Last spring, I tried to envision what it would be like to have been in Kentucky for any amount of time. I envisioned the day I’d move in, my first day on the job, I even thought about getting together with the family for Thanksgiving and responding to a slew of questions about Americorps, Kentucky, The Future and how much weight I’d gained in the last year. (Oh, wait, Aunt Sally wasn’t there this Thanksgiving…) Last weekend, wow, it was Thanksgiving. The fam came in bit by bit from around the Midwest. Maxine’s new place is…something, alright. I was the first to arrive, on Friday Mom and John came, and Saturday brought Dad, Katherine and Benjamin on the train. They were only there for 24 hours. It was the perfect amount of time. Maxine hosted three Thanksgivings in three days. By the time I left, I realized there had been almost no questions about Americorps, Kentucky or The Future from my family. Have I narrowly averted an uncomfortable situation, or should I feel somehow cheated? Well, regardless, I know that my right hand is chillier than my left hand.

An awkward transition, you may say, but it’s cold here in Kentucky! Stop laughing. It does get cold here. It’s about 30 degrees on this cloudless night, and one thing I’ve learned since moving south of the Mason-Dixon line is that houses here weren’t built with any sort of effective insulation whatsoever. My room in particular holds in all the heat beaten onto it during the sweltering summer days, making trips outside pleasantly cool trips, and loses every degree of heat in the winter, seeming to hold in the chill throughout the day. On one hand, it makes me spend as much time outside of my room as possible. On the other, it’s noticeably colder by the window (to my right) than by the doorway to the hallway.

So I’ve been in Kentucky for four months. What have I learned? Allow me to make a bullet list for easy reading, and lazy typing:

-Don’t ever change lanes. Or if you do, don’t bother using your blinker. No one else uses them, and the great majority of the people here who do use their blinkers do so for the same reason they get neon purple lights underneath their cars, or spinners, or blonde girlfriends: for decoration. Then, as with neon purple lights, spinners and blondes, these Louisvillians tend to forget about them quickly, leaving you to pace someone for eight miles on the highway thinking that this (asterisk ampersand pound dollar percent) is preparing to think about considering the benefits of investing in turning the fuck RIGHT!

-The amount of precipitation this city receives is inversely correlated with the intellect of its drivers. These folks will drive like bats out of hell when its pouring like the end of the world, but if they see one snowflake half a mile away they forget how to brake properly and cause ten-car collisions.

-Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa mean one thing: cold. “But you’re from (Wisconsin/Minnesota/Michigan/Illinois/Iowa), so this weather NOTHING to you!”

-Religious institutions have their hands in just about every charitable organization and educational organization. It’s a bit unsettling to realize that in this city, if you’re going to be philanthropic, you’re going to have to pair with an established institution that preaches something you may not believe in.

-People here are downright damn friendly. I’ve had more genuinely polite conversations at gas stations in Louisville than I ever had in the state of Wisconsin. Maybe it’s all the sweet tea.

Now, to move from a list of things I’ve learned to a list of things I’ve been doing:

-Painting a mural! The grant was won by last year’s VISTAs and implemented by this year’s. It was supposed to be done over the summer, though everyone fell behind schedule, and that’s probably for the better since this summer was atrociously hot. So for the past gajillion Saturdays anywhere from one to six VISTAs have met at this north-facing wall with anywhere from zero to twelve immigrant and refugee kids and a resident artist from Argentina to paint a mural themed “Empowerment Through Literacy.” Even though I contributed a relatively pitiful amount to it, I’m proud of what there is now! Will try to post pictures.

-Working. The school (I discovered that blogger.com opens all its blogs to search engines, so I won’t ever be listing any specific names of people or organizations) I’m working at has been running pretty smoothly – we’ve implemented an attendance-tracking program that has taken probably 50 hours so far to set up, hooked enough volunteers to make the four days per week that we operate tolerable, secured a second VISTA at last, overcome most of the office politics, won our first grant ($500 – you’ve got to start somewhere!), given up every Saturday post-mural to fundraising, and other small stuff I’m proud of but won’t mention here. VISTA is going alright – there are lots of politics within this organization, and between it and its partnering agencies, and between it and other branches of Americorps, but I’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff. Or I would have died of ulcers months ago.

-Writing. November was National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org), which I no longer hold as highly in regard because of their arbitrary definition of a “novel,” but it spurred me to join some local writers to churn out lots of words (in the form of short stories) regardless.

