Day Thirteen

The students are journaling as part of our Final Day Retreat. This gives me a chance to post the final blog entry, written last evening as we finished working and began our retreat.

June 29, 2007
Today is our final day of immersion. We all have mixed feelings about the experience coming to an end. We miss our cell phones, computers, snacks, and TVs, but we had such a blast working with St. Anthony’s that we will never forget these two weeks. This morning at St. Anthony’s we sat in a circle and reflected about why we wanted to do immersion. We did the same thing on our first day, and we wanted to compare the differences in our answer from two weeks ago, to today. For the most part we origionally wanted to do immersion to have a new experience and to help others. Now that we have completed it, we realize that our immersion experience was great because we got to understand all the people we met and not just serve them, but be with them. We also wrote letters to ourselves about this experience which St. Anthony’s will send to us in 6 months. After our morning work: half to Salvation Army and half to the Clothing Store, we had our last lunch at St. Anthony’s. In the afternoon we sat in a circle on a blanket with candels in the middle. We each lit a candle for someone we met in the past two weeks and said something they have taught us or something we remember about them. After this activity we all stayed there because Mary Anne Finch, the founder and directore of Care Through Touch, offered to give us each a back massage. It was AMAZING!! Then we all came back to our room because we are ordering dinner for tonight. It is a surprise and it will be here in about 15 minutes and we are all starving!
Katie Nolan

Day Twelve

Today was a pretty intense day. We took Muni down to our regular 6th Street stop and met Colleen at the door of St. Anthony’s. We began the day by talking about different definitions of servics and what it can mean to different people. We ranked different forms of service from the most important to the least significant in our eyes. It was interesting to see the other reactions and decisions of the other people in the group as to where they ranked certain things on their lists. Then we went down to the dining room to begin preparing for the early lunch guests. This was the first time since we arrived that we were all working in the same location. Working the dining room is a favorite of many in our group as it is the duty with the most interaction with the clients at St. Anthony’s. Throughout the day we rotated between serving and cleaning and bussing. Lunch today was pasta and marinara sauce with cucumber salad, bread, fruit, and dessert. It was very good and we all cleaned our plates. After lunch was over we met back up with Colleen and talked about our experience so far with the Immersion program and with St. Anthony’s as a whole. We talked more about service and ways we can make an impression on others to make a difference in the community. We all decided to buy St. Anthony’s shirts and use $15 of our $20 spending money. We said goodbye to Colleen and Marie who we would not see again and headed out. Team Blue, or Mr. Shaughnessy, Cristina, Audrey, Sumner and I headed to the grocery store while the others went back to St. Agnes. While we were in the store, I turned around to see none other than my brother and his friend buying some last minute food for their trip up to Lake Tahoe later today! It was a nice surprise. We spoke for a couple of minutes and I learned that he would be on vacation instead of eagerly awaiting my return from Immersion. We finished up shopping and decided on two whole chickens, red beans and rice, cornbread, and grapes for our final cooking meal. It should be pretty tasty. It sure does smell good now! I can’t believe we only have one and a half more days left! It seems like we only started yesterday! See you soon!

Alessandra Zanassi☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

Day Eleven

Today was a little difficult waking up as some of us our starting to feel the effects of sleeping on the floor. Some ate breakfast while others got a few extra precious minutes of sleep. We arrived at St. Anthony’s right on time and were greeted by Colleen. We played the power chair game where we lined up chairs in ways so one chair had all the power. This game showed us that power can be interpreted in different ways depending on the situation. Katie, Bianca, Sumner, Alessandra, and Shag went to Salvation Army to do Meals that Heal while Rian, Audrey, Jordan, Theresa, and I went to St. Anthony’s clothing store where we hung up clothes that people could then pick through and chose an outfit. We then went back to St. Anthony’s for lunch and put ourselves in line. Today was a great day in terms of St. Anthony’s lunch as it said chef special on the calendar and we were all a little skeptical, but it turned out to be a great mushroom, spinach, and quiche with rice and cole slaw. I met an interesting man at lunch today as he works for a private company that sets up special equipment for private concerts and events. He also turned out to be a huge San Francisco Giants and San Jose Sharks fan that was great for me as I am also a huge fan and was able to have a great conversation about what we thought the future had in store for our favorite teams. We then had an amazing afternoon experience as we had the opportunity to hear Indian Joe’s story, a homeless man who comes to St. Anthony’s and has made connections with students on San Francisco Immersion. His story was very powerful as he told us he came from an Indian reservation in Adam’s Lake, British Columbia and was abused as a child and ended up being adopted by a white couple that treated him well. He has lived in San Francisco for 25 years and did end up with an addiction to heroine, speed, cocaine, and alcohol, as there is such an easy access to these substances that it is hard to stay away. He got sober not by a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, but by saying no thank you and not associating with people who have drug or alcohol problems as the temptation to fall back he said would be too great. Indian Joe talked about in a way chooses to be homeless as the shelters and single room occupancy’s are filled with drugs and he ended up contacting TB when he stayed at a shelter. He has a deal with a private parking lot where they let him sleep in a safe environment and pay him to clean up the parking lot. Indian Joe demonstrated that government programs rarely work and that the city needs to pay attention to the problems of its citizens instead of its potholes. Team Red went to farmer’s market to get ingredients for their meal while Team Blue went back to St. Agnes to take a nap. Team Red made a delicious stir-fry with cake chocolate chip cookies, cantaloupe, and cookies n cream ice cream for dessert. We are now waiting for Theresa’s roommate to get here for reflection, and we hope to play a rematch game of Charades tonight or tomorrow.
Cristina Fowler

Day Ten

Hi everyone, this is Theresa Vela. We have just about completed our tenth day of immersion. We are currently sitting in the Spiritual Life Center, cooking team Red is cleaning up from dinner while team Blue, who prepared dinner, is journaling about the day. Reflecting on the day leaves me feeling full, and tired. Everyday I feel as though 7.30am comes faster and faster, almost as though 7.30 has made a deal with 7 and is in fact coming first. I realize is completely ridiculous, but knowing that it doesn’t make getting up any easier. Easy or hard, get up me must and reluctantly we do. And while we made it to the bus stop in time to make the “early” No. 6 we did so in a very tired manner.

When we arrived at St. Anthony’s Angie gave us a talk on Addictive Illnesses as a follow-up to RJ’s talk yesterday afternoon. After the talk half of us went to the Salvation Army to deliver meals to the homebound and the other half went to work in the Dinning Room. It was a busy day in the dinning room. The closer to the end of the month it gets the more people are in need of a meal. Yet, even though the dinning room seems crowded and chaotic, it is stilled filled with an atmosphere of equal dignity and respect for others.

Our afternoon plans changed at the last minute because our planned speaker couldn’t make it, so rather than learning about Hunger in SF we heard from Joe, another participant in the Fr. Alfred Center’s recovery program. After Joe’s talk we returned to St. Agnes for an afternoon nap.

Once refreshed we, minus Shag who is having some back trouble because of the hard floors we are sleeping on, went out to the Panhandle to play capture the flag. The winner of this game was never truly resolved since both teams were convinced the other team had unfairly hidden its flag.

Team Blue made Sloppy Joe’s (they made me a Sloppy Tofu), corn, garlic