Happy Birthday To Me!

I'm no longer homeless!  I found a place that is only 17 minutes by bus from work.  It's on a wicked steep hill but I only need to go up 2 block of the hill to get to the house.  Utilities are included in the rent.  I will be living with a gay guy and a straight guy.  I met the straight one today.  His name is Jim.  He has a 13 year old son that visits on the weekends.  It's one bathroom for all three of us.  The kitchen isn't that big but it's workable.  I can move in now.  I am so excited for all of the extra time that I will have in my life!  I can bring in food to share at work.  Speaking of food at work, Laura made cupcakes for me so I had roses and baked goods at my desk this morning.  That's what I call a good start to the morning.  I brought my leftover daal for lunch but the Americorps gang, minus Evan went out to the pho restaurant down the street.  They ended up paying for me even though everyone is just as poor as me.

I got all of the ESL classes filled on Friday so that was a major project completed.  I also got to be the official case manager for my first N-400 application.  It's really strange that I started less than 3 weeks ago and I'm already holding the future of someone's citizenship in my hands.  Xiangping has been leading me through the process so I definitely have a safety net but she is leaving on vacation next week so that net is leaving soon.  I also will be in charge of all the citizenship classes in the I.D.  Tomorrow, I have my citizenship class and then Talk Time which should be more fun.  It's intended to be a conversation club rather than an English class but we have too many students for it to be mostly discussion.  We are getting a volunteer which will help reduce the student:teacher ratio.  The volunteer also speaks Vietnamese which is going to be a huge help since all of the participants are from Vietnam.  Tomorrow should be a good day!