Sarah's Inn Update and Holiday Gift Project

It's hard to write about what I do at Sarah's Inn. Part of this is because any information about clients is strictly confidential. Victims of domestic abuse have all sorts of safety concerns to worry about, so we don't share any personal details about clients, or their experiences with us, or anything that could possibly link them to us. I've taken three shifts of the Crisis Line now, and while I got calls that gave me things to think and pray about, there's nothing to talk about.

The other reason I don't have much to say about my work at Sarah's Inn is that my day-to-day is pretty mundane. As the Volunteer Coordinator, I spend most of my time in my office, making volunteer calendars and scheduling appointments. I spend a decent amount of time on the phone, and most of the rest of my time emailing volunteers and staff. Almost everything I do is dependent upon the responses of others, which means I check my email compulsively. It can get frustrating, waiting for volunteers to sign up for shifts on the Crisis Line and leaving voice mails about meeting times.

I'd like to say that I'm learning patience by having a job in which waiting for others is a part of my daily life, but that's not really true. I still get as nervous waiting for emails to trickle in after sending out volunteer request as I did when I started. However, I am learning to trust that volunteers will come through. There are volunteers working on the Crisis Line throughout Christmas and New Year's. Volunteers often recruit their friends, come up with new ways to support out clients, and generally are willing to put in a tremendous amount of time for no pay.

I still haven't met all of the volunteers face-to-face, although I've certainly met more of them by now. To many of them, I am still a disembodied voice that will call up and ask them to spend a night talking to domestic abuse victims, or come in and sort through donations, or work the front desk during our peak hours. And despite the fact that we have no history together, responses are overwhelmingly positive. Our volunteers are completely casual about the amount of time they spend helping Sarah's Inn, like it's no big deal. And since there's no way we could do many of our services without them, it means a lot to me and the rest of the staff.

I don't interact with clients very often, which made last Saturday's Holiday Gift Project a special treat. The Holiday Gift Project at Sarah's Inn is a time for clients, volunteers, and staff to all intermingle while clients pick out presents for their families. Courthouses, schools, hospitals, and police stations collect toys for weeks before the event. Volunteers start showing up the week before the event to transform one floor of the office into a toy store. There are rooms of toys, scarves, and other presents, sorted into different age groups and arranged with care. Clients also have a chance to pick up new winter coats for their families as well, combining practical and fun concerns.

The event is an organization-wide affair, and everybody gets involved in some way. The advocates that run our support groups have a special session to help clients deal with holiday stress. Our legal advocates spend most of their time at courthouses instead of in the office, but they come in for the day to greet their clients and make everyone feel welcome. I'm never around the groups, so it's fantastic to see kids getting excited to see their regular advocates.

It's also an exciting way for new volunteers to come in and start working with Sarah's Inn. Our regular volunteers need to complete a month-long training before they can interact with clients, but serving hot chocolate and wrapping gifts are things which untrained volunteers are more than capable of doing. We get plenty of school groups in for the day, as well as people who are waiting to begin their volunteer training. I love getting to meet new volunteers on that day. It's also great showing the volunteers part of how their work at Sarah's Inn fits into the bigger picture of services for clients. And frankly, the kids who are waiting for their moms in childcare are a lot of fun to spend time with.

Faith House Update

We're starting our fourth month as a team in Faith House. Things have been working out pretty well; we've all learning how to share two bathrooms and one shopping list among six people, which is getting better and better. The six of us have very different work schedules, so it's rare to have everybody home for an entire evening. We still manage to spend Mondays together, since those are our community days. That tends to make Monday night dinners the most fun, or at least the loudest.

We change our team name each week, just to mix things up. Last week we declared ourselves Team Taylor, in honor of Fort Taylor. Fort Taylor is the blanket fort we built in the ground floor living room. One of the great things about living in a house that used to be two apartments is that we have plenty of living rooms to go around. Fort Taylor is officially

my favorite part of Faith House. The top pictures here are inside the fort, and the bottom pictures are the (awesome) exterior. There's a couch and radiator inside the fort, so we're quite comfy and warm inside it. Every couple weeks we expand the fort, so eventually we will both run out of sheets and have an absolutely fantastic blanket fort.

Elevation

Teaching middle-school students week after week is a fairly unpredictable experience. There are some constants: regular attendants, some youth who raise their hands first and some who need time to show off their phones when they come into class. But each week has its ups and downs, sometimes for no discernible reason. The youth will dive right into some lessons, but completely muddle through others. And somehow, the times limits for each discussion section and activity which I carefully chart in lesson plans never work out as planned.

