Good morning, City Year!

So I probably should have started this a while ago.  Within the last month and a half, I have accumulated more tell-worthy stories than I had in my previous 18 years.  The sparknotes version: I moved out of my childhood home for the first time in my life to live in an apartment with three virtual strangers in a city I had been to only once before.  Now I pay for my own food, rent, laundry, and toothpaste, all on a "modest living stipend."  I spent six weeks meeting 140 new people on a very deep level and learning how to sound out the word "cat" using phonemes for ten hours a day.  Now I wake up at 5:30 five days a week and come home after seven.  Between those hours, I can be found tutoring, quieting, dodging, chastising, chasing, helping, instructing, leading, and hi-fiving a rambunctious conglomerate of first through fourth graders.  

Although the only people who will ever read this blog belong in my immediate family (Hi mom!  Hi dad!  Hi Nadav!), I figured I should probably specify what exactly it is I'm doing this year.  What I'm doing is called City Year, and said city is Washington, D.C.  And what exactly is City Year, you might ask?  Well, if you are one of the business professional types I see every morning on the metro, I would answer:

City Year unites 17-24 year olds from across the country for a full-time year of service.  We are stationed in 20 cities in the US, and have international sister sites in London, England, and Johannesburg, South Africa.  We focus primarily on combating the drop-out crisis in public schools, but also try to engage the community in service.  I, specifically, work in an elementary school in Southeast D.C. where I'm on a team with 8 other corps members.  Each of us are assigned a grade (I have fourth), that we work with during the school day, after which we provide after-school support.  Most CYDC teams work on similar teams, but one focuses more on engaging middle schoolers and the surrounding community in service, and another provides HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention education to middle and high schoolers.  

However, if that cute guy from CVS were to ask me what it is that I do all day that leaves me so fashionably disheveled (by the way, smokin' jacket), I would have to reply:

City Year is a way that the government can put 17-24 year olds to work in some of the nation's worst performing schools for 10 hours a day on a $200 weekly stipend.  And it's the best thing I've ever done.

It's all true.  The days are grueling, but I mean it when I say that it's the most rewarding experience of my life.  I've met some of the kindest, warmest, most radiant young people through City Year, and don't even get me started on my kids.  The social aspect, the work aspect - all of it just fills me with the bubbly fuzzies.  And the stipend isn't even that hard to stretch, especially when you're sharing a two-bedroom, one bath apartment in Silver Spring, MD with three other roommates and a temporary couch surfer.   

Alright.  I'm gonna go sleep for a while.  Remind me to thank Christopher Columbus when I get the chance.