Well here

As it turns out, winter has not yet come. That stint of bad weather- that was just a warning... or maybe a test to see who was going to turn tail and run back to the south. Or maybe, summertime was getting tired and decided to make it an early day, and then realized it still had some things to do, so came back in. Regardless, the weather has been so beautiful this past week- you wouldn't believe it.

This weekend, Michael and I started going out to see the city. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty cool. There were fun things to play with- digitizing yourself and whatnot. We went into a "real" coal mine. I have to put that in parentheses because, despite what they kept telling us, it was not real. We also learned a lot from a display about AIDS. I was depressed when we left it, Michael was enlightened. He spent time learning about how researchers are trying to fight it. I spent time learning about its history.

We also went to a service at a Hindu temple. It was really interesting. Just over an hour of... a swami, I guess?... reading from one of the holy books, and explanations scattered throughout and within. There were the obvious differences from Christianity's teachings. But then also things like the teaching that our soul is always with God. Not that God is here on Earth with us, but that our soul is sitting up with God, and our minds and bodies are doing the work down here.

Saturday night, I drank wine and ate an ice cream cone while saying hello to the full moon, and missing my prayer circle back home.

Then I drank a lot more wine with my housemates (minus Daena- her family was in town for the marathon) and we watched the Royal Tennenbaums, one of my favorite movies.

Things are also picking up on the job front. I've gotten more students for art class, and am hopeful that I will actually have students for my writing class this week. I've also gotten a lot of interest for the Open Mic at the Sunrise Cafe. I'm a firm believer that teens need to have stuff like that they can go to in order to express themselves. I don't know yet when I will get my training for Project Hope, but RCIA is picking up. I have a group of five teens. Fr. Bruce is realling pushing them to use us as mentors, so I"m excited about that. My group will probably grow next week because we had only about half of the teens here this week. I talked to them about making an altar for Dia de los Muertos. They seemed interested, although none of them had ever made one before. I told them my job was to get the things they needed to make it, and their job was to teach me how. Tutoring has picked up, in the sense that now, I have tutored.

I've been reading and writing a lot. I've written three new songs since I've been in Chicago. I've written 15 chapters of my book, but I"m ending the first draft early for the next re-write, because I didn't like where it was going. Already, it is greatly improved. All in all, things are well here.