-Applying to grad school. I almost waited too long, and now have to scramble a teeny bit to get everything in for the first deadline coming up. We’ll see what comes of this.

I’ll leave it at this for now. I hope there are still people out there.

To quote a former VISTA: “Your year in Americorps will be the fastest year of your life.” It’s October already? Wow, it’s only October?

Kids have been coming to the program for over a month now. This year it bolstered its largest attendance ever with over 70 kids – great for the mission, horrible for the people who have to supervise those antsy kiddos who are in their eighth hour of school by the time they arrive. As anyone who has known me for any amount of time knows, I’m rather…hesitant to willingly place myself in the presence of children. So this last month has really, really been a learning experience. The kids I deal with daily are between 4^th and 9^th grade, and the first hurdle to overcome was simply learning their names. The second hurdle was learning how to, well, interact with kids.

One of the other VISTAs, who works at the ESL department for the school district, advised me to “be more sarcastic.” It was great advice. I don’t know why, but the first time I told a kid that no, he couldn’t be excused to go to the bathroom, he instantly befriended me. I don’t understand it, but hey, I’m not complaining. Sometimes they even…hug me. Either they have very, very low expectations when it comes to interacting with adults, or my sarcasm is improving.

Now things are picking up, and although some days time feels like it’s crawling by and other days slip away before I can clear the crusties from the corner of my eyes, life in Louisville is taking shape. I’ve already been rejected for my first grant, and have possibly received my first. I’ve acquired and lost some volunteers, and some friends, and most surprisingly of all, have gained the trust of some of the kids at the school. Last Saturday on the front lawn of the school the Vietnamese community celebrated the Moon Festival (a tradition stolen from the Chinese, I believe). I shivered through about an hour of skits and dance routines in Vietnamese before slipping away, but saw at least a dozen kids from the school milling around with their parents, or dressed up for the celebration. Some of the parents have gotten to know me – last week I attended my first parent-teacher conference in, oh, 11 years. And that’s almost as gratifying as earning the kids’ trust – earning the trust of these adults who have come tens of thousands of miles from their homes and are raising kids in an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar practices.

And Louisville itself is proving to be a cultured little city. Every weekend there’s so much going on it’s impossible to attend every fest or show or karaoke night. (Still working on that last one…) This last weekend was the annual St. James Art Festival, which originated years ago as a tiny festival for local artists and has now grown into the largest art festival I’ve ever seen. It took me more than three hours to just walk by every booth there was! I’d have to say that my favorite act came from a blonde, bronzed man sitting on the ground gurgling out a hypnotic didgeridoo beat to an audience of at least 50 gathered spectators. He wore furry boots with bells and seashells sewn on that jingled when he stomped his feet.

These days are hectic. I’m registered to take the GREs in two weeks, and a tooth is urgently telling me that I’m going to regret not going in to see a dentist years ago. This has been a quick update. Hopefully ones in the future will be more, uh, how do you say, good.

Today is one of those days when I’m glad I didn’t wear shoes.

I got up around 8:30, slipped on my “vegan” sandals and was out the door by 9, arriving at the food warehouse close to 9:30 (see photo I secretly snapped). I arrived prepared, after last week’s hour-and-a-half debacle, and after poring over the “picking list” and choosing the healthiest-seeming drinks and snacks, I pulled out my book and settled in for a long wait. To my great surprise, 10 minutes later my order was called, and I loaded it in my car and continued on to work.

Once there I had a couple hours before my next planned obligation, and I proceeded to busy myself with office tasks: changing the calendar to September and transferring the important dates, preparing items to bring to this weekend’s long-anticipated WorldFest which I’ll be attending both days in order to supervise the program's booth, and checking work e-mail. I got word of an upcoming grant opportunity, signed up for a community fair for refugees and immigrants aimed at orienting them to the area and its commodities, and then my spuervisor got a call. It was from Mildred, the seasoned, fiery head of the Louisville VISTA office. She wanted to let my boss know that someone had applied for the other Lac Viet VISTA position.

My heart immediately jumped. Having a co-worker would lessen the intensity of it just being two of us in that office all day (not to mention lessen my workload). Boss checked the application online and read out to me this woman’s qualifying attributes. They sounded GREAT…and slightly familiar. I didn’t know there were so many people coming to Louisville from Florida, having studied Marine Biology, working on a Master’s in Education, having formerly served in Americorps…

I about popped a vein in my forehead when I shouted “I KNOW HER!” Last Friday the VISTAs went on a bus tour of some of the other sites (we did this as our required monthly meeting, see photo of Churchill Downs). Afterwards my roommate and I returned to the house en route of a coffee shop on Bardstown Road, where she saw a coffee shop patron wearing a bright red Americorps shirt. The three of us began a conversation about Americorps, this woman told us she had just moved to the area from Florida where she did a year with Americorps, and we told her about our individual positions. She seemed really intrigued, and I told her to check out the Web site because several positions in Louisville were still available. Not only did she do just that – but she applied for the position at MY SCHOOL! Al hamdulileh!!!

