Hello dearest readers! After a significant hiatus from Blessings Blogging, I wanted to finally update you all in the midst of a few transitions. Long story short, in the last four days I...
... wrapped up three jobs in Northfield...
... set up my first art exhibit with some of my travel photography (if you're interested, head to the Northfield Arts Guild before mid-October!)...
... attempted to say "Goodbye for now and I'll see you sometime" to everyone who touched my life there...
... moved everything out of the room I was renting...
... moved everything to my parentals' home in suburbia to pack for my next year in Tucson...
... sorted/packed most of my belongings not coming for my service year and moved them to storage...
... said "Goodbye for now and I'll see you sometime" to my family...
... and hopped on a plane for the next adventure.

I have been so blessed by so many opportunities to learn and create relationships in Northfield, and I'm so thankful to have gotten to spend more time with current Carls as well as meet and work with so many wonderful students, mentors, and community partners. My time in Northfield was truly the perfect place to be for this second half of my gap year, and working with many Latino students and families helped me prepare for my upcoming year! This is where the leaving is difficult, though. I leave with the knowledge though that the reason is hard is that I invested my time and heart to the fullest extent, and that so many hearts and minds opened to me as well. I will dearly miss my core Zumba crews at each place I taught, my Carleton professor with whom I had been working since sophomore year, and above all my TORCH team who have inspired me, put up with all my questions, taken me under their wings, and let me fly.

I am also thankful for another thing that made my Northfield experience even more fulfilling - a new companion to process, ponder, and love life with. Reflecting on the little things and living life in the present drew me to quality time with him over reflecting through this blog, so I do apologize to my readers. I hope you understand that processing comes in waves and in different forms, and writing is something that goes in waves, especially as I default to one-on-one quality time with other human beings. I hope you have found ways to reflecta and fulfilled wherever you are and with whom you are as well!

As for other things I'm thankful for... I'm thankful to have been a guest at the long-awaited first lesbian wedding at my amazing home church! "Same Love" and "At Last" were the perfect music to affirm the love of this couple who has been waiting for this moment with their darling daughters for years!

I'm thankful for the wonderful blessings my home church gave me with a formal sendoff during Sunday's service with a laying on of hands and an outpouring of prayers, blessings, and love for my journey. This following a children's sermon about hands as tools to bless others with how you use them to touch and love and work, as well as the main sermon message deeper on the same topic and connecting with the Spirit. My two favorite quotes were: "It's one of the great paradoxes, that the more you let go of yourself and your desires, the more you find yourself," and "Whether you believe it or not, whether you want to believe it or not, the work you do with your hands is the presence of the Holy Spirit to another." I so strongly believe that. Even if you don't believe in a higher power or the Spirit or think what you believe in looks different than what someone else does, if you put good out into the world, that is the best you can do and hope that someone else will receive it as good. You may never know how you touch another soul, but you may as well try. My church community has poured so much soul into me, but I also had to intentionally open my heart to receive it. I was both shy and cynical for many years about faith and religion, but I'm so thankful that now I can see what a truly special, loving, creative, justice-driven community this is, and it is instilling the values of peace and justice for all in all it does. I hope I can be living proof of that investment.

I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to say goodbye to the house I grew up in, and for all my parents' help getting all the rest of my earthly possessions ready and into storage. And I'm thankful my parents have found their ideal place to downsize too, even if it's making their/our lives a little bit more hectic for the time-being.

I'm thankful to have gotten to thin down my key ring a little bit as I devolved my car key to my parents and their house key to probably never be used again. Wow.

I'm so thankful that I got to say goodbye to my family in transition - my momma at home, my dad as he brought me to work with him, and then I got to have one last breakfast date with my new amor before he drove me to the airport. Hasta pronto.

I'm thankful that despite how hard the leaving is, I can take heart that I know what is waiting on the other side is the right next step in my journey. I am to be a YAV (Young Adult Volunteer) and serve in Tucson, Arizona with BorderLinks on immigration justice issues!

And I'm so thankful for all the well-wishes from near and far for my year of service. At church I was invited to join a bluegrass group in Tucson with a couple who winters down there, hugged and kissed, and reminded to "keep us in your pocket." Another reminder was that "It's going to get hard. It will be wonderful and you will be wonderful but life is hard. But we can't do it alone, so know you can always draw on us whenever you need to."

