That's a nice watch!
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2004
1
8
35
Trip End
Mar 08, 2005
Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Yulia and I were assigned to a women's shelter. The security is understandably very tight, and it felt really weird hitting the buzzer and trying to explain who we were the first day. The rules are also strict, but everyone was friendly. The supervisor, who originally applied to have us as technical interns changed life plans, and left the shelter without a clear plan for us... We fended for ourselves quite a bit in the first couple of weeks.
"At lunch time we get to interact with the women a bit. Yesterday morning I was hanging out with two little ones, Kevin (5) & Suzy (3), for awhile until I had to go start 'work.' When it was time to say goodbye, Kevin wanted to come with me, he seemed to exhibit some sort of seperation anxiety, was was really weird to me after such a short interaction, but I had no idea what kind of circumstances he has escaped to be here. He grabbed my hand and asked for something to remember me by. He asked for my watch! At five! We settled on a high five and I promised to hang out with him at lunch. When I said hello later that same afternoon, he hardly seemed to remember me."
Working in a shelter was quite surreal, I had never experienced anything like it in my life, coming from such a close comfy family life. It was hard to see some struggle so hard, and yet to me it really represented hope- to survive, to get out, to make better choices, to start over fresh. The strength these women displayed...
"Next week we will be helping with some public education, anti-violent conflict resolution classes for elementary students. We will see how that goes."