After that tremendous realization and after Boss’s brief phone conversation with the potential co-worker, a VISTA stopped by to pick up some extra books we had that he could use at his site. Things then settled down and I busied myself with putting together packets for volunteers. At 1:00, a woman from the University of Louisville came by to check out the school for a potential work study partnership. She’s enthusiastic, energetic and has experience with kids…I’m pumped. In the midst of that a man came in to register two of his nieces in the after-school program, and after that it was nearly 3:00 and Boss left for the day.

I finally got a chance to finish checking my (work) e-mail, then moved on to my non-work e-mail, and soon it was nearly 4:00. I left and picked up 3 Cuban girls who are participating in the mural project, then brought them back to the program where we met with 6 other girls from around the world, two volunteers, a fellow VISTA of mine who works at Kentucky Refugee Ministries and a local artist named Nico who’s guiding this project. It was a fun two hours of ART. The kids (they’re all girls, interestingly enough) drew and painted in preparation for painting this mural, and several of them are slowly but surely warming up to us. Two sisters who are from Russia but are of Turkish heritage are particularly frosty (see photo of me with them) – they’re rather bitter that we didn’t invite their 8 other Russian Turkish girlfriends to participate in the project. The younger one was really enthusiastic this time around – she brought Russian music to play while we all worked, asked me questions about Arabic and commented on my glasses (she’s supposed to be wearing glasses too). Her sister spent most of the two hours sitting back sullenly in her chair with arms crossed, but toward the very end picked up some of the watercolors I’d been desperately trying to get her to use and began painting an extremely lovely tree scene. Nico alternated between working on his own drawing which will be the base for the mural and circling the table, admiring everyone’s work and giving encouragement. By the end the tables (and some of the girls) were splattered in paint, the nearby desks were covered in sopping masterpieces waiting to dry and I had exchanged a written Greek alphabet with the younger sister who gave me the Russian equivalent. I gave the Cuban girls a ride home (see photo of then with Nico) and proceeded back to my own neck of town.

After returning home I had enough time to exchange work-related items in my bag with extra-curricular ones and headed down the block to the coffee shop. At 8:00 I met my new Mauritanian friend, and we proceeded to practice Arabic. I had borrowed “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” written in Arabic and English from the library, and we went through the entire thing while he helped me with my reading and pronunciation. Then we just sat back and talked about travels, languages, politics in the Middle East and starting a real language table with other Arabic hopefuls. By 10:00 our teas were depleted and we parted ways.

I walked back to the house, said hello to some of the guys who were watching an excruciatingly boring-looking movie, clumped upstairs and kicked off my sandals for the first time in 13 hours. Had they been shoes, I would have passed out from the stench of my own feet.

It’s been a very good day.

Here are some surreptitious photos taken of the FANTASTIC resource center at a local high school intended to whet a mousy elementary teacher’s dreams: It consists of ROLLS of construction paper you pay for by the foot, a LAMINATING machine, a cabinet full of colored paper and a WALL of stamps. Those stamps – they were like nothing I could have imagined. Ever wonder how teachers make such nice-looking bulletin boards in the hallways at schools? They CHEAT. They take these blocks which have a wooden base and spongy foam with a metal stencil on the other side, slide them into these nifty presses, heave the lever down two or three times and end up with – you NAME it: a snowman, a fire truck, any letter of the alphabet, mathematical notations, all neatly stamped from colored construction paper. There are some crazy stamps, too. You can tack up the fleur de lis (the symbol of Louisville), Africa, a hand making the peace sign, the outline of a boy or a girl, the Coliseum …

So our landlord has us on a month-to-month lease. Should I be worried? And come to think of it, I don’t think I’m even on the lease, either. It shouldn’t be a problem, unless I need the leverage against his horrible landlord-ing skills. Every time we turn on the air conditioner, the basement floods. The roommate who lives in the basement isn’t very happy with it. We’ve called about it three or four times since I moved down here, and as you can imagine, the problem persists.

