C-Span Plays Classical Music When Nothing is Happening

I have been a direct witness for at least the past three hours. At least it's nice classical music. I was extremely surprised when I first heard it, and I couldn't figure out where in the world it was coming from. I finally figured it out when the reporter that sits diagonally from me said, "I always forgot how soothing C-Span's music is." Who knew?

Anyways, I'm not really feeling like being at work today. I haven't really felt it all day. It's not that I hate being here - I really don't mind. I just don't want to be doing anything really, which is a total opposite of last night. I spent a half hour pacing up and down in our bedroom last night, raving to Danielle about how I had all this time on my hands and I had no idea how to use it.

But now that I have something to do, I don't really want to do it. My brain feels like it's made of cotton.

I was assigned a story about bullying this morning. The assignment was essentially: "This Board of Education in Maryland is talking about this bullying policy today. I think there's a story, but I don't know what it is - see what you can find."

So I spent the first four hours of my time here researching bullying policies in Maryland and just bullying in general in schools in Maryland. The biggest problem I encountered was that the people I needed to talk to most were in the board meeting all day. Luckily, I caught one guy on the lunch break and he talked to me about it for a while, and then promised to send me the release as soon as the decision had been made.

So I got my story! I really didn't think it was going to unfold until about 4 p.m., when I finally got the release. And I still am trying to get in contact with one more person - somebody from one of the county school systems. Fingers crossed.

Alright. I'll finish the update.

Saturday

Saturday morning we had a community meeting called that everyone was expected to attend. At the meeting we were informed that one of the guys in the ASP program was being sent home for violating the behavioral code that we signed when we entered the program. It has something to do with one of the WJC girls who went home without telling anyone last Thursday (and who isn’t returning, as of yesterday), and there are a lot of questions floating around about the whole thing, especially since all the stories that we’re hearing don’t really make a whole lot of sense.

But I thought the whole thing was handled extremely well. The director of ASP conducted the meeting Saturday and made people ask the questions that were on their minds. It was a pretty big surprise, to be honest. I had heard what the meeting was going to be about earlier that morning, but the whole issue was just really unexpected. The guy who was sent home was extremely well-liked in the program and everybody knew him. One of those guys that is really good at including people and bringing people together.

Karin and I had discussed some of this stuff at length, and essentially come to the conclusion that we didn’t know what the real truth was, and we weren’t going to take sides. I had been friends with both parties involved, and I just didn’t want to have any ugliness. And honestly, we’ve only been a part of this community for five weeks – I had no idea how people were going to react to everything.

So we decided to just get out. Just the two of us. We went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and got lost in the world of beauty and talent. Art is revitalizing for me. I love being surrounded by it and looking at the strokes and appreciating how much work went into creating such an incredible work. It’s a different world, and it felt nice to escape. A solid 3-hour escape, to be honest.

After we had spent as much time as we wanted in the museum, we went out in search of frozen yogurt. It had been far too long, and we are far too used to being able to eat frozen yogurt whenever we want to – Berry Cool, Yogurtland, PinkBerry, etc. They hardly have any that we’ve seen here. So, we found TangySweet. We got our yogurt and then sat and just talked for a couple of hours. Talked over all the events of what happened, of life, of the past weeks. It was really good. I’m so thankful to have someone I trust so much here with me.

We headed back to the apartments, a bit reluctantly, and made dinner. Once we’d finished, we found out that the guy who had been dismissed from the program (he hadn’t left yet) had bought pizza for everyone and we were all invited. We’d already eaten, so we went down to the party a little late, just to kind of hang out with everyone. Hanging out and watching tv turned into a massive game night. About 20 people retreated into the parlor and played the Animal Game, Signs, 4 on the Couch, and then finally a 3-hour finale of “I Have Never” – the youth group version where you run around and have to sit in an open chair. The night ended with a send-off and prayer for the ASP guy, and while it was encouraging to see the community come around this guy, it made me wish our WJC girl could have been around to see the same sort of support given to her.

Sunday

The game night didn’t end until after 2 a.m., and I wasn’t in bed until almost 3 a.m. Add to that Karin was getting sick, and we basically slept through Sunday morning. Got up around 1 p.m., and ate, showered, and went to the grocery store because we were pretty much out of food. We took the bus down to Safeway, shopped, and then literally as we walked out of the Safeway doors, we saw our bus arriving across the street.

Unfortunately, we were too far away to make it, and the next bus wasn’t coming for 45 minutes. Bleh. So we ended up having to walk back to the apartments – which we hadn’t planned on, so we weren’t wearing warm enough clothes AND we had bought heavier stuff than we would have if we had planned on walking. So it wasn’t the best walk back we’ve ever had.

We cleaned out the nasty food that had been sitting in our fridge for too long (and made a couple executive decisions – for instance, shriveled up strawberries), and then headed out to Ebenezers, where National Community Church was having a special worship night.

I’m very glad we went to the worship night. It was a good reminder to turn to God when things get tough. It had just been such an odd weekend, and coming to Him at the end of it and surrendering was exactly what I needed.

Back to the apartments, dinner, talked to the family, and that was about it.

Now you’re caught up!