I spent the first few weeks of teaching Elevation (our middle-school youth class) just trying to learn people's names. Then I started worrying about how no lesson went according to schedule: Was I ignorant of what the youth were interested in? Why did some activities flop and others get the kids involved? I've had to give up on learning these seemingly basic answers. There are some things which I know the group will enjoy, or care about, or be good at doing. But there are some times when the lesson plan takes a backseat.

Today our class was supposed to open by sharing ways to welcome others. Instead, halfway through sharing time, one kid raises his hand amid the general chatter.

"I have a fish."

Other youth started chiming in with stories about their own fishes, which fishes were deadliest and which were tastiest. And that's why we had Fish Time today (after talking about hospitality!) where each youth got to tell one fish story. I had no idea that some youth had fished for sharks, or petted koi. And while admittedly Fish Time wasn't related to the lesson plan in the slightest, devoting some time to talking about themselves made the rest of the hour a bit smoother. I often feel apprehensive waiting for youth to filter in at the beginning of class, but these guys are awesome. It's a fun time.

Neighborhoods: The Loop

It's a little difficult for me to consider the Loop a neighborhood where people live, as opposed to the place everybody travels through. However, there are colleges and apartments there, as well as plenty of people passing through. The Loop gets its name from the CTA trains which run throughout Chicago -- downtown they make a loop which circles the heart of the city. This means that I travel through the loop almost every day, even though I only go above-ground there every few weeks. This also means that, practically speaking, millions of people travel through the Loop every day. The neighborhood is full of commuters, although this means that restaurants there tend to shut down on Sundays when offices are closed.

The Loop is full of skyscrapers and offices. It has plenty of places to go, such as the Art Institute and Harold Washington Library. The Harold Washington Library is a huge favorite with our house. It's eight whole stories of books with an indoor garden on top, all housed conveniently next to the Jackson stop of the CTA. The building also looks like a shrine to Literature, which I enjoy. I've been using the library for months now, and I still have very little idea how to find books -- the catalog will mention which floor to find a novel on, but nothing else. The library also has sections such as "New!" and "Popular!", which make it a great place for browsing and a terrible place to get specific items.

The Loop also has plenty of interesting art exhibits and and

statues, most of which are temporary.

Directly across from the Harold Washington Library used to be a giant eyeball statue. It was part of an exhibit called Eye and Cardinal, completed with banners of cardinals which hung from lampposts. The eye was dismantled and shipped away a few weeks also, which has made orienting myself in the Loop a bit trickier. Giant eyes make for very, very obvious landmarks, whereas little expanses of leftover grass do not.

Both the eye and the library are above the Jackson stop of the CTA, which I pass through almost every day. The Jackson stop, and the surrounding few blocks, are probably my favorite part of the Loop (and definitely my most traversed part of the Loop). I understand that talking about the Jackson stop isn't a very complete view of the neighborhood, but the loop is fairly easy to understand. It's downtown Chicago, pure and simple. There are businesses and government buildings and people all over the place, much like in any healthy city. However, the Jackson stop is one of those singularities that you just don't get in smaller cities.

Both the red line and the blue lines of the CTA have Jackson stops, with a convenient tunnel which unifies the two stations. Since I live off the blue line and Fourth Presbyterian is off the red line, I spend a decent amount of time walking the connecting Jackson tunnel. Both the red line and blue line Jackson stops usually have musicians playing at all hours. There are some regulars and some who show up for a few weeks, such as the doo-wop dance trio that performed at the blue line stop last summer. However, my favorite musician is probably the woman who tap dances, plays the violin, and and the harmonica. She hasn't been around much lately, but her songs are fantastic.

I feel like it's only fair at this point to mention the Smell of the Jackson connecting tunnel. The Smell is pervasive, and by now overly familiar. It's also just barely beyond definition; a mix of way too many people and their takeout and wet clothes. I realize that this sounds unpleasant, but frankly by now it's a part of my daily commute. I would trade not having to find parking in the loop for the smell of the Jackson tunnel any day of the week.

Neighborhoods: River North

I admit that this photo explains very little about River North except that it has many stores, but the glory of getting the Apple store logo reflected next to a CB2 store does give you some idea of why people enjoy living in River North. You don't have to get on a bus or train to find pretty much anything - huge shops, restaurants, and theatres all cluster together. River North is where we go to see movies. It can get a little overwhelming at times, with high-end stores laid out for streets on end. However, it's fun to go see a show there. The Steppenwolf theatre is about a block away from where this picture was taken, and they're fantastic.

According to the Chicago tourism website, Goose Island is also within River North (although it might be considered one tiny neighborhood of its own). Goose Island is a tiny little island within Chicago, surrounded by the Chicago River. The first time we drove through it I was super-excited. However, there is essentially no difference between the bits of Chicago that are islands and the bits that are mainland. Still, there's something about an island in the midwest which is pretty exciting.