Other updates: The horrendous heat finally broke, and now and then it’s actually comfortable to sleep at night. Internet has been set up at my house, but that doesn’t stop me from taking advantage of any wireless access point I find (particularly in caffeine-saturated locales). I’ve now made promises to begin both an Arabic and Spanish language table with various people in the community…the first time, I was jittery with caffeine, and I got excited at the challenge of sitting down with a native Arabic speaker and toughing out a basic conversation. But the second time I was celebrating one of the VISTA’s birthdays, and various celebratory activities had put me in the mindset that my Spanish abilities are far smoother than they really are. But hey, it’ll be an interesting break in the routine my life has quickly fallen into!

Man, working full time is a bummer. I know, most of you who are reading this have learned that looong ago, but I’m just…reiterating a point we all agree on. After emerging from the office at the school and smelling my first fresh breeze since 9 a.m., I get more grumpy instead of happy. A part of me mourns my lost days after I leave work. And also, working eight hours a day, no matter what the task, is *exhausting.* Even if my day has mostly consisted of me sitting in front of a computer creating referential Excel sheets for my own benefit, I leave at the end of the day feeling wiped out, and then snort rush-hour traffic for the next 20 minutes. Now I can see why some people want nothing more than to veg in front of a TV with a beer in hand after work. I have *got* to find a gym.

But work is getting more interesting, at any rate. This week the parents are coming in to register their kids for the program, and that in itself is an experience. None of the parents are native English speakers, and even when I give them the registration form with English on one side and Vietnamese on the other, they have trouble understanding many of the questions. Luckily most of the kids are returning this year, so their parents either know the drill or their kids can explain it to them. Besides that, I’m busy slogging through a grant that the VISTA before me won just days before I began this job. It’s for a computer lab and some award-winning software; but we’ve just learned that most of the computers we already have (see photo of our existing computer lab) don’t have the specifications necessary to run this great program (go figure). So now we’ve got to look into buying new computers, and a server, and antivirus software, and now our estimates have us exceeding this grant. This Wednesday and next I’ve got to go to a training specifically intended for recipients of this grant. It’s from 8:30-4, and is titled “Outcomes Measurement Training.” I’m yawning already…but! It should be beneficial, right?

And one more thing. Here's a picture of the lovely marble fountain that's outside the school. I think the current building owner (the pastor of the church it's attached to) acquired it for the school. To quote my previous almost-co-worker, "The first time I got directions to the school from the Americorps office, I was told to turn left at the statue of Jesus and Mary riding a dragon. I didn't believe it until I saw it."

Tonight we’re celebrating our two-week anniversary. It will be interesting, the 11 of us crammed into a booth in the hip district of Louisville celebrating over “cokes and smokes…”

Two weeks and one day ago I arrived in Louisville with my car packed up to the ceiling with my most precious Earthly belongings. I got to town at 10 p.m. on a sultry night, made about 15 trips up the creaky wooden stairs to my large humidor of a room, then slept briefly in a sleeping bag on the hardwood floor. The next day I was off to Atlanta for Americorps training, and it was there I met the 10 other VISTAs (Volunteers In Service To America) who will be working in the Louisville area. We became almost instant friends – in the best of senses. There are no cliques, there’s no hidden animosity, no one’s the scapegoat, everyone has a very easygoing sense of humor. I realize that may be because it’s a certain type of person who chooses to enter Americorps. I realize it may also be because we’re all mostly between the ages of 22-24.

Since returning to Louisville from Atlanta, we’ve met up occasionally in varied permutations of the whole group. Last Friday 8 of the VISTAs came over to my place (which I share with 5 hairy men from Louisville and one woman from Iowa, who’s one of the VISTAs and lives in the basement). Tonight we’re meeting up at Café 360, a hookah bar and surprisingly good restaurant. I think it’s more of an excuse for us to get together as the whole group again than to actually…celebrate. Though hopefully this will start a trend of recognizing unusual chronological anniversaries – before we realize it, we’ll be celebrating our second and three-quarter month! I’m pushing to have that gathering at a karaoke bar.

So Americorps. VISTA is the only branch of Americorps that offers “indirect” service – meaning we don’t actually build the houses for Habitat or tutor the kids in after-school programs. Rather, we find the volunteers who’ll build the houses and tutor the kids. We write the grants to secure funding so that our respective programs can, well, continue to exist. We’re in charge of “building permanent infrastructure in nonprofit organizations to help them more effectively bring individuals and communities out of poverty.” (www.americorps.gov) Oh yeah, VISTA is also completely geared toward the eradication of poverty. I learned that during the Atlanta orientation, too.

