, Sam and I went which was good because I didn't want to end my day on that note.  It was a lot of fun to just hang out with Recruitment and eat ice cream. They even had flavors that City Year designed like "frozen idealism," which is what I had.  They also gave us a ton of CY swag, like a City Year bracelet and little drawstring backpack. So awesome.
So, while today was not perfect, it wasn't a bad day. City Year always says that there aren't bad kids, just kids that make bad decisions. I don't think there are bad days, just some bad moments. So, here's to hoping tomorrow will be a little bit easier and being thankful for the reminder that this is why I serve. There's a campaign on Twitter right now. It's the #iamCY campaign, where corps members tweet about who they are and why they are serving. Mine right now is "I serve with 20 first graders teaching them math and reading, meanwhile they are teaching me unconditional love and patience. #iamCY" I think that my middle schoolers are definitely in there teaching me patience and understanding because, so often, there is something out there causing this attitude.

Also, look who made it onto the City Year blog! Mom and I are such celebrities!http://cityyearboston.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/setting-up-for-success/