Red Lining Chicago

Dear Dirty,

I had my first interview at Sunlight Africa Community Center, and it went well. I like the program.

I tutor African immigrant children/children of African immigrants, play games with them, organize workshops for them, and encourage them to have fun while learning. It sounds like a lot of fun.

In fact, I'd say it's the internship I'm probably going to take.

I say this because none of the other organizations I mentioned, as well as a few other I called on the wing, are responding. Also, I really do like the program and I could stand to learn a lot.

Mostly, for most of the day it was a matter of whether or not I was able to accept the position. Being an after-school program, I'd only be working from 2-6, Monday-Wednesday, we're expected to be working as though this were more of a full-time job. After a discussion of semantics both with my roomies and with myself, I came to the decision that I would be spending a significant amount of time finding books for the children, organizing the workshops once a week, as well as developing relationships with the children (which my boss was very specific about). And when I talked to the guy in charge of the internships later, he said that was okay.

My trip there was more stressful than it needed to be. I intended to take the 15 to the Red Line Train, ride that north, and get off for my interview. Sparing the useless and very embarrassing details, I got off at the Green Line, accidentally got on Orange Line, instead of the Red Line again, and caught up with again after (intentionally) getting on the Brown Line and transferring onto the Red Line. I'm not sure what neighborhood I was in, but it's just north of Wrigley Field.

The trip home was the best hour I'd had in a while. The last few days of finding internships have been so stressful and I felt really good on the way home. An interesting contrast to how I was feeling an hour earlier than that. The release of stress is probably the reason why I'm the only person in my apartment awake at 1:42 and writing this.

Today we also went to the art museum downtown. We were told to write a page in our daily journal things about one particular piece that sticks out in our mind. Impressionism for me, of course: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Lautrec_jeanne_wenz_1886.jpg

God Speed,

Steve