At the Mercy of the Yellow Line

Museum of Natural History

       Life has really started to pick up! Thanks to the wonderful Zack and Autumn Randles, I've been working childcare for Waterfront Church. I think I have found my church home for the spring at Waterfront. I remember deciding that I wanted to be a part a church plant while I was in DC, and it just so happens that Waterfront is a church plant. The generous members have taken me under their wing, and I've been able to meet and connect with cool peeps who are just like me! I joined them in visiting the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History last week and in eating some killer Chinese food.

Hope Diamond, Smithsonian

       This has been the most exciting week at the ABA so far. I came in to the office on Tuesday and had gotten an email about joining a conference call to take notes. This was my first conference call ever, and I had no idea what I was doing. But just like everything else, I jumped in and figured it out. The call was a working group meeting about fighting notario fraud. There were influential people from Maryland, DC, and Virginia working together to educate consumers and stop the fraud. I was especially interested in the investigative part of their work. How cool would it be to visit a fraudulent business undercover?

Wok and Roll

       I encourage you to do some research on notario fraud when you get a chance. Scammers are basically posing at attorneys (called "notarios" in Mexico and other Latin American countries) and charging immigrants for legal services that they can't even give. For all those in Texas-- HRBlock of Texas has actually been engaging in something similar to this. Organizations in the working group identify these types of businesses, seek out victims of fraud, prosecute the offenders to compensate victims, educate consumers, and push legislation to protect immigrants. Hopefully, I'll be able to attend the next meeting in person and match faces to the voices.

China Town

       I took a call in Spanish last week! Well, kind of. There was not a Spanish-speaker available to take the call for me and I didn't want to ask the detainee to call us back. So I bucked up and did my best to understand. Someone started talking to me in English half-way through the call. He finished the call for the first man and requested some information for himself. I've started asking the Spanish-speaking detainees if they have a friend who could interpret for them over the phone, and they usually do. Is that cheating? Maybe.

       My supervisor likes to gather the ABA interns for lunch on Wednesdays so that we can engage with each other and branch out of our own sections. This week, he told us to bring a poem that means something to us. My friend, Noor, did some of her spoken word, Joey recited a poem in Chinese, Ashleigh read a poem in Spanish, one girl talked about her favorite operetta, another shared a quote, and I read Psalm 51. This group of ABA interns is so diverse. I've already learned so much about society and about myself from spending time with them.

       I mentioned Noor's spoken word. Tuesday night she invited me to join her for open mic night at Busboys and Poets. I came home after work, got my ticket online, squeezed in a nap, and headed out for a night on the town. I loved the atmosphere of Busboys and Poets, and Noor's poem, called "Barcodes" was a challenging poem that addressed the expectations of young women in our society. When we left Busboys, we hit up the famous Ben's Chili Bowl, where a nice man paid for our meal!

 

       The next morning I overslept, of course, and the funniest thing happened at the metro station in Springfield. The blue line pulled into the station, and I boarded with a group of people. We waited about 5 minutes for the train to pull out. Right before the doors started to close, we heard the driver say, "This is the yellow line train to Greenbelt. Doors closing." There was a big collective gasp of "Oh no!" The train had switched from blue line to yellow line without any warning. People rushed to get off the train before the doors sealed, but most of us were trapped at the mercy of the yellow line. There was a mixture of amusement and frustration felt throughout the car as it pulled out of the station. "I swear they do that on purpose," one woman said. 

       On days when I don't oversleep, I hit up the gym in the ABA building before my internship. Tuesday morning I braved the cold for a run outside, and I can't even articulate how cool it was. I went down by the Lincoln Memorial, the WWII Memorial, the Washington Monument and back to the office (only because I ran out of time). I could have kept running just to see the whole of DC. When I was down by the Lincoln Memorial, I kept getting passed by these men with NAVY on their backs. Turns out I was running in the path of some Navy group's morning workout! I didn't mind that at all.