819 Hrs.

Today has been a somewhat less than desirable day.

In the middle of the night, my bed broke. I don't know how. I was fast asleep, and all of a sudden I was on the floor. I got up, replaced the wooden slats that had slipped down and the mattress, and fell back asleep. The same thing happened three other times throughout the night, so I was not well-rested at all when my alarm clock went off this morning.

When my alarm clock finally did go off, I woke up to discover that I now have the cold that Cory and his dad probably shared with me. My throat hurts, my nose keeps running, and I have a terrible headache. Because of this cold, I did not end up being able to go out with Cory and his parents today.

A little after noon, my roommate came back unannounced, and he came back with a friend that will be staying with us for a while. This made me incredibly upset since I do not get along with this roommate at all because of various reasons including his unclean tendencies, so now I am trying to figure out how I am going to remain sane while trying to entertain my company for the next few days.

-Aly

795 Hrs.

Nothing much happened today...church, a tour of downtown with Cory and his parents on the Metromover, and then some time in the hot tub. How come I am still exhausted?

-Aly

787 Hrs.

Every part of my body hurts right now.

Today, Cory and his parents and I went back to the Everglades - this time for a canoe trip. For almost five hours, we paddled down a beautiful inlet of water and were able to see such things as an astonishing mangrove tunnel and lots of birds including white ibises, all kinds of pelicans, and a bald eagle.

After we got back to my apartment, we had a "Christmas" dinner that consisted of tofurkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, dumplings, pumpkin pie, and sparkling cider. What an exhausting day!

-Aly

780 Hrs.

Today, I spent the whole day with Cory and his parents, who are visiting from California, at Everglades National Park. The weather was beautiful, and we ended up taking a fifteen mile hike around part of the Everglades. I have wanted to visit the Everglades for a lot of my life, and it was pretty much just as cool as I thought it would be. As we were driving into the park, we drove past a huge alligator that was right on the side of the road! We pulled over, took a bunch of pictures, and then drove the rest of the way into the park several minutes later. After parking the car, we began our hike, and right away spotted another alligator! Once again, we stopped, took lots of pictures, and generally just ooed and awed. The next alligator we saw was not so exciting since it was kind of small. For our next five hours on our hike, we saw dozens more alligators, so it wasn't as incredibly exciting to see them by the time we left. Some alligators were tiny like the ones we saw just emerging from a nest, and some were over eight feet long. Some were hiding in the water so that we could only see their eyes, but most were lying within only a couple of inches of the hiking path. All of them scared me a lot, since I expect to see wild and dangerous animals that close only if they are behind glass! The fact that alligators are also actually very sinister looking did not help, either.

772 Hrs.

Blaring Christmas carols in Spanish and Creole. Palm trees decked with Christmas lights. Eighty degree weather. Shorts and a t-shirt. Riding on a bus at 1:00 a.m. on Christmas day. Tofurkey. A poinsettia Christmas tree. Pip and Francheska. The beach. Miami. I could have never dreamed that one Christmas would bring all of these things to me. I guess that just goes to show that things are never as you plan.

764 Hrs.

Yay! Winter vacation is finally here!

Yesterday, Cory I spent the entire day at the Miami Metro Zoo. It took us a couple of hours to get there on public transportation, since it is down by R. R. Moton. The zoo was very large, and had lots of really cool animals. Usually at the zoos I have been to before, the animals are hard to see and are usually sleeping. At the Miami zoo, though, all of the animals were very active! Being a weekday, it was also nice to not have to battle lots of crowds.

Today, believe it or not, Cory and I spent the ENTIRE day grocery shopping. We bought a lot of food for Christmas Eve and Christmas. One thing that my local grocery store did not have, though, was tofurkey, which is what we are going to have for Christmas dinner. For that, we had to travel for an hour to a Whole Foods Market in Coral Gables. I know that there is a closer location in South Beach, but I really dislike going over the causeway. I have always been terrified of driving over bridges over water becase I have an awful image in my mind of the bridge collapsing and me being trapped inside of a car and drowning. : ( I avoid travelling to the islands whenever I can.

-Aly

Not Yet Winter Vacation

Since it is 80 degrees outside and I still see no snow, I absolutely do not believe that Christmas is only a few days away.

I have not been feeling well for the past week or so, so all I have been doing lately is lying around, sleeping, and reading. This afternoon, Cory and I visited the Miami Art Museum, which was tiny, but free for us "students", so it didn't matter. This evening, I have spent a lot of time cleaning my apartment, which I hope will stay at least moderately clean until my roommates come back.

-Aly

748 Hrs.

I am panicking because after typing in the title of this post, I am now realizing that I am behind in my hours by 102 hours. I don't know how that happend, but I guess all it means is that I am going to have to work extra hard to make those hours up starting January 5th, which is when the second half of the year begins for us.

This week has been very crazy for me. On Sunday, I went down to Bayfront Park to participate in a BBL during Bike Miami. The book we did was "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", and I got to be the mouse that wasn't stirring.

Monday and Tuesday were just like any other days at R. R. Moton, except that our classroom was turned into a winter wonderland. During all of our breaks during the day, my teammates and myself entertained students with games, contests, crafts, music, and lots of sugar. The kids really loved it, and I felt really good about it since I was the one who planned the entire event.

Wednesday was the last day my team was all going to be together at the school before break, so we went out to dinner after work.

Yesterday, I stayed after school with Alex, Madeline, Akilah, and Patty so we could watch the magnet holiday performance. The show was absolutely amazing, and included perfomances from the magnet dance, music, drama, and art students.

Today, I took the day off work.

