Kidstown and plans

I talked to the children's director for my church the other day. I'm essentially taking over the preschoolers for the summer. It's a pretty small program, so I'll only have between 10 and 20 kids 5 and under. My job is to take the curriculum (which is geared toward elementary) and adapt it down to preschool level and then write a program around it for about an hour-long service. I don't know how much I'll be teaching (I'd like to not miss all of church for the rest of summer) vs just doing the lesson planning and giving that out to the volunteers, but either way I'm excited. Janet, the children's director, took me around the preschool area so I got to poke around and see what my resources are. I'll be writing up the program for all of July and August. Since I'm going to be out of town this weekend and next, I'll just need to email her the program I write up for the first Sunday in July, and after that I'll be able to be more involved in the implementation of it. Naturally, I'll be in contact with her through the whole process. What will be nice is that I'll have my mom with me as well over this next week while I'm writing it up, so I can use her as a resource too (she's been teaching two-year-old Bible classes for over 20 years). This will definitely be a challenge for me, but I'm looking forward to doing it.

Tomorrow and Friday I have a final each day, and then Friday afternoon I leave for WI, so classes are wrapping up quickly here. As soon as I get back I'll start my internship. Yikes!

Just a little update

Yesterday some people at the church had a cookout. It was hosted by Danielle and Ergun. Danielle was the first person I met at the church, she's really friendly and fun, and it was neat to go over. I'd met Ergun a couple times at church, but I got to talk to him for a while there. Turns out he's Turkish, was born in Turkey and moved to Kenya when he was 15, then later came to the US (I don't remember at what age).  He and I talked for a really long time, about Turkey, about international politics and happenings in general. It was really interesting. There's a reason my major is my major; I really enjoyed being able to hold an intelligent conversation with a random person on international issues. I also met a guy, Caleb, who is Haitian, so he and I practiced my French some, which was nice because I desperately need to work on it.

We managed to get together some 6-on-6 volleyball that we played for a few hours, which was really fun. I'm so bad at sports, so that part was really embarrassing. But it's a fun group of people, and it was just fun to hang out with people and chill and such things, do the kind of thing I do really get to do off campus. I'm really glad I found this church.

I have a meeting with our children's directer at 1 today to talk about me taking over the preschoolers for the remainder of the summer, so I'll let you know how that goes when I get back. :)

I have an internship!

So, as expected, I'm bad at keeping this thing updated. I've been pretty busy with classes recently; last week was midterms, this week is papers, and next week is finals. The biggest thing that happened this week is that I had an interview for an internship, and I got it, which means I know where I'll be working for the second half of the summer. I'll be working at Consensus Building Institute, a nonprofit that works both domestically and internationally with governments, NGO's, corporations, and individuals on conflict resolution and negotiation. So, for instance, say there's an NGO in Kenya that's fighting with the government over something, CBI will come in and mediate and help resolve the issue. They work with the UN a lot too, which I think is really cool. It's a project-based organization, so I'll have some freedom as to what exactly I want to work on. It's also only a 15 minute bus ride from my apt, so it's nice not to have a huge long commute. And it's right on the edge of MIT (it was founded by an MIT professor), so it's in a pretty area too. Overall, I'm pretty excited about it. I start on the Monday after the fourth, so I'll have to let you guys know how it goes. 

Red Sox

So yesterday our program directer, Yolanta, sent out an email saying she'd received 19 Red Sox tickets to the game at Fenway tonight and for people to email her and let her know if we wanted one. So I did, which means I get to go see the Red Sox for free tonight! (Tickets are usually pretty expensive. At least $100, as far as we've seen.) So there's a group of us going and it should be a lot of fun. We're going to run to a sports store to get some Sox paraphernalia before the game. I have to at least have a shirt to wear. It's gonna be fun! Hopefully we'll win. :)

I found a church!

My roommate and I visited Tremont Temple Baptist Church this morning, and I absolutely loved it! It's a slightly more traditional service than I have at home, with hymnals and the ministers in robes and whatnot. They have an organ that's absolutely gorgeous that they actually play, which I think is amazing. All throughout the sermon you could see the emphasis on prayer, the Bible, and missions. You could really just feel the love of God in that church, and you could sense the sincerity of the people there. They were extremely welcoming, with one or two practically running us down just to say hi to a couple unfamiliar faces. They have a gospel choir (!!) that was having a short practice after service that I was invited to, so I tagged along with that and sang with them and it was really cool. Within the church and the choir there's a whole mix of races and ages. I met a whole lot of people and felt really welcomed. I'm really excited to go back next week.  :)

Summer Apartment and Roommate

Well, I'm here in Boston. My flights went without any significant event. When I got here I had to wait for like an hour and a half before they'd let me in to my apartment, but my roommate had to wait like three hours, so I don't feel too bad. Just typical university inefficiency.

My apartment
The apartment is mostly just old, but it's not too bad. Kind of small and not very open. There are two bedrooms (kind of), but Rachel (my roommate) and I decided to move into one bedroom and then use the other one as a den/TV room. My desk is in there too.  We have a tiny little bathroom that's only kind of gross (it is campus housing) and a fairly big kitchen, with a fairly big fridge. It's so nice to have a fridge and a stove and an oven and the means to make my own meals. We apparently don't have a microwave, so we're going to try and look for a cheap one. So overall the apartment's not spectacular, not too bad, probably about what you'd expect for a campus apartment.

My roommate
My roommate's name is Rachel and she's really really sweet. She's from NY, but spent a year in Boston, so she knows her way around a little bit. So far we've been getting along really well. We're both coming from stressful semesters and want to be able to enjoy Boston with as little stress as possible. We've found we complement each other nicely. She does all the decorating for the apartment, and I do the organizing. It's working out well so far. She's really easy to get along with. It should be a fun summer. :)

Soon to be on my way!

Well, here I am, sitting in my room a mere three days before I'll be in Boston, MA. I know nothing of the city and no one there, but I'm actually excited to go. Considering how quickly it's all been thrown together (I was admitted into the program just 7 days ago; I just found out my rooming assignment yesterday), it's still kind of amazing to me that I'm going. I'm excited to be out on my own, without anyone or anything familiar, and taking care of myself. I'll be living in an apartment-style dorm, kind of. I'm not sure whether or not I'll have a roommate. But I'll have a kitchen and everything. It should be very exciting.

My host-dad from last summer actually went to MIT, which is just across the river from BU (I live like 300 yards from BU), and he sent me some tips on churches in the area, so I've been looking at those. So far I've looked at these three:

Ruggles Baptist Church
Tremont Temple Baptist Church
Park Street Church

Ruggles is literally about a 15 second walk from my apartment. The other two are a little farther away, but not terribly far. I've been looking at and analyzing their websites for a while now. Park Street seems like an awesome church, but it's got 2000 people that come every Sunday, and since I have a church similar to that at home (Summit), I think I want to try something different for a summer. Find a good, solid church that's not just a replica of Summit in a different place. So I think I've already ruled out Park St.

Just from the websites I can't decide between Ruggles and Tremont. And I was sitting here going back and forth about it in my head, and then I was like, wait, this is silly. You can't judge a church from it's website. A church is made up of it's people. Until I go to the church and see how it works and see how the people are, I can't know what the church is like, regardless of whether or not I agree with their beliefs and their 'personality' as set forth by their website. So at the moment my plan is to visit them both, and any others that I hear of that appeal to me, though I want to find a church and settle down pretty quickly, since I've only got a summer there. But there's no use in deciding now. I'll go and see the churches for myself, then decide. I promise I'll let you guys know how it turns out!

And thanks, Alan, for the advice.