02/26/02: On Sunday, the rest of the Fire Unit left on spike. My roommates both left really early, I got up to say goodbye. It was so weird to think of not having them around for two months. While everyone was here, I always looked forward to seeing who else was home, getting a bite to eat, sharing stories of our day, and sitting around gossiping and bitching about CTI or annoying people or manwhores or what have you. And now they're gone, and it's incredibly depressing to come home to an empty, silent and dark house. There's no one to talk to. It's so lonely! Even more so than before. Boo hoo.

The good thing is that the team is wanting to do stuff together. Last night some people got together to watch Moulin Rouge. Tonight, in like five minutes, the three of us that live on the same street are going to have dinner together. It kind of sucks that we haven't had the intense bonding that first-round spike would bring, but it seems like we're trying to do what we can.

This week our project finally commenced. Yesterday we had an orientation/tour of the school, after arriving an hour late, anyway. The principal, Mrs Green, is so fabulous. She's really excited about quality education and not letting anyone slip through the cracks. It's so inspirational.

Today we actually got to go into the classrooms. It was a really interesting day! I'm in second grade with Ms. Streat's class. There's about twelve students, I think. (No class has more than 18 kids. Isn't that amazing?) It seems to be a semi-rowdy bunch. There are more boys than girls in the class and they get loud and disruptive. But overall, the kids seem pretty cool. Some of them took to me right away and wanted to hold my hand. At first, some of the boys told me I had a big nose like Pinocchio. But things definitely got better after thatI was able to start right away working in small grouips. I helped out with reading and then math. There's some really smart kids in there, but there are also some who are at a completely different level. I tried to bring them out and help them answer the questions themselves, but it took so long and the rest of the class was moving on.

All of us NCCC folks are on for lunch duty every day, which is also interesting. The entire second grade eats lunch together, and we're supposed to keep an eye out, make sure everyone is behaving, and help collect the trash. I talked to a bunch of the kids, they were curious about me and the rest of us.

Well, crap, I have to go now. I've got laundry that needs to go to the dryer, and that dinner's gonna start. So I'll continue this later and hopefully will have more details and interesting stories.