Last night, as our second to last night activity, we had a talent show. A very memorable performance was given by Zippy Spanjer (12th grade, Rochester), in which she read two ‘slam poems’ that she has written over this summer. Zippy got a standing ovation. A must-read:
“On My Way in GIVE USA”
PART THE FIRST
4:45 AM, and my father’s voice comes from down the hall.
“I’m awake,” I say, and it’s true; I’ve been staring at my watch on and off for the past fifteen minutes. I swear the second hand is taunting me.
This is it. It’s really happening.
I pack the last few items into my suitcase—its already fifty-one-point-four pounds, but maybe if I glare at it enough it’ll get lighter.
Into the car and at a quarter to six in the summer the sky is already light, a rich blue chasing away the last streaks of pink and purple.
Wal-Mart is mostly empty this time of day, but despite this it takes twenty minutes for me to find the right bag for my water bottle. Why do they make pockets in bags that small? I’m not going to be giving a ride to Stuart Little.
Three hours into the drive and the mountains are still beautiful. My dad jokes about the names we pass on those green rectangular signs—Beaver Kill, Narrow Kill. The word kill, according to dictionary dot com, comes from the Dutch word for “channel.”
I’d hoped to get some sleep on the drive but I’ve been trying to call college Chabad houses and apparently most phone companies think the Catskills don’t actually exist.
We get to Woodbourne and I start to get nervous. We’re half an hour out, assuming we don’t get lost. I don’t know anybody there. What if everyone else is already friends? What if I packed all the wrong clothes? What if the food is gross?
We pull up in front of the old hotel. I go in and am greeted by a pair of little bronze elephants and two advisors in tutus and really neat name glasses. I get a name tag and a room key.
By the time I drop off my suitcase and don’t get lost on the way back to the lobby, I’m told the New Jersey bus is arriving. I go to get a scope of the girls I’m going to be spending the next five weeks of my life with. Names start flowing and I forget most of them immediately.
I’m pulling a pink carry on down a ramp and I almost trip but I don’t.
A few hours pass and I’m standing around a piano trying not to stare at the Koreans and singing horribly off key.
Something in my chest loosens. I think I’m going to do just fine.
PART THE SECOND
Sweat.
So much sweat. That’s one of my first thoughts. I’m going to lose ten pounds and it’s all going to be sweat.
The days pass in a blur of scorching mornings drowned out by the rain that drenches the sinking earth every afternoon.
My second thought is, it’s so *green* here. We are optimally situated to witness this, as we huddle around the eight-years-young trees, to pour out heaps of hard-shoveled mulch or to take refuge from blazing sun or watch, grateful, as the spreading branches shoulder aside curtains of rain.
My third thought is, thank G-d for washing machines. Paint from houses and schools and friends’ hands, dirt stained deep, and, of course, sweat. 48-hour deodorant is a trifle to the force of nature that is Southern heat and humidity.
The people here are nice, thought number four whispers. They put up with our easily-distracted enthusiasm, and we slowly come to realize that hey, this sweat and these tears and our ant-bitten limbs are helping. We’re doing this for a reason; our efforts are not fruitless, and, to me at least, it is more than worth it.
New communities, sprawl of sleeping bags, the taste of sweet fried dough on my tongue. Learning to appreciate the little things, seeing how much they value that which I have taken for granted. I am going to remember them, I think. This experience has changed me in some intangible way, and I am a different person now. For that, more than anything, I am grateful.
The drone of car engines and bus engines and van engines becomes the soundtrack of my life, interspersed with impromptu concerts and chatter. I am not just learning about myself and the residents of N-O-L-A, the fifty-odd faces that surround me are becoming more familiar. She has siblings, she draws, she sings like a bird, she is quietly, shockingly *funny*.
The beds are strange and wireless internet is a mixed blessing, keeping me up way too late more often than not. I need to cut back on the junk food.
It’s okay that we missed the fireworks. Because really, there are fireworks all around us.
This is my life
and I
love it.”