A long awaited real world update….

First off I would like to say thank you for not throwing things at me for the past month or so. It has been insanely busy here in MA; thank goodness the weather has been rather nice.

Where to start…?

June was a mess and the beginning of July was too. There, is that enough? What? No? You want details?!? Fine. (sorry guess my husband is rubbing off on me…)

Since I don’t know where I left off in either of the grent letters or here online, I’ll start just after Kyle’s birthday. The Sunday after Kyle’s birthday was a very very busy day. First up was Kyle giving his first sermon, which went extremely well. I’m so proud. He kept everybody’s attention, was clear and he kept getting comments that what he said made people think weeks afterwards. We also had the church picnic on the back lawn of the church which overlooks the ocean that afternoon, and in the evening, we had our first joint youth group event over at Calvary Chapel. It the first of several events dispersed throughout this summer to try and connect with the other youth groups on Cape Ann.

I had the orientation for my internship on June 13th and it was a bit on the boring side. At least they finally got the internship funding so we could all be paid. I am one of twenty interns dispersed among various local public health departments and will be presenting about my experience mid August.

All of this fun stuff was going on while I was finishing up my MC810 class at BU, which is a community needs assessment class. For the class I decided to look at alcohol and drug use in the Gloucester adolescent population. I had a presentation to make on my findings as well as a Needs Assessment Paper to write. I gave myself a deadline of June 25th to have the paper finished (even though it wasn’t due until July 3rd) so that it would not interfere with starting my internship June 27th and moving July 1st.

The funny thing is that the weekend of the 25th ended up being a crazy day as well. After my last class on the 22nd, Kyle and I went out to house sit for some friends of ours in Rockport. Kyle and I were it for the worship team so we ended up begging some of the youth to come up and help us (which they did). We had the normal youth group meeting at 7pm on the 24th and Sunday the 25th (which was the deadline I set to have my paper finished if you remember) we had our second joint youth event. This time it was our turn at PCC to host. I decided to divide the kids into two teams and hand them a list of pictures, which all had different points alloted to them, that they were to have taken in about two hours. The team with the most points wins. That got them out of my hair for another couple of hours while I frantically worked on finishing up my fifteen page paper. Before they came back I had to start a spaghetti dinner for them. The Lord is very good. Not only did I get my paper done before they got back, but he sent me helping hands to work on the dinner so that it was finished before everyone got back. While everyone ate, I tallied up the score and the two teams would have tied if one of the teams didn’t get back late (I had to dock them ten points out of fairness to the others who got back on time). It was a wonderful time had by all and I was very glad to have my paper finished.

The next weeks was busy because of two major things: (1) starting my internship at the Gloucester Health Department and (2) packing up the house for the move. Both went extremely well. I decided that I would only work part time that week so that I would have enough time to pack, do laundry, clean and other moving type things. The house was packed and ready to go by the end of Friday and we had lots of hands helping us move on Saturday.

Note to self and anyone else who’s listening: Don’t try to move on a holiday weekend near beaches and ocean in the summer time. We had lots of help, but traffic was insane. The move didn’t go as I had anticipated and things were not put where I needed them to be initially so it took me much longer to unpack this time around. It was a long hard day and only a couple of things didn’t make it up to the third floor. We are living in an old house and that means there are small, winding staircase to try and get furniture up. The boxspring did not make it and our dresser had to come up through the window, which was a lovely experience let me tell you. The dresser was the only piece of furniture that we had bought when we got married so I was praying really hard that it would make it up.

We did make it to church the next morning but I was plumb tuckered out and not much for greeting and conversation. I sat and listened while crocheting to keep me awake.

For July 3rd, we had friends over for supper, and no the house was not completely presentable yet (about halfway). Before supper we went to the “Horribles Parade” which goes by near our new apt in Gloucester and then after supper we watched the city fireworks over the harbor. It was very pretty but a bit odd having festivities on the 3rd instead of the 4th. For the 4th, we went to Rockport for a cookout. I made the potato salad because no cookout in the summer should be without it. After the cookout we went to watch the traditional bonfire. It was really weird. I’ve never seen someone purposefully build and light a fire that was four stories tall. There’s a reason why some people become firefighters, but I didn’t realize they got so much joy about being fire starters as well. Kyle and I left before it got too late so I would be able to get up and go to work the next morning.

At my job I’m working on two things. The first is just to gain a better understanding about how a local office is run and the responsibilities of everyone involved. The second is a bit more involved with my concentration of maternal and child health. I’m seeing what is available at the local level for women and children and also looking for community based assets for adolescent mental development. I’m hopefully going to be working with the needs assessment that I just wrote and expanding on it so that it could be used in a more practical way to better Gloucester. What I’m hoping to find are community assets that counter behaviors like drinking, doing drugs, and relational abuse as well as seeing if there are connections with these types of behaviors and mental health. It makes sense in my head, and if you’re confused, I’ll try to send you an email to explain it a little bit better. I’m running out of time here at the library so I can’t talk about it in more detail at the moment.

And speaking of running out of time, I should be scooting now. I think that’s everything that’s been going on in the past month and if there’s more you’d like to hear just send me an email or something. At least the house is all unpacked. I only have to finish putting up pictures and do some cleaning; plastic peanuts are obnoxious.

Peace and Blessings to you all.

Author: KB French

Formerly many things, including theology student, mime, jr. high Latin teacher, and Army logistics officer. Currently in the National Guard, and employed as a civilian... somewhere View all posts by KB French