- We had an amazing Christmas party at our school( I have nothing to compare it to, but it was fun!)
- One of the JVs who had to go home at the beginning of the year came back to visit
- I found a Christmas tree hat in our closet, priceless
- All the faculty/staff played "family feud" together
- I helped one of our students write a college essay
- We made a sweet potato dish for our party, but bought the wrong kind of potatoes......
- It rained in LA for three straight weeks....
- Mel came to visit me!
- I took five Verb students to a Loyola Marymount basketball game
- Dan came to visit again
- We went to one of our support people's homes for a Christmas dinner
- I had very good conversations with Hubert and Kenny at the gas station
- We made a fancy Christmas dinner at our house: including ham, sweet potatoes, veggies, wine... it was wonderful!
- Realized again how lucky I am to be in my house with my roommates
- Spent four days in Tucson with the Michelle and the Souder family (they were wonderful hosts as always!)
- One of my best friends Adam got engaged!
- Adam asked my buddy Matt and I to be co-best men. Greatest combo ever.
- I made it back to Sioux Falls after a few delays
- I immediately was reminded of what cold weather feels like.....
- Spent a WONDERFUL Christmas with my family in Sioux Falls and Brandon
- Played a TON of Bananagrams (and scrabble)
- Spent four days in the Black Hills with my family (except Mel.....)
- Went skiing!
- Was reminded of how lucky I am for my family (and my dog Cooper, I guess....)
- Spent another night in Tucson (long story, but great!)
- Got back to LA, it was still raining.....
- Was pumped to see all of my roommates and everyone in LA
- Packers made the playoffs!
- Hit the ground running first day back at work by driving a route
- Had some classic convos with students
- Dave came to visit!
- Went to a Verbum Dei winter sports pep rally
- Hosted a Welcome Back get together at our house
- Filled up many, many vans
- Continued to work on Spanish
- Started p90x (it hurts.....)
- Went to Las Vegas with 15 JVs!
- Realized how great the group of people I get to serve with are
- Tried to get used to being called Mr. Petersen again
- Our enrollment is down to 245 kids (started the year with 266....)
- Chilled with the yearbook crew for over an hour yesterday after school
- Went to a co-workers birthday party
- Got stuck in traffic, many many times
- One of my kids got called a N**** on the job......
- Had dinner as a house with two FJVs: Rose and Marisol
- We got two new Jesuit Novices here, so I have been talking to them quite a bit
- John and I are getting a new bathroom. Much needed
- My parents and sister Erin are coming this weekend. PUMPED
This is nowhere near everything that happened over the past two months for me, but right now it is what sticks out....
There are two specific stories that I left out. They might not seem huge, but to me they were just that.
Last week I was filling up a van with gas when my friend Kenny came over to me. Kenny is one of two men that actually work for the 76 gas station in Watts. I say actually work because there are usually two or three people hanging around trying to pump gas for money that have no affiliation to the gas station other than they live in the neighborhood. Now, the other worker (Hubert) has been very outgoing and friendly form the beginning (love to talk professional football), but Kenny took a little while to warm up to. It is not that he is mean, he just has to build up a certain level of friendship/trust before he with initiate conversations. After four months of seeing him twice a week, I have earned that trust. The last time he came over to me to talk, we talked about skiing, so I figured this would be another lighthearted conversation but I was wrong. All he said to me was: "Hey now, I got a lesson that I figured I should share with you. There is a big difference in life between book smarts and street smarts. Book smarts will get you a degree and a job, but street smarts will keep you alive." For some reason, that two sentence comment just stuck with me. There are two different kinds of intelligence in life, and if you and don't have both it will be hard to make it. Kenny has lived in South Central Los Angeles his whole life. He has never received a college degree. Despite this, in many ways he is smarter than me. That goes for so many people that are looked down upon in life.
The second story is an hour-long conversation that I had with one of our janitors: Gustavo. I have mentioned him many times before in this blog, but yesterday was one of the deepest conversation that I have had with him. "Gus" was born in Honduras and grew up nearly his entire life in that country. He came to the United States in the early 1990s to follow his father and pursue a better life. If I were to guess, I would say he is currently in his mid-40s. He is legally in our country on a work visa, but he has been on the waiting list for 12 years to become a citizen. That entire time he has been paying income taxes. He has spent over $10,000 on legal fees in an attempt to speed up the process, but all of that money was taken with nothing in return. He has been a janitor at Verb for over 15 years. He told me about how citizens have offered to marry him in order to make him a citizen, but he has turned them all down. "Marriage is only for love" is what he told me. He wants to retire in him home country, but he cannot go back yet because he does not have enough money. Despite all of his issues he told me two things: he believes that the United States has very good immigration laws and that he is happy. I told him that I was planning on going to law school and he was so excited for me. His exact words were: "I know you are going to be a great success." It was then I realized that he was the perfect example of selflessness.
The work I am doing here is not great. I try my best to be a great help, but it is the people around me who are great. It is the teachers who work 16 hour days sometimes. It is the janitors who are so grateful for a job that many of us would hate. It is the friend from Watts who pumps gas everyday. I am realizing more and more everyday that this is home to me. This is my family too. Not biologically, ethnically, or even geographically, something much more.
The past two months showed me that I have two homes, and I am so blessed for both.
