just before bed

What a week. Tuesday we spend most of the day learning about what is called an Enneagram. For a simple explanation, this is a type of personality test. We learned a lot about different personality types and why certain people react in certain ways depending on a certain situation. This really helped us define who we were as people (which was kinda cool) and help us to understand the variety of kids we will be working with. It may seem a little frivolous, but it really was a great exercise. We also spent some time Tuesday learning more from the book "Community and Growth" about living in community. On Wednesday we spent 5 hours in a workshop on "Substance Abuse and Mental Health". It was basically an informative session about types of drugs our kids use and mental health issues they could be dealing with. We also talked about how to recognize each of these and what to do in certain situations pertaining to them. Later on Wednesday we learned more about the Covenant House's governing structures (rules, policies, etc). Every Wednesday night is community night, so we went out for a picnic with everybody in our group along with the current New York volunteers that we are living with. We had a picnic in Central Park, but it rained so we moved it under some really cool bridge in the park - it was a fun. Upon returning to the house, we spent about an hour in prayer/reflection with the group. Thursday was another intense day. We met a couple higher-ups in the organization in the morning then had a three hour session on "Gender 101, Working with LGBTQ Youth (thats Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer). This session pertained to understanding anything from the meanings of the categories above to the basics of sex change and everything in between. Its really important to understand these things so we can relate to the kids. After this we returned to the house to do a whole lot of paperwork an have dinner. We then had an evening session to help us understand the basics of "Franciscan Spirituality" (the priest who founded Covenant House was in the Franciscan order). So we learned about the life and beliefs of Saint Francis of Assisi and did a really cool activity where we wrote the Lord's Prayer in our own words - very cool. Ok, I know this is getting long, but we still have today to cover. This morning we had a session on the Covenant House mission statement where we basically dissected the mission statement that I blogged earlier. After this we had a 3 hour session on "Suicide" where we spent a lot of time talking about how to respond in situations where the kids tell us that they are contemplating suicide and did role plays to that effect - it was very heavy, but very important as well. Other than that we had dinner and some of us watched Shawshank Redemption while those with more energy left went out for a while. Ok, thats it for now - Peace.