Day 2
Today was an eye-opening experience! We began our day volunteering at the Utica Refugee Center. We helped out in the English as a Second Language (ESOL) classes. It was quite interesting to meet people from Somalia, Burma, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Vietnam. Trying to communicate English in many different ways presented quite a challenge! The experience overall was quite rewarding and we're all interested in returning in the future. After visiting the Refugee Center we had lunch with Amy James, discussing such issues such as "looking outside the Clinton bubble" and "walking in someone else's shoes." The discussion was based on one of Ian Frazier's essays in The New Yorker. Later we headed to the Cosmopolitan Center and played with elementary and middle-school kids. We completely forgot how much energy young children have! After basketball, soccer, football, tag and many other games we were exhausted and thankful to recuperate while observing a Cornhill community data group meeting.
Day 3
How can you U.S.E. me?
Today we awoke and had a great breakfast of eggs, sausage and raisin bread prepared by Sister Lynn and Sister Betty. Sister Lynn asked us to clear out a storage closest in the church basement. After removing all the items from the room we sorted the items, replaced the carpet and painted the room white – quite preferable to the drab yellow it had been. We finished painting while being taped by WKTV news and then distributed fliers around the neighborhood for the Underground Café. We later helped with the Mocktail Party, a party to promote teenage alcohol awareness. Although few people were there (other than organizers) the party was fun. Then we cleaned up and ate dinner and crashed.
Day 4
At JCTOD we split into two groups. The first group was dispatched to the area surrounding Johnson Park to pick up trash and the other was assigned to making data tables for legal documents using temperamental computers. Lunch was followed by a work session at the Mohawk Valley Latino Association where there actually turned out to be very little to do. After an hour of washing the floors, we moved on to the Munson-Williams Proctor Institute… Dinner was followed by a service session where the majority of the group walked the streets (with two guides) distributing fliers for JCTOD. I found this interesting because we were literally seeing Utica in a new light where people are out. A lot of teens as well as older folks were going about their business and were receptive to our efforts. Apart from the cold I never once felt uncomfortable.
Day 5
After a quick breakfast of Cheerios and tea, we drove to New Horizons where we were greeted with 2 boxes of donut holes. ? We briefly indulged ourselves with donut holes, while listening to the custodian Captain Jack dishing out orders as to what we had to accomplish. Within 10 minutes, we were whisked off to work. Half of the group descended to the abyss of the basement whilst the other half ascended the staircase into the attic. The basement crew attacked the filthy basement with brooms of righteousness, kicking up a choking dust storm…
Lunch was served at the Hope House, where we sat with the local residents and met a few new friends. After lunch, the group was once again split up into two teams. Colin, Ngoda, Sarah and Chip helped Chef Joe to prepare ground turkey casserole and cantaloupe for tonight. Li, Miranda and Charley helped to crush boxes for recycling and painted a fresh new coat of paint on the storage shelves downstairs.
Time flew by, and then in a blink of an eye, we were shipped off to the Thea Bowman House below the Refugee Center. The group was divided yet again and assigned to different classrooms to help the children with homework, and in the special case of Colin, PLAY. We were very touched by how we affected the lives of the little ones. Miranda had a particularly powerful interaction with a young girl-child who had a reading disability. By using a creative teaching method, Miranda helped the girl make a breakthrough in her reading skills… The day was long from over, as the tired group packed into JCTOD Outreach. Colin, Ngoda, Sarah and Charley sat in class with adults searching to get jobs while Li, Chip and Miranda went upstairs to play with the children. By then, we were all worn out, but we fulfilled our responsibilities to the best of our abilities. In a nutshell, the adult class taught them how to be successful at an interview which was followed by each Hamilton student making a brief speech about their job experience. On the other hand, the group upstairs was basically involved in playing Connect 4, Tic Tac Toe, Playstation 2 etc. with the children.
Day 6
The last day! We drove to the refugee center at 8:30 and climbed the stairs to the top floor where the Multicultural Association for Medical Interpreters (MAMI) was located. There were great views of Utica from the windows. We met a nice lady who taught us about MAMI and gave us some materials to write skits! Each of us wrote a skit about the importance of medical interpretation… Bonnie Urciuoli, an anthro. professor at HamTech joined us for lunch and we had a discussion about class and society in America and in Utica. It was a real nice discussion. I really enjoyed just talking and relaxing together. After Bonnie left we had some down time to enjoy before we headed down to Thea Bowman house where we played with the kids some more.
