Overall, I think I had a pretty successful Thanksgiving with Jamie & Shannon and the rest of the Vernons.  I was popular enough to have a Thanksgiving song, complete with hand clapping, sung exclusively for me and two other guests by Will, Jamie & Shannon's oldest son, and then shot with a nerf gun by their youngest, Wesley.  (After I was hit, I found the culprit standing behind me, cackling and saying, "That's what happens!"  Cryptic.)  I also managed to take home some chocolate cake, made with, er, Guinness.  Though it's really incredibly delicious and moist, rather than merely a beer-tinged cake.  Driving there & back was half the fun, though, since I got to listen to both Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Nigella Lawson talk about food and Thanksgiving.  Lynne said things like, "Just mix the egg in and stick it back in the oven - no one will ever notice," and Nigella said things like, "It's okay to sometimes be irritated by trivial things."  It was really cold on Thanksgiving day, but no ice or snow.  I wouldn't mind some snow, though, to be honest (at least that's the verdict for now).  I have two hats.

At work on Wednesday, I co-taught a class on resume writing and cover letters at the day reporting center with one of the youth case managers who sits near me.  I wanted to go with her in case we decide to try to implement something like that for the any of the youth corps.  It was pretty fun, somehow. We were able to work with people individually since their staff stuck around.  I met a girl who is a case manager/counselor at the mental health hospital here and working on a program for foster youth, I think.  She was about my age and did a year with AmeriCorps here last year.  She was working one-on-one with one fellow, and I was kind of jealous of her job.  I hadn't really thought much about counseling or any kind of therapy very seriously as an occupation up until this year, or that particular moment, but then it seemed quite reasonable, or obvious, though I don't imagine that it's something I would do for quite a while.

I might try to put together an activity for the T.I.G.H.T. youth corps (these are 14-17 year olds) on semblances between poetry and hip hop to convince them it's cool, but I'm still uncertain.  I don't want it to be too heavy-handed. But we'll see.  They've been doing journaling activities lately, so the idea is that I would slide some creative writing prompts in there too.  I don't want to overthink it, but I do want to think it through to make the most of it.  I mentioned to the T.I.G.H.T. crew leader that I wanted to involve college students in working with some of the crew members to get their GEDs and that I'd had some good meetings with students and faculty heading in that direction, which she thought was pretty exciting.  So on Monday we met with the environmental ed. coordinator and talked about ideas for the program, and that's where the poetry came from.  In general, it was exciting, because it gave me some more ideas, but it was also just nice to know that she's on board with some of the things I've been working on. 

Also, I decided yesterday, I think, that I am going to train for a half marathon in Denver sometime in March.  Um.  So, it's not that big of a deal, but I think it'll end up being an important way to change up my running routine.  I think I'm going to follow a schedule that calls for one day of cardio that's not running and a long run on Saturday or Sunday.  I'm looking forward to it right now, but I'm also not in the middle of a ten-mile run right now, so that might change. 

I need an excuse to sing, since I sometimes walk rather than run just to be able to do it.  I've been singing loudly in the car, and I imagine it would be good to do that with a choir at some point.

Snow

After talking with some VISTAs (other AmeriCorps members) at the AmeriCorps conference in Estes Park, I started to give the idea of curriculum development for our youth programs some more thought, especially since, as of late, I've become more interested in peace education programs and curriculum reform.  The environmental education coordinator from over the summer came back on as a staff member, and we started to brainstorm ideas for curriculum and experiential education opportunities for youth corps members.  No big deal, until we planned an activity for Friday, and I got to implement it by myself since my partner was out sick.  So I was lucky enough to be in a position of explaining, impromptu, to a group of not totally engaged youth why they should take an online test to assess their learning styles.  To which I was met with blank stares and "I don't want to do this" and other encouraging words.  Ultimately, it wasn't too bad, as I found out after some hand wringing.  According to some of the computer lab staff, the corps members were a lot more cooperative than usual and even interested, and I think I was able to convince 80% that the activity wasn't really, really stupid. 

Then today, when one of the county cars died, we showed the youth corps how to jump a car or asked them to show us, which sort of worked.  (I also learned that my car is in a really poor position to jump another car.)  They were surprised both at a) how small my car was and b) the fact that I'm from Mississippi, but somehow this, er, experiential learning opportunity made them like all of us more than computer tests, maybe since dancing around is easier outside.

I've been thinking more about how to relate what I'm doing now to my future work, and I think that the best plan for now is to concentrate on aspects of program development and fundraising, both of which I could apply to work with a non-profit that provides direct services to youth.  Both tasks, however, require me to ask really specific questions and hope to get equally specific answers, but hopefully I can hammer out what I imagine that I want. 

On another note, I made pumpkin bread with leftover pumpkin from a pumpkin dip that I made, and it was delicious.  Both recipes were from Simply in Season.

And it snowed!  Am I really excited about this?  Stay tuned to find out...