And while I'm so amazed and overwhelmed with gratitude by the messages of support I've received from so many people, I think the most important message for me to hear was from someone dear to my heart who happens to be from Mexico and have a much closer relationship with immigration justice issues: "People like me need people like you to educate others like you." That hit me so clearly because as important as it is for groups who are in a racial/ethnic/cultural/gender/ideological/religious/political/etc. minority to advocate for themselves and their history and their rights and their dignity as fellow human beings, those of us who come from places of privilege also have a responsibility to learn from, better understand, and advocate for their human dignity as well. We need to make those connections and work in solidarity. It's tough, but we have to try.

And as I left for our program's week-long orientation in Stony Point, NY before we fly out to our sites, I received this message from my new site coordinator in Tucson:

"Happy 1st day as YAVs!
travel well.
Be blessed,
be a blessing to others."

I'll try my best, and may you be a blessing to others as well. Thank you to all who have supported me, believed in me, and invested in me. I hope to work with sacrificial love each and every day in the Tucson community, finding myself by letting go of my desires and serving others to hopefully make their days a little bit brighter.

With that, dear Blessing Blog readers, I do not know how often I will be updating this blog for the next year, if at all, because I will be reflecting on my year of YAV service mainly on my travel blog. So find me at kemstravels.blogspot.com, and may you be light and love to others!

Peace,
Kathryn

Today I want to focus on amazement.

I'm amazed at my energy throughout today given the fact that I went to bed just before the sun arose. I guess quality time is an energizer!

I'm amazed by how a red-winged blackbird, decidedly one of my favorite creatures, decided to race me for a spell while I was on my bike heading in the same direction.

I'm amazed by the good press the programs I have had the good fortune to work with are getting - I in no way expected or need to be featured so much (especially since I'm not the brains behind this operation - I'm just on the forefront as the site coordinator!), but here's a local article about the brand-new summer lunch program run through the Community Action Center: New Northfield program offering free lunches to kids throughout summer months The reporter had apparently seen a poster and come over to my site to check it out - hopefully more families hear about this program through this healthy publicity too! Even if it has been somewhat of a struggle sometimes to communicate to a few of my volunteers the necessity of this program (especially when they say "Well, I don't believe in government handouts" as one elderly woman did...), I firmly do believe in the importance of providing fresh nutrition to kids who may not get it at home. It is not a child's fault if their family cannot afford nutritious food for them, even if they work all the time. This is an investment in our youth so they can play better, run around better, focus better, think better, and transition back to school in the fall better so they can direct their energies constructively and dream rather than worrying about the empty feeling in their stomach or where their next meal is going to come from.

And speaking of dreaming, I'm still amazed immigration reform is actually looking like it's going to happen! And that a DREAM Act will be a part of it! The Senate has recently passed their version, and I'm thankful I had the time in the afternoons this week to make calls to my senators about certain provisions (see http://www.interfaithimmigration.org/ if you'd like to get more clued in on the action and learn more about what people of faith and conscience are advocating for in teh fight for just immigration reform). They heard from me about including the DREAM Act and extending it to the youngest DREAMers, and they heard from me to not pass the "border surge" amendment, which will further militarize the border, force immigrants to take on even riskier journeys, and cause even more turmoil in the borderlands. I'm disheartened that the "border surge" did pass, but I'm grateful the Senate does want to prioritize immigrant children's value in society and invest in their educational path for their dreams, as well as work towards supporting the "American Dream" for all undocumented who make this society richer and call this land their home.


And I'm amazed by the shout-out to the TORCH program by Senator Franken on the Senate floor! How cool is that! Senator Franken's Statement on Immigration Reform. Keep your eyes peeled for immigration reform updates with the House - could get interesting!

Today I'm thankful for having gotten to spend some good time with my parents lately - it worked out so perfectly to drive up to the Cities for folk group practice to sing with my papa on his birthday, to be followed by my baked birthday present and basement ping-pong.

I'm thankful to have money for gas to make a couple trips up to the Cities recently, which has been rare in the past, but I got to get to know one of my new housemates a little better by driving her to the airport on Friday afternoon, and I was also able to pop up to the Cities on Saturday, mainly for a chill folk group gig at night and then other adventures got added in to the first half of the day.