-Aly

699 Hrs.

This morning, I woke up early in order to attend part two of the Young Heroes Team Leader orientation. The orientation only consisted of a few teambuilders, a little bit of paperwork, and a little of planning with our co-team leader as to what we want the first day to be like it, so it wasn't too much work. After the orientation, I spent a little bit of time calling potential young heroes who haven't quite finished their applications. I went home after only an hour, though, since I wasn't really feeling well.

-Aly

694.5 Hrs.

Since today was a Friday, we had a service day, and the service projects for today actually took place only a few miles from R. R. Moton. The frustrating thing was that I had to be at the site an hour ahead of time in order to prepare the project I was the project coordinator of, and it wasn't until I got all the way out there that they told me my project had been canceled. Instead of being a project coordinator, I was demoted to mulching duty for hours and hours on end. : (

-Aly

685.5 Hrs.

Wow! I can not believe that I did not even get home until 11:00 p.m. this evening!

Today was like any other day, except for what I did after school. J. A. was canceled since we were not actually supposed to be working at R. R. Moton today because of a meeting we were going to have. Since we run Jaguar Academy, they were not going to be able to hold it without us. I stayed after school ended for FCAT parent night. The FCAT is the state test that school children take in Florida. Since a lot of the parents attending the meeting were going to be parents of children we have in our tutoring sessions, it was suggested that City Year put in an appearance at the event. Before that started at 6:30, though, and after it ended at 7:30, I spent all of my time making our classroom into a "winter wonderland" for the carnival I planned for next week. It was a LOT of work, but I am hoping that it will all pay off next week.

-Aly

673 Hrs.

I had a pretty frustrating day today. : (

Yesterday, we were informed that we would be working in the office tomorrow, and that we wouldn't have to even be in until 9:00. As the day progressed, however, we found out that the meeting we were going to the office for was canceled and that tomorrow will be a normal Thursday. When we first found out about the meeting being canceled, we thought that maybe we could still go into the office and do work there since all of our tutor session and our after school program had been canceled for the day. My P. M. assured us all, though, that the tutor session could still be rescheduled. I was really looking forward to getting three extra hours of sleep tomorrow.

The main part of my day was also really frustrating. The kids were particularly devilish again today, and my teammates were also behaving worse than usual.

On the positive side, one of my teammates who has been gone since before Thanksgiving is finally back with us!

-Aly

664.5 Hrs.

Quick to help. That is part of the City Year pledge. Remember that I was trying to do just that while you read my story below.

Since it is very late, I only have time to summarize a little bit of my day for you before I crash into bed.

School today was fine, other than the fact that all of my kids seemed to want to pay attention less than usual.

After getting home, I took Francheska for a walk, and was followed home by two humongous yellow dogs. When I say "followed home", I mean that they literally followed me into my apartment! For those of you who don't know, I am actually very afraid of dogs, so this is not something I would do if I was of my right mind. I gave them some food and water and called the ASPCA right away, but it was hard to get a hold of anyone since it was already 8:00 p.m. When I finally got into contact with someone, they said that they couldn't pick one of them up for three days! They said they could pick one up within twelve hours, since I told them it had a huge gash on its leg and was bleeding, but the other would have to stay here for three more days. After speaking with the animal services people, I was able to convince three of my friends to keep them in their garage for three days and for one of them to pick them up with his car. In the meantime, I found out that the dogs knew how to sit, come, and shake. They were very friendly, and had a good time playing with all of the cat toys in my apartment. They were very skinny, however, and I could see all of their ribs. They gulped down about ten bowls of water and a couple of cups of food each. Unfortunately, they were also crawling with fleas. : ( Within thirty minutes, though, animal services arrived and took them both away. I kind of already miss them. : (

655.5 Hrs.

Another productive day today at R. R. Moton.

Today, we had some people from a research firm employed by City Year visit us to see how we work with R. R. Moton. I think the visit went really well, but I'm not really sure what they were supposed to be looking for. The only thing they observed of mine was Starfish Corps. Today was a lesson all about P. T., and we even had a contest to see which team could perform the best P. T. routine. My team lost. : ( Our visitors and my kids seemed to really get into it, and we were even able to persuade our visitors to join in a few P. T. moves with us.

-Aly

Happy Birthday, Beth!!!

Today was my roommate's nineteenth birthday. I woke up early and ran around like a madwoman buying her birthday present, a card, and wrapping paper. I also ran around trying to find a turtle ice cappuccino blast for her. She had one one time at the Baskin Robbins down the street from us, and she has been REALLY disappointed because every time we have been to Baskin Robbins after that, they were sold out of the turtle cappuccino blasts. This morning, however, I called ahead, and they were thankfully not sold out already! Unfortunately, by the time I got home five minutes later, it was already pretty melted and was more like turtle mush, but I think she still appreciated it. : )

-Aly

646.5 Hrs.

Instead of working in the office today, the entire Miami corps held a "recruitment blitz". What this meant was that we all spent the whole day in Miami high schools speaking to the seniors about joining City Year. As it turned out, my particular group only had one class to speak to first thing in the morning, so I went back to the office for the rest of the day to help the recruitment department with data entry and phone calls. The exciting part of the day was that I got home around 4:30 and was able to watch "Gone With the Wind" for the rest of the evening. : )

-Aly

637.5 Hrs.

Nothing much has been going on this week. My trip home was not long enough by far. There were a lot more people I wanted to see and things I wanted to do that I just did not have time for. I have decided that the only advantage Miami has over Ann Arbor is that I don't freeze to death here.

Things have been a little stressful at R. R. Moton this week; all of my teammates have been getting on my nerves for some reason or other. I try to ignore my feelings of annoyance, though, because no one has actually done anything to really offend me in any way.

-Aly