I’m amazed at how many people don’t know what Americorps is. I guess I’ve been spoiled, spending the last five years in a liberal, progressive, socially-conscious haven. The line I use most often is, “It’s like a domestic version of the Peace Corps.” Other facts: It’s a one-year commitment. You essentially get to choose where you’ll be located, since the particular program you apply for is set in a particular city. You are a federal worker for that year…eep! Americorps (AC) doesn’t have employees, it has “volunteers.” Its volunteers don’t get paid – they get a stipend. And that stipend is exactly 105% of the poverty level in that particular area. VISTAs qualify for food stamps, and the vast majority of them are on food stamps. You’re allowed to serve up to three years in AC. After completing one year of service, each volunteer receives either an “Education Award” of approximately $4,500 which can only go toward paying off student loans or toward future education, or they can receive a cold, hard cash stipend of $1,200. I chose the former. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americorps

So Louisville. I’ve heard people say “Eew, Louisville?” and I’ve heard people say “You’ll love Louisville!” Overall, it’s surprised me. It’s got the southern drawl, for sure. And anyone who knows what’s left and what’s right doesn’t pronounce it “Louey-ville.” (See photo.) But it also has this amazing proactive population that, several years ago, realized its grade school kids weren’t doing so hot (20% of the 96,000 kids in Louisville were reading below their grade level), and made very admirable bounds to correct that.

And that’s where I come in. Louisville, I learned, is a refugee relocation hub, and has a huge and growing population of Vietnamese, Bosnians, Cubans and Somalis, among other ethnic groups. (Who knew?!) I’m working with an after-school program established in 1999. It was started by a man from Viet Nam who realized that not only were many of the young Vietnamese students doing poorly in public and private schools, but a lot of the parents didn’t even know their kids were doing poorly. The program (which will remain nameless, since I discovered that googling its name turns up only 4 hits, one of which is this blog) has only had a VISTA position for the last two years, which has been held by a woman who made incredible connections in the Vietnamese community and made a name for the program for the first time. She knows every student who attends the program, and has won every grant she’s applied for. I’ve got big shoes to fill.

Oh, and the first day on the site, my co-worker, another VISTA, decided she wanted to switch programs. So I’m running this by myself for the time being.

It’s been hot here. I know, it’s been hot everywhere this summer. It’s also been hot here. Moving to town, unpacking, scouring this new city for furniture, starting a new bank account, starting a new job, waiting in line for food stamps, and taking the first steps toward researching grad schools has seemed twice as intense in this broiling bubble.

Traffic. Driving. I usually like the latter and dislike the former, but I’ve come to hate them both. This job requires one to have a car. I have a car, and I have the job. I sort of feel like a “grown-up” for…*gulp* commuting to work, but I’ve also come to feel like a complete tool. I hate commuting. I hate it. Every day I pass traffic accidents. Some days, like today, I get there before the paramedics do. Some days, like today, the accidents are still steaming in the middle of the road lanes, and I have to creep around them along with my fellow surprised commuters. Almost every day so far I’ve gotten into my steamy, blistering car and run the air conditioner simply for survival. Every day that I continue this below-minimum-wage job I suck up irreplaceable dinosaur juices and careen down the expressway with my fellow commuters. Could I take the bus or my bike to work? I could, except that I need to use my car at work, too. Networking is great in principle, except that it requires lots of dinosaur juice to make the connections between sites, and lots of flexibility not permitted by busses. I was hired to improve the sustainability of my program, yet every day I decrease the chance of sustainability of this planet.

But for that downside, there are plenty of upsides to this transition. For example, the first Friday of the month, Louisville hosts a Trolley Hop downtown. You can literally hop an old-school trolley and be carted from one art gallery to the next where, if you arrive early enough, you can enjoy fantastic art displays with snacks and wine. Last Friday, there was a display of “art cars” lining both sides of the street. (See photos.) The next day, as I took respite in a coffee shop from the locker room-like heat of my house and pitiful lack of Internet, every one of those art cars drove slowly by on the street outside, some tossing strings of beads to onlookers. Coolest parade ever.

This week, my supervisor is on a retreat, so I’ve been in and out of the school at odd times of the day, for odd durations. And I’ve taken whatever work I can to the local coffee shops. It also allows me ample time to *sigh* study for the GRE. But at least I have the anniversary to look forward to tonight. I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks. I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks.