Thursday May 19, 2011

Our group of five (the same that had gone the day before) set out that morning a little behind schedule due to a short meeting with John and Anna Ramirez. We arrive in Brooklyn at Park Slop Baptist Church at 10:30 AM, about 45 minutes to an hour behind schedule.
Upon arriving, we split up, with some making tuna salad sandwiches, and others tackling the mess of a Clothing Closet. Charlie’s wife told us that a group of poor/homeless women had recently worked their way through the Clothing Closet and left it a bit unorganized. We spent most of that morning hanging up shirts and pants.
About half way through organizing the Clothing Closet, we stopped to take the tuna salad sandwiches to the homeless. Because we were so late in arriving, most of the people had already gone, and we only gave out seven bags and bottles of water.
We soon started on our way back to the church, and took up our posts in the clothing closet once again. We organized and hung and placed size tags on the shirts/pants until approximately 2:30 PM. We left shortly after due to a lack of things for us to do.
Back at the ole homestead, Jared and I made supper. Well, we opened a box and put the food in the oven…haha. After eating, we ventured down to 14th street for a bit of adventure and exploration. After walking around Union Square, visiting a few stores and simply spending time together, Katy Aleshire and Dani Bothe joined us.
We explored the area further and soon found ourselves on what appeared to be a movie set. The big give away…HUGE lights being set up in the streets at 10 PM. We asked the lighting crew which movie was being filmed and we were present with the title, Fiona’s Tale.
Dani, using her sophisticated phone with internet capabilities, searched until she found out that Fiona’s Tale was actually an alias for the new Spiderman movie (The Amazing Spiderman)! We snapped a few pictures to document our discovery and soon began on our way. We ended our excursion by stopping at Wendy’s for a late night snack before heading back to the comfort of our beds.

Wednesday May 18, 2011

Our schedule for Wednesday was relatively light, for in the morning we were to clean our housing area and then tackle the mounds of laundry, both ours and the linens and towels of the MNYBA. After cleaning up our kitchen/hang out area, Erin Jeffries, Katy Aleshire, Jared Doyle, and I headed out to the Laundromat to do our laundry while Matt Lange stayed at the MNYBA to conquer the rest (for he had done his a few days before). The Laundromat was small, but it more than satisfied our needs. We cleaned our clothing and made it back to the building before noon.
That afternoon, John Ramirez took our group of five to a church in Brooklyn. We would be working there the next few days, and John wanted to introduce us to Charlie, the pastor of Park Slope Baptist Church. The travel time to Charlie’s church was approximately an hour, and while on the way, we were caught in a downpour of rain! Once we arrived, Charlie gave us towels with which we could dry off, which was great! Once seated in the lounge area of the church, Charlie told us the entire story of Park Slope Baptist Church. It was really long… 
Once leaving there, we only had a short time to change our clothes and prepare to leave for Harlem to help with the ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching. That night I worked with Sory. He had been in the States for approximately six years and had a wife and children still in Mali. He had been working to save money, both to help support them and to hopefully bring them here. Because Sory has been in the States for so long, he spoke English relatively well. I only had to help him with some word pronunciations and a few small grammar mistakes. He told me much about Mali, and it was extremely interesting to listen to him share. Sory speaks French and Bumbra fluently, and was a history and geography professor at a university in Mali. He had also studied philosophy, and was an all around brilliant man. As like the week before, around 8 or 8:30, all of the people, including Sory, left to attend the Muslim prayer time.
After leaving Harlem and arriving back in the Upper West Side, Jared and I stopped in at Trader Joe’s for a few more groceries. We soon made our way up the five flights of stairs to our common area and relaxed for a few minutes before finally heading to bed.
Days in New York City are exciting and exhausting, no matter the work!