July 5, 2011 - Post #6

So since the front desk is pretty slow today, I’ll write another one of these. The last few days of last week were pretty crazy. It seems like when one person gives me a project to do, EVERYONE has a project for me to do. Which I prefer than just sitting and doing nothing anyway. I met with the 4 other girls I’ll be working the summer camp with (which starts tomorrow). They’re all interested to see what kind of dynamic a male will bring to the camp, since a guy hasn’t worked it in over 2 years. They also said it’s always an adjustment to the way you need to treat these kids, because there are multiple things that they don’t receive at home. They often get no constructive guidance or reasonable punishments, but they also get very little positive support. We have to be strict, but not in the ways their parent’s are often “strict” (ie. swearing and/or verbal/physical abuse). But we also have to be supportive, even through their issues and mistakes, because they’re often issues the parent’s don’t understand or have the means to care about. The days I’m working the camp are “in-house” days where we have a goal for the day, and coordinate therapy related activities and exercises in the clinic. For example, the first day is self-discovery, then anger management, then family and stress, etc. There are lesson plans that they’ve used in the past, but we are free to use some new exercises if we think they’d work better. I’m really looking forward to it.

Also last week, one of the supervisors in the clinic asked me to make some copies for her. She handed me a 26 page packet, with front and back pages, and asked for 20 copies. I asked her, “Okay, but you know that’s going to be over 450 pages right?” And she said yup (in a way that made me realize that was the reason she was having me do it and not herself). Apparently people get a little agitated when someone else is using the copy machine for 45 minutes to print and sort 450 pages. Plus, I pressed the wrong button, so instead of the packets sorting themselves, I had to spread all 26 pages out and sort them myself. Long story short…I looked like an idiot.

Another good story from last week: My roommates aren’t messy, but they definitely aren’t clean. During the week, they both work A LOT, and the kitchen ends up getting kind of gross, with loaves of rock hard bread on the counter, and the huge pig leg that’s always there doesn’t really help either. They will leave the house at 8-9 every morning, and won’t usually get back from the office until 9 or 10 at night. But when they have a free afternoon or weekend, they go crazy with cleaning. They’ll mop the floors and scrub the toilet and vacuum and yell Spanish frantically at each other as they run around the apartment. During this frenzy, I wanted to make dinner. And apparently I walked to the kitchen too soon after they mopped, and Cristina yelled bloody murder. I got to the kitchen, but she said I wasn’t allowed to leave for 10 minutes. So…naturally I stayed in our tiny kitchen until she said it was okay for me to walk back to my room…literally 4 steps away. After I got back to my room, my roommate Diego comes to my door, and asks “Hey, do you have a plaster?” I made it obvious I had no idea what he was asking for. “Yea, a plaster…for my hand,” and he pointed to a cut on his hand. So I said, “Oh, you mean a band-aid?” Diego: “Band-aid? No, a plaster.” So I said, “…there’s really not such a thing as a plaster for your hand.” So Diego yells down the hall to Cristina, “Cristina, a Band-aid? Is that what I need?” And I hear Cristina yell, “Band-aid?? No…what is band-aid? You need un plaster! PLASTER.” Diego turns back to me, “Yup, I need a plaster.” So trying to be nice I said, “Okay well…there’s no such thing as ‘a plaster,’ so I’m sorry. And what you need is called a band-aid, and I don’t have any of those either.” Again, long story short…the language barrier continues.

Friday night. Cristina and Diego decide to have a party. I told them I’d have about 8 people come, and they had about…15 people. All of their friends are really nice though. Much friendlier than American people. It was just interesting, they’d all be in little Spanish speaking circles, and us in our English speaking circles. And every once in a while, two circles would combine, and they’d switch over to half English half Spanish, and tell us about how in Spain, they started drinking at 12 years old, and they make a drink called “Kalimotxo” (I had to look up the spelling of that obviously). It’s half red wine, and half Coca-Cola. Apparently, it’s the poor man’s drink of Spain, and all of the 12 and 13 year old kids would drink it in the parks at night. Sounds interesting to me. Later in the night, I guess we got a little loud, because the 2 Japanese women from upstairs came down to complain. And somehow, my roommates’ friends were able to invite them in, and one of them began singing opera to all of us (she was actually very good). It was just a very bizarre night.

Saturday night. We had a welcome to NYC party for Gorcica, who moved in last weekend. Hung out at Gorcica and Clint’s place, then went out. While trying to flag a taxi, a black limo pulls up to us and asks where we’re going. We tell him, and he says “20 dollars anywhere in the city…total.” It was too good to pass up. So the 6 of us take this limo to the bar (that also conveniently had 3 dollar beers…which is half the price of a beer we would have bought at the bar). It was pretty awesome. Who knew you could flag a limo in New York City?!

Fourth of July. Clint’s optometry school friends have a really nice apartment on the East side, with a private roof equipped with lawn chairs and grill. We hung out there for the afternoon…it was great. Then we headed over to the west side for fireworks. Got there at 5pm. There were hundreds of cops monitoring the people trying to get into the “designated viewing areas” (that ended up just being the middle of the West Side Highway. List of things not allowed to bring in: chairs, blankets, towels, strollers, coolers. So…nothing. Eventually, after getting rid of most of our stuff (Clint brought it all the way back to his apartment), we get into the area, claim a spot, and sit on the concrete road for 4 and a half hours waiting for the fireworks to start. I guess in the long-run, it was worth it. There were 6 barges on the Hudson River, spanning about 25 blocks of the city. And they all had synchronized fireworks going off. It was the biggest fireworks display in the country, and definitely cool to watch.

Hopefully this will be an interesting week, with the summer camp starting tomorrow. And going home for the Boilermaker this weekend. Good times. I’ll keep everyone posted on any further Spanish hilarity and the crazy clinic children.