It's crazy what kinda things you may learn given certain scenarios.  During those times, you'll learn things about yourself, those around you, and even how aware to things you become, or how checked out you may become.  The way those thoughts, feelings, or revelations show themselves can come in any kind of way.

Through different challenges from people like David, Juan, Alysa, and Z, continuing to work on figuring out who I am and what makes me, me, it hasn't taken long for me to become more aware in situations and to be more transparent with others when it comes to how I may have reacted in any situation (mainly if I think I could have been taken wrong, or it was clearly bad).  Not that I'm saying that I now critically analyze everything I do, but I am paying attention to things that could need to be fixed.  This week has brought both positives and things to think about.  A sweet thing came from our staff meeting that we had yesterday.  In that staff meeting we basically talk about how things are going, how we are doing, and something that was either new, good, or both from the past week.  

The building being bid for in Globeville

Over the past two weeks now, we've been involved with doing two tasks that I would have been certain to try and avoid in the past.  Those two tasks were going door-to-door with surveys and calling over a hundred people on the phone for whatever reason.  It's crazy to think about after the fact, but this task I thought that I would hate, grew on me, and for a certain cause or reason like what we were doing, I'd go door-to-door like we did all over again.  Last week, we went door-to-door in Globeville (~1000 homes) because there is a building that the church is looking to put a bid on because the city is offering it to whatever organization they deem to be the best for the community.  Our purpose in going out was to survey the people in the neighborhood to see what all it is that they'd want out of a building that is pretty central in the community.  At first, I was hesitant and really didnt want to mainly because I figured that I'd be bothering people, they'd possibly outright reject me, and I honestly thought  I'd fumble over things to say.  Some of those may have been extreme versions (which all actually happened), but the point was going past that fear and continuing on to carry on because of the purpose behind it.  If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have met some of the awesome people in the community and get to have half hour conversations with them.  Ya never know what'll happen until you step past that hesitancy, fear, or whatever.  And to top it off, who cares what bad could happen?  It's for a good cause and you're doing what you can.  After that, you can do no more.   In that staff meeting yesterday, Juan had mentioned something that he said before but I hadn't given much thought to.  He basically said that there was something that seemed to give the people I was talking to some sort of ease, which then led to long conversations.  I think thats awesome, not only for me, but I know a couple of the other interns had the same kinda reservations at first, and we had the same kind of great convos.  You really don't know what will come from something like taking surveys door-to-door until you actually do it and give it a chance. The other thing we did was call all the kids that had been accepted into this camp called Camp Hero.  Our basic job at the camp will be to help with a thing called Read-to-Achieve, which will work to help kids 1st-3rd continue to keep what they've learned and not drop back a half of a grade in reading ability (apparently that is what commonly happens).  I basically had the same reservations at first, but then that was quickly changed just because I got used to it.  In less than 3 hours, we pumped out over 250+ phone calls to parents to make sure their kids were going to be there when it starts on Monday.