I'm thankful for intentionally meeting up with one of my fellow Carleton alums and randomly running into a couple other alums at the ILCM's (Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota) Citizenship Day event. It was great to catch up and spend that time watching a naturalization ceremony of over 50 people from 38 different countries with my friend who is a son of naturalized immigrants himself. I'm thankful for the free lunch and the choices of Venezuelan or Jamaican - chicken-avocado arepas all the way! And I'm thankful for the chance to hear Keith Ellison speak on the importance of individual duty as citizens to contribute to our communities and to our political system so that the system serves the people. He also affirmed how vital immigrants are to this land, making our society stronger. and the presiding judge also gave great remarks following the oath in which these new citizens of the U.S. renounced allegiance to their prior countries, emphasizing how that does not mean they must renounce everything from their homeland, but share their customs and culture with the rest of us so we all learn from each other. It was an important reminder for the rest of us who were naturalized citizens or born as such - a reminder of our privilege, as well as our responsibility to work for our communities and to leave this world better in our wake. 

I'm thankful that I had the rest of the afternoon free to meet my dad and go to Pride in Minneapolis to celebrate love. I try to be a straight ally the best I can, and I'm so thankful my parents are in the same boat.

And I'm thankful for late-night silly dancing, conversation, and stargazing. Nothing like soaking up the summer. My only request is that mosquitoes lay off of soaking up my blood a little bit. I kind of need that to live, but I'll survive, thank goodness.

Today I'm thankful to have been part of the TORCH visioning conversation for next year, as the program continues to expand and try to serve more students, while continuing to serve them well. I'm so thankful to have been able to learn from so many people in that room and all of the factors they are taking into account in consideration of how to best serve their students, from transportation to ACT prep, from college visits to financial aid, from tutoring to academic advising. And the conversation of how to get families in the loop and on board with TORCH services, as well as the basic goal of advocating for their children and being proponents of education, is so crucial, especially as many of these families are working hard to provide more opportunities for their kids. The hard part is when their hard work means they are not as present in their childrens' lives to be well-informed and invested in the day-to-day of constructive time and education for the future. One step at a time.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to be considered an artist for the Summer PLUS program that functions as a free summer camp with academic enrichment through the school district. It has been fun to be on the coordination end of recruiting artists to think of fun, low-budget art projects to do with these K-8th graders, many of whom are from low-income families and may have less exposure to art. One art teacher is working with a group to create a new design to paint a Northfield snowplow. I conscripted one of my friends to some really amazing and accessible photography projects, especially within that discipline that has so many intricacies and practices beyond the scope of your average kid picking up a digital camera or smartphone. And today I got to be one of the twelve artists that we were able to recruit through our new grant and co-teach a little Latin dance to a group of about 20 middle-schoolers! While we expected a couple more site assistants to help manage extraneous behavior so we could just focus on teaching, we tried to go with the flow to at least teach some basic rumba and cha and encourage them to get over the weirdness of, um, touching each other. Awkward. Middle school is awkward for everyone, it just is, but we tried our best to teach the kids how to have leads and follows learn decent frame to respect each other that way too. They were a squirrely crew, but I'm grateful for this opportunity to be silly with some middle schoolers and impart some of my dance love to them.

And I'm so thankful for having gotten to spend an afternoon/evening with three amazing high schoolers as I chauffeured them to take the CLEP (College Level Examination Program - had to look that acronym up!) test in their native tongue so they could put in an hour and a half of their time and test out of four semesters of college-level Spanish. Even though things didn't really go as planned (other than them rocking the test), and our evening stretched way longer than we had expected, I'm so thankful for their patience and that they did not have anything in particular to get home for. I'm thankful to have gotten to talk with them about college, life, God (for the record, I did not bring that one up, one of the students volunteered that he had been not been heading down a good path, but "God found [him]" and now he's learning more about ministry!), and US-Latin America politics. What a cool crew. Thanks God!

After a long and exhausting day, it's time to bake some Reese's surprise cupcakes - surprise in the sense that there's peanut butter snuck into the centers and also in the sense that my dad doesn't know they're coming for his birthday tomorrow!

Buenas noches, until tomorrow. 

Tonight I'm thankful to have run into one of my students when I was flyering his neighborhood about the new summer lunch program I've been working with. He's such a sweetheart, it was good to see him in his element as opposed to how uncomfortable he seems to feel in school, and he was so helpful with advice on how to best reach out to his community.

I'm thankful for how patient my full Zumba class was when my conversation with my student made me late (and my bike clock being 15 minutes slow didn't help either), oops! But I ran into the class already sweating, and I think they seemed to enjoy how we all got a sweat going together!

I'm thankful for a great conversation over dinner with three fellow Carleton alums, two who came down from the Cities that I had not seen for a year, about the future of our education system and their part in it. I'm so thankful for their hearts for education and how they want to reach youth that way, even though the districts they have been working in and the education system itself still present challenges to the ways in which we do serve our youth.

I'm thankful for a roommate baking date.

And I'm thankful for great conversations on the porch, getting to know someone new, and relishing the new summer breeze. Ahhhhhhhh.

Today I'm thankful for my opportunities to practice my español with the Latino communities I am working with. I'm thankful to be able to surround myself with Mexican accents that will help me prepare better for my upcoming year on the Tucson-Mexico border than my still-amazing adventures to Spain, Nicaragua, and Cuba have. I'm thankful to try to overcome language barriers to be a better advocate and hear the stories of those who have made arduous journeys to Northfield, Minnesota, where they are oftentimes still in the shadows.

I'm thankful to have met an aunt who brought her nieces and nephews to my summer lunch program (and their chihuahua Taco!), and to have been someone she could open up to about how she was just one of the thousands who have crossed the border to Arizona and walked through the desert for days. She met her sisters here while her own children are still back in Mexico struggling for pesos. She, heartbroken for them, makes her living here by housework and taking care of others' children (and Taco!).

I'm thankful to have met a father who seems newer to this community, admits learning English is hard, and was pleasantly surprised by my attempts to speak Spanish with him, asking where I learned it. "High school, and there's still so much vocabulary I don't know!" But it was so nice to be able to let my volunteers fend for themselves and entrust them to keep things running smoothly so I could talk with this new father and the two adorable girls he brought with him. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to explain the TORCH program that these girls may be in when middle school rolls around and make jokes about nail polish and trains with a four-year-old who cannot yet roll her "r"s. 

I'm also thankful for salsa dancing, lime, cilantro, and spices that make this Minnesota white girl sweat... 

... for new roommate bonding over rolled-up cuisine, aka crepes one day and enchiladas the next....

...for old roommate and other close Carleton friend re-bonding over the phone...

...for old high school friend revitalization with a weekend of good times with her family, volunteering with her family friends, and registering (for free!) to be on the bone marrow donor registry to possibly save a life someday...

...and I'm thankful for warm summer days and crisp summer nights. If the weather would make up its mind, that would be even more ideal. But for now, I am thankful for Spanish and for summer.

Buenas noches!

Tonight I'm thankful for how the day was redeemed after it felt like nothing was going my way. Volunteers I had tried to recruit for the other summer lunch program site didn't show up as promised, leaving our other site coordinator scrambling. My volunteers at my site were awesome, but patience for a couple of them was a more difficult task, and as we are still ironing out the kinks with this brand-new program, timing was a little thrown off today with the food service driver coming back to collect the coolers before the end of our service time when we could actually empty them, putting him on hold for a few and making us get creative with our time to get the extra food into our monitor's car to go back to the food shelf... only to have miscommunications and miss one tub of food that needed to go with her, having her do an extra loop after the round to the food shelf and the other site... A couple of people who have made various commitments to serve the youth I'm working with in various capacities had to cancel today, and running errands for an artist to work with some of our youth has yet to prove fruitful, but it's on its way.

I never feel like I have "good days" and "bad days" - just taking things in stride, but it seriously felt like a buildup of one thing after another for a while, and I'm thankful to have had the time to breathe and step away from things for a second, recollect myself, and discern what could be dealt with tomorrow with a fresh heart. I know that the human part of me gets frustrated when others make commitments to either me or others I am working with and want the best for, and I am working on adapting. I know conceptually that they too are human and things come up, and it is up to us to flow and change course, and I must recognize what has gone well today.

Even though some of my artist's supplies errands have not yet panned out, I am thankful for how it has been unbelievably easy to work with the Sketchy Artist store to arrange the supplies that I can get through them. I'm thankful to have been invited to take the place of one of my supervisors at the WINGS dinner since he was not able to go, and in his place, I had the opportunity to thank these Women In Northfield Giving Support for supporting the brand-new Youth IDA program that I have had the privilege to work with to provide financial literacy training and support enrolled low-income youth with special bank accounts designated only for saving money for post-secondary education. It was pretty amazing to get a snapshot of all the initiatives and programs this foundation is supporting in the Northfield community and how they are investing in providing more opportunities for particularly women and children in both systemic ways and in terms basic needs. And I'm thankful for the time to just be a little silly on the phone with my Carleton freshman- and senior-year roomie while we both multi-tasked, listening to each other's stories and reflections on how we've grown with the occasional extraneous sound effects as she made dinner on her time in the West Coast and I finally unpacked more of my new room in my summer housing, with time to tease her about boys and wall space to put up more of my collection of artwork from my own hands (and camera) and from artists around the world. Ahhh, and finally to sit down.

