I was chatting with some friends after church today, and someone mentioned how long it took her to get home to England. It was much less time than it will take me to get home for Christmas, which can only mean one thing: I've moved to the East Coast! There has been some culture shck, but for the most part, it's been wonderful- I’m so grateful for this year, for my community, for the chance
to live in New York City, but I’m also learning to be grateful for the
challenges. The area I live in is
beautiful, the people I am with are beautiful, and every day is an
adventure. Now that I’ve been in the
city a little over a month, I feel like I’ve got my feet under me. Unfortunately, my camera is acting up, so
I’ll have to try and show ya’ll my new life using stolen pictures and
embellished anecdotes.
We live in Northern Harlem, right where Manhattan gets
skinny, so even though we’re technically on the West Side, we’re about a block
from the eastern edge of the island, just a 15 minute walk from Yankee
Stadium. Our apartment is comprised of
the top two floors of an old convent.
There are eight of us, but we still manage to be blessed with a
ridiculous amount of space, especially for New York City. One of my favorite features is the rooftop,
where we have a small garden and a magnificent view. When the weather is warm and dry, we eat up
there, and we also have the occasional late night sing-alongs, which are
splendid.
The view from our roof, stolen from Roommate Jesse
Who, you may be wondering, is this we she keeps referring to?
Part of my commitment for my year in New York is a commitment to
community. We apply this to our
neighbors, our co-workers, fellow Jesuit Volunteers around our region, but most
of all to the people we live with, which in my case is seven other women. Having a large community has been a
wonderful, if sometimes exhausting blessing.
It took time for us to get to know each other as individuals (and for us
to figure out how to have a house business meeting in under an hour), but we’ve
learned and grown already. It’s been
wonderful to have a built in group of brand-new New Yorkers to live intertwined
with. We laugh together, go out together,
watch TV together, and do life together.
It’s occasionally frustrating and frequently silly, and I’m so grateful
for it. Now just to figure out how to
align eight schedules for our thrice weekly meetings…
We had been home from happy hour for like five minutes when this picture was taken, and we were already half in PJ's
One of the most challenging parts of the transition to New
York for me has been my job situation. My first placement started showing red
flags from the first meeting, and efforts to resolve these quickly
escalated. I left that job two and a
half weeks after starting (the shortest I’ve ever been at a job). I was unsure
if there would be another placement that would work out for me in New
York. Fortunately, there was another opening for a Jesuit Volunteer, and I am now placed at
an amazing organization called Association to Benefit Children, which uses
early childhood intervention and parental education to break cycles of
poverty. I am in the baby room, so I’ll
be working with one and two year old children, although I may also be spending
some time with three to five year olds as we expand services. I’m so excited to learn more about this kind
of work and thrilled about the possibility it has. Also, I am not only not required to wear
shoes at work, I am actively discouraged from it. Sounds like my kind of place.
As I think about all that has happened in the past couple of
months, I am so grateful for new beginnings. Doing social justice work and activism means
running into huge, insurmountable seeming problems, be they social or personal
or (as is usually the case) an intersection of the two. Getting discouraged
about these huge problems that aren’t going anywhere makes me discouraged about
what is even possible for me to accomplish, as a Jesuit Volunteer now and as a
social worker later. It’s humbling to
meet these huge teams of people, dedicating their lives and careers to
creating a more just New York and have them be willing to give me the chance to
work with them. Despite the fact that
it’s hard and culture-shocking, it’s an amazing blessing to be in New York and
I’m so happy about what this year will hold.
I’ve also resolved to blog at least once a week with more
essay-ish, creative nonfiction type writing (I’m actually giving myself
homework because I miss the process of making my writing good enough to share),
so if you hate these sporadic, updatey blog things about people you don’t know,
stick around, I’ll be doing different things soon!
Peace and Love,
Diana
