A Day in L.A. Really is Just Like the Movie "Crash"

As I'm crossing the street after getting off Metro, I hear a gravely voice behind me yell, "Move, bitch!" Startled, I move to the side and cautiously look over my shoulder to see who it was. A tall black man with a weathered face and a leather jacket stands to my right. I can see out of the corner of my eye that he's staring at me. I immediately start freaking out because I'm paranoid like that. Crazy stuff happens on these streets every day (Skid Row isn't all that far from my office.) I tap my toes anxiously, waiting for the walk signal to light up so I can cross over to the next street.

As soon as it does, I practically run across the road, my heart pounding. Unfortunately, the stop lights are all timed so that I have to wait at each and every one of them no matter how quickly I walk. The man from earlier is behind me, waiting at the next light to cross. My heart quickens and my palms start to sweat. I know he's still looking at me. While we're waiting, a man on the other side of the street jumps into the middle of the road and starts flailing his limbs about and shouting. The man in the leather jacket looks to me and says, "You know, that's not a crazy person. That's just a guy trying too hard to get some attention." I smile, but don't make eye contact. Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure this guy isn't crazy himself.

Then, the man surprises me. He looks over at me again and says, "Sorry for earlier. You know I wasn't talking to you, right? I didn't mean to scare you or anything."

"Hmmm?" I say, pretending to have no idea what he's talking about.

"It's just that this rude lady just stopped right in front of me in the middle of the cross walk. She took up the whole damn road! People in L.A. just keep getting ruder and ruder. Didn't used to be like that here."

I smile in reply. I think back to the Metro stop and realize he may be talking about the deaf Hispanic woman and her husband who appeared lost and were rapidly signing back and forth to each other as they got off. He probably had no idea she was deaf and she probably (luckily) didn't hear him say, "Move, bitch!"

"You live here?" the man asks me.

"Yeah," I reply, still not willing to make eye contact. The light was taking forever to change...

"I'm from the Valley and commute here to work. You know, this city's changed a lot since I've been living here. Everyone used to be so nice. People knew L.A. as a nice place with nice people, but folks are just getting more and more rude now and the city is getting uglier every day. It's not horrible, but it used to be better is all."

"Hmmm," I think to myself, "I'm pretty sure you're not helping the problem..." 

"Well, I'm from New York originally," I say timidly, "and I can tell you for a fact that people in California are much more courteous than people in New York."

"Oh really? You from New York? You from the city or upstate?"

This shocks me since most people in California assume everyone from New York lives in the city.

"I'm from the Poughkeepsie area, but I used to like to go to the city and visit friends," I tell him as we cross the street.

"Oh cool! White Plains, Schenectady, Syracuse, I know those places. My daughter was just in New York. She's a model. But you know what, New Yorkers just think differently from us."

"Yeah," I agree, "in New York it's kind of just assumed that everyone acts rude, but it's not really rude, it's more like the way things are. People are always in a rush to get places and you better not get in their way or God forbid, make eye contact!"

He laughs. "You know, I hear a lot of New Yorkers are getting sick of it. They're moving to places like the Poconos!"

I smile, "Wow. I was just in the Poconos last weekend!"

"Really? That's crazy!"

"Yeah, my grandparents live there. Well I mean, my grandpa just died so I guess just my grandma lives there."

"Oh, I'm sorry," the man says, looking at me with kind eyes.

"Thanks," I say, waving hello to the woman who holds the "$3 Parking" sign on the street corner across from my office building.

"Well this is my building," the man says pointing to my office building, "looks like I'm late. I see all my co-workers up there already!"

"Oh, it's my building too!" I say, "What floor do you work on?"

"Fourth floor. How about you?" he asks.

"Fifth floor. We're practically neighbors!"

"Well have a good day at work. Sorry again about before. I didn't mean to startle you," he says.

"No problem. Good talking to you!"

He takes the elevator up and I jog up the stairs (I'm trying to get exercise any way I can.) Maybe I'll see him again tomorrow.

The Christmas Post I Never Posted

So I went to the Bay Area for Christmas with Josh's family this last year. I kept meaning to post about my time there, but I never did. I've never been to San Francisco, so I was super pumped to go (mostly so I could take cutesy couples photos by the Golden Gate Bridge...kidding...maybe). Anyways, I had a great time there and wanted to share the pictures I took.

Gingerbread Emily and Josh (that's supposed to be a Spiderman shirt)

Josh and his sister Becky hamming it up in Napa

Becky and Velvet take a break from wine and cheese in Napa Valley

Say CHEEEESSSEEE! At the vineyard we visited in Napa.

Obligatory cable car photo

Chinatown in SF. I've been to Chinatown in NYC, Boston, LA and SF. Now I just need to go to China.

Getting some authentic Chinatown Chinese Food (I kid, we actually had orange chicken...)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Obligatory Golden Gate Bridge photo

Obligatory Pier 39 photo (I lost that Hello Kitty hat that day. I had received it as a X-Mas present just days earlier).

Christmas Tree at Pier 39

Muir Woods! Contrary to what happens in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" no pets were allowed (sorry Velvet!)

Is it just me or is L.A. in the middle of an Ice Age? (Please tell me it's not me!)

Typical LA weather report (it was drizzling that day).

Sometime shortly after I first moved to Los Angeles, I had the late night munchies and decided to walk over to the Yogurtland near my apartment complex. It was a February evening and temperatures were in the low 60's. While waiting in line to pile my yogurt high with gummy bears (for some reason I always get chocolatey yogurt and then get a gummy bear craving and they just don't mix but I never learn) a girl walked in wearing a floor-length puffy coat, earmuffs and gloves. It was hilarious! I remember calling my parents in NY the next day to share the funny story with them. "Mom, you should have seen this girl. It was like 70 degrees out and she had on a puffy coat. People in L.A. are ridiculous! There's no way she'd ever be able to handle a New York winter!" I told the story of the pathetic puffy coat girl over and over again to my East Coast pals and we always got a kick out of it.

 2009- I'd just swam in the Pacific... at night...in January.

I moved to L.A. to get away from New York winters. There was a time when I was a child that I'd go out and build igloos and play in them all day, but as I grew older, I became less and less tolerant of snow dripping down the back of my neck. I left most of my sweaters, all of my warm coats, gloves, hats, scarves and other winter gear in New York when I moved to California. The warmest piece of clothing I have here is a baggy pure cashmere Valentino sweater that I picked up at Buffalo Exchange for super cheap. I don't even own a legit coat anymore. The one I wear is a sweatshirt/coat hybrid I got at Target for under 30 bucks. My lack of warm clothing was never an issue...until recently.

Proof that it really IS cold (just not THAT cold)

I don't know what happened. I really don't. But ever since I got back from my cousin Kristin's wedding in New York this November, I've been freezing my a$$ off in L.A. I even have a little space heater I keep right next to my face in my bed. The past 2 weeks I've had to wear fingerless gloves (the closest thing I have to mittens) on my commute to work. Today I even added a knit cap and scarf (albeit a nice designer scarf not a winter scarf) to my ensemble. It's been taking me a great amount of will-power to get out of bed in the morning and get dressed, and when I do get up and out of bed my teeth won't stop chattering until I've put on socks, pants, a t-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater and my coat. When I get home from work, all I want to do is jump into bed, wrap myself in blankets, and blast the the space-heater. I'm becoming the pathetic puffy coat girl!!!

I know L.A. has been going through some sort of cold-spell as of late. I even had to scrape some icey stuff off my car the other morning. Today at work my boss told us all to go home early because of the bad weather (it was a "chilly" 50 degrees and drizzling out).

Freezing at work (what you can't see here is my personal space heater)

But I know that the Emily who moved to L.A. in 2009 is not the same Emily who lives there now. The 2009 Emily would be just like the tourists on the Hollywood Tours buses, rocking out a sundress in 60 degree weather. But not anymore. My closet is filled with sundresses that haven't been touched in a month. This is a tragedy! (It's mostly a tragedy because somewhere down the line I got too fat for most of my pants and didn't realize it because I was only wearing loose-fitted sundresses and now I only have about 3 pairs of pants I can fit into. Luckily no one at work has noticed this yet.)

I'm going back to NY next week and I have NO IDEA how I'm going to handle a NY winter for the first time in 2 years. I'm pretty terrified. I just hope that when I return from NY, the old Emily will come back to life and I won't find L.A. so cold anymore.

So please people, if you live in So-Cal tell me that I'm not crazy. Tell me that it really has been freezing out lately and L.A. isn't normally this cold this time of year. I'm not quite ready to admit defeat...

I Seriously LOVE My New Job*!!!! (AKA: So where exactly does Emily work now? And also some Thanksgiving pics)

*Ok, so technically I'm not supposed to call my AmeriCorps VISTA position a job; it's a "volunteer service opportunity" or something like that. You see, I don't actually earn a salary but rather a "living allowance" as I volunteer for one year to help out a non-profit through capacity building within my community as part of a national community service organization that's pretty much the equivalent of the domestic Peace Corps... but see, it took forever to explain that and most people I talk to end up wanting even more of an explanation so that's why I just call it a job...

 Now that we've got that out of the way... I seriously love what I do! So if you see me on the street, ask me about it! I've only been working at the YouthBuild Charter School of California headquarters in Downtown LA for about a month now, but it's already been an enriching experience. My main objectives during my time with YouthBuild Charter (YCSC for short) are to raise money through fundraisers, write grant proposals, work on the official YCSC website and use various social networking tools to raise awareness about YCSC. I also do a lot of other random odd jobs for the school adminstrators (currently I'm putting together binders for each of our twelve sites containing a variety of materials the teachers create to plan their curriculum.)

YouthBuild USA

Dorothy Stoneman & Michelle Obama (The Obamas love YouthBuild)

So you may be wondering what YouthBuild is exactly. I wondered that when I first started too. In order to explain YCSC, I should first write a little about YouthBuild USA. YouthBuild USA was founded over 20 years ago by this really amazing lady named Dorothy Stoneman. When she asked the youth in her community what they'd do if they had the support to improve their community, they responded resoundingly that they'd rebuild, renovate and reclaim the tenement buildings that had been taken over by drug dealers. She assembled the teens together to form the Youth Action Program (the first official YouthBuild) and they went to work renovating an East Harlem tenemant. Based on the incredible success of the initial program, she was able to receive funding to continue the program, which "enabled 20,000 New York City youth to obtain education and job training in various community improvement projects." Today, there are around 275 YouthBuild programs all over the country. The students who participate in these YouthBuild programs are low-income young people between the ages of 16 and 24. They work full-time for 6 to 24 months toward their GEDs or high school diplomas while learning job skills by building affordable housing in their communities and becoming leaders in the process.

So how does YouthBuild Charter School fit into the equation?
To quote YCSC's official website, "YouthBuild Charter School of California is a unique charter school model that provides young adults at YouthBuild programs with an authentic alternative to traditional school environments." YouthBuild Charter School is really two schools--YCSC (YouthBuild Charter School of California) and YCSCC (YouthBuild Charter School of California) each with six sites (YCSC is LA-based and YCSCC sites are in the cities surrounding LA.) YouthBuild Charter specifically caters to under-served, low-income students between the ages of 16-24, who have dropped out, aged out or otherwise failed out of the traditional high school system.  Instead of employing the test-based curriculum of traditional schools, YCSC uses a project-based approach to learning with an emphasis on leadership and community development.
For example, in a traditional math class, students learning statistics will learn how to turn fractions into decimals and percentages and plot them on graphs and their understanding is measured in the form of some sort of standardized test. On the other hand, at one of our YCSC sites, the math teacher taught his students statistics by having them spend a day at Occupy LA, interviewing protesters with survey questions the students came up with on their own, tallying their answers, determining percentages and plotting graphs, and finally displaying their results on posters filled with pictures from their experience.

Not a stock photo! One of our real teachers helping a real student

Teachers at each of our sites work together at the beginning of each Trimester to create a curriculum collaboration by coming up with an "essential question" for the unit. For example: How can you be the change you want to see in the world? Using this essential question as a guide, the teachers develop three projects for each of their courses. At the end of the Trimester, students and teachers work together to create one final project that both sums up what they've learned and serves the community.
I could go on and on about how awesome YouthBuild Charter School is OR I could direct you once again to our official website or our BRAND NEW BLOG (that I, of course, created).

So in conclusion...
I have so many amazing stories already from my experience with YCSC, but I'll be updating the YCSC blog as often as possible with my stories and stories from our teachers and students, so I'd say just check back there from time to time. It's so exciting to see students who really want to learn and who also have a desire to give back to their communities. Even though I don't work at any of our actual school sites (I work at headquarters, where our two principals, CEO and other admins work out of) I'm hoping to spend time with both teachers and students and learn from them as much as possible during my year here.

I could go on and on about my new job, but it's late and I'm freezing (I actually had to scrape ice from my car the other day) so I should probably hit the hay. More updates to come soon enough. I'm heading home to NY for pre-Christmas Christmas from December 16-22. Then, Josh and I will be driving from LA to the Bay-Area to spend actual Christmas and New Year's with his mom and sister. Should be fun and I look forward to exploring San Francisco! If what I've written about here has intrigued you, feel free to ask me more and if I've interested you enough in YCSC's education model that you want to donate, visit our website to do so there.

It's photo time!!
Oh, and here are some pictures of my first time making Thanksgiving dinner!!

Josh's mom and sister helped me out

I overcame my fear of ovens

The spread: gluten-free biscuits, sweet potato wedges, risotto, yams, mashed potatoes, cooked veggies and turkey

Om nom nom - My gluten-free goodies!

Josh and I enjoying our food and drink

The leftovers

Black Friday shopping at the Grove