The song on my heart tonight: Chan Chan - Buena Vista Social Club. I love exchanging especially Latin music with people who are more in tune with the Latin scene and history than I am. After I returned from Cuba, my parents discovered they had a Buena Vista Social Club cd in their collection that they then passed onto me, after I had heard live bands cover their songs! I'm thankful for a new friend who has expanded my Latin music education recently, and I look forward to more music exchanges, but for now, this song has been running through my head the last few days. Enjoy this gem from a classic Cuban band!

Today I'm thankful for multi-tasking while watching an incredible NBA playoffs game last night, after one of my beautiful Carleton roommates called me to update me on a couple things going on in her life and make me tear up from her saying how blessed she was by the songs I sent her. Just trying to let God work through me, and I'm thankful for her friendship even if we flow in and out of staying in touch!

 

I'm thankful for a really adorable Zumba class that I got to sub for at the Senior Center - two had never Zumba-ed before, and one of them was this sweetheart from Peru that started talking a mile a minute once she learned I could speak a little castellano, as she said. 

And after a solid workday that ended around 1, I'm thankful for the flexibility to do work-related things but pursue errands and also just be outside! Best discovery of the day: the wifi at my house works outside so I can work on a picnic blanket. Thank you, Minnesota summer, "I'm glad you came."

 

Oh, and tonight, I had my first dinner date in a long time with my fellow alum-bum as we reflected on our past year around Northfield and thoughts on God and entrusting our future to God over curry. And full of spice, I got to transition to a night of Latin dancing and good conversation with a new friend. What a summer this is shaping up to be!

Put yourself in their shoes.

Upworthy - Refugees

Father's Day

Today I am thankful for having the opportunity to congratulate the Carleton Class of 2013 on their graduation this weekend! I have been so blessed to have gotten to spend more time with them and see them shine in their senior year, and I wish them all the best. Notes distributed (that were perhaps partially written during the graduation ceremony... Let's be honest, multi-tasking as Carleton's second PhD honoree moved through poem part 5 out of 8 was a good call...), snacks consumed, memories shared, hugs given, well-wishes exchanged. I'm thankful that a few of my Class of 2012 were able to come back for the ceremony and time with these grads as well, and it was wonderful to see them and especially hang out with one of my beloved housemates again to speak of life updates and recent revelations. I'm thankful to have been once again inspired by the potential Carleton has instilled in its graduates, and I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to have pursued my undergrad education there to be prepared with as much knowledge, analytical skill, flexibility of thought, drive, and compassion as I can muster. Thank you, Carleton, and peace, love, and strength to the next crop of amazing graduates!

And on Father's Day, I'm so thankful for my dad, and I also want to thank all the parents out there who are making strong commitments to their children, whether they be "nuclear families," same-sex couples, single parents, or however your family looks. Some families have more struggles than others, some feel pain/anger/remorse today, and I am amazed by the resilience of single parents who take on the world and kids who try despite less-than-ideal home life. May we all try to encourage our communities to invest in our kids so that they all have a beautiful father and mother figure in their life, no matter who that may be. Maybe you've been lucky to have several! My church community has been filled with adults who have been my village, but I am so lucky to have a dad that I can talk about anything with or spend any amount of time with, even if we're not really doing anything at all (which really means we should be playing ping-pong). He is the most kind, caring, hardworking, humble, and selfless person I know, and even though he still jokingly tells others "I want to be like her when I grow up!," I'm dearly hope I'm even one bit like him.

I'm thankful my dad has been around. I'm thankful for his commitment to raising, loving, and supporting me, and I am also thankful that my dad and I have had the privilege of being born in this country. I am thankful that he has had great support from his family, has been able to pursue higher education, and has been able to pursue a career that he is interested in and can use to make a living to support and sustain his family. I am beyond grateful that he did not have to flee violence or economic hardship in their place of birth, and that I do not have to live in fear of him being deported for making this country his home despite lack of legal approval to reside here. This is a story not often told in our society today, but it is the reality that 12 million undocumented people could have or have had a brother, father, sister, mother, other relative, or friend deported. My dad contributes to his community, just as many immigrants do, and today, there is a movement to call on our legislators to fix our immigration system and stop families from being torn apart; to stop hardworking dads who love and provide for their families from being deported after sacrificing so much for more opportunities here. I am sure many are reflecting on what their fathers have meant to them today would encourage you to take a few minutes to read these stories and advocate for just immigration reform so that families can remain united and pursue their dreams in this country that they call home: http://dontdeportmydad.org/

Blessings.