how time flies

I am writing to you from Ba' Haba' (or Bar Harbor, but I find it hard to say without the accent). I am also writing to you as a graduate of City Year New Hampshire. And in perhaps the most shocking news, even to myself, I am writing to you as a soon to be Service Leader at CYNH. Yep, I'm coming back for a second year! Who'd a thunk?

So my dad flew out to help me move to Ithaca for grad school, but since that plan got postponed we decided to just goof of on the east coast while he's out here instead.

Maine is beautiful. I thought New Hampshire was nice, but Maine has so many fewer people and so much more ocean. We watched the sun set from a sand bar in the bay and it was just beautiful. Tomorrow we are going to drive back along the coast to see lighthouses and antiques (hopefully with some ice cream thrown in).

I'll blog more about why I am coming back to City Year in the next couple days.

swimming in the lampery river

Yesterday my roommates and I got a call from our neighbors after work, "Put on your swim suit and come swimming now." After hemming and hawing we agreed. It turned out to be the most wonderful and most necessary experience for the moment.

We ended up a mile north of our apartment walking on a trail next to the railroad tracks ending in a calm river flowing slow toward the Great Bay. It has been in the 90s with 90% humidity and no air conditioning at school. It was pure pleasure to jump into the cool water.

I floated on my back watching a lone dragon fly buzz from shore to shore. I realized that thanks to Emily and her triathlons that I'm a pretty decent swimmer. I did some free style and splashed around with friends and even found a rope swing (it needs some work).

We got out with that I just did a lot of work kind of hunger and immediately went to get Chinese food. Food never tastes so good as after a long swim in a murky river. A perfect end to a not so perfect day.

update in pictures

We took my teammate, Blaze, to the aquarium in Boston for his birthday last week...




Here's my whole team showing off our handiwork on the blacktop.

Another shot of the team :)


I'm kinda proud of the above picture.

Even the solar system!

Hey! My school was on the front page of the local newspaper. It's about the Global Youth Service Day we put together on Friday. Check it out here!

Crash

I watched the movie Crash tonight with some friends. It's the second time I've seen it, the first time was I guess several years ago now. I remember having long discussions about it (if you haven't seen it, it's kind of intense). Here's my thought after the second viewing.

I think the main thing I'm taking away from it is that you should treat everybody with kindness. The movie is about people reacting in tense situations based on the race of the people they are interacting with. If you treat everyone with the same kindness, race doesn't matter. Simplistic, I know, but...

I'm sure I'm quoting someone when I say this, but we all have judgments build into our brains. They can be useful, making it so that we don't have to fully process every situation before reacting. It's a survival mechanism. But these judgments can obviously be harmful as this movie pointedly shows.

But perhaps that judgment could not be based on the race of a person, but just on the fact that whoever it is, is in fact a person. If one truly believes that there is good in all people, then that is what will be seen during a crisis. I don't think there is a character in the movie that demonstrates that ability. I don't know if there is a person in the world either. But I know a lot of people who are trying.

Global Youth Service Day

GYSD, as they say in the biz, is today/this weekend. It's a cool idea, empower youth to work and take pride in helping their communities. At Seabrook Middle School, the whole school skipped classes this morning to work on service projects with us City Year kids. The 7th grade picked 42 pounds of trash off the beach. The 5th grade cleaned up the trails behind their community center. The 8th grade planted flowers and spread mulch all around the school. And the 6th grade painted four-square, hopscotch, a multiplication chart, and the entire solar system on the blacktop where the younger kids have recess. It is beautiful.

I got to give a welcome speech to the school before we got started. Here's what I said:

Good morning. My name is Michelle McMillan, first year City Year corps member proudly serving here at Seabrook Middle School. Welcome to Global Youth Service Day!

Today you will be joining hundreds of youth across New Hampshire and millions of kids all over the world making a difference. In 120 countries, students like yourselves are coming together to impact their communities. In India, twelve-hundred trees will be planted this weekend to stop the destruction of their environment. In Zambia, youth will clean up the area surrounding a clinic and remove grass areas where mosquitoes live. In Manchester, middle schoolers are painting murals and picking up litter in local parks, and here we are cleaning the beach and beautifying our school. The projects you are working on today are part of a much, much larger impact young people are having on the world.

I’m sure you’ve heard, at least once in your life, “You can’t do that, wait till you grow up”. If you remember one thing from today, remember that you don’t have to wait till you are older to make a difference in the world!

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr.: Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to get straight As to serve. You don’t have to hit home runs to serve. You don’t have to wear cool shoes to serve and you don’t have to be 18 years old to serve. All you need is a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.

Thank you all for serving today and proving that young people can make a difference. And a special thanks to the student leadership team for all their ideas and hard work that made today possible (would the student leadership team stand up and be recognized). Have a wonderful day!

Here's Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech that I stole the quote from. I was thinking about the quote a lot today. Especially as I was asked to do silly things while I was exhausted and grumpy.

A heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.

Soul generated by love. Made by love, created by love, crafted by love. Who was my soul crafted by? By the love of all the people in my life. By Mom and Dad and Danny and Grandma. By Marieke and Mary and Callie. By Tamie and Jillian and Emily and Eleanor and Rachel and Rusty and Nick. By Amanda and Jodi and Blaze and Kevin and Tyler.

Heart full of grace. How does my heart get full of grace? It is running dry now. I kneel down and drink from a stream of grace thousands of times a day without realizing it. Watching each and every one of my students grow and explore and make it through one more day. Being with my team mates and room mates as we persevere through all manner of silliness. The fourth grader who thanked me after school today for painting a solar system for him, then disappeared into his classroom shouting "I got to thank them!"

It helps to stop to remember that I do have these things with me all the time. It didn't help a lot, I was still grumpy and exhausted after giving myself the above pep talk, but it helps.

Now my sore, sunburnt body and I are going to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and celebrate GYSD at another school tomorrow!

I'll post pictures as soon as I get the energy to download them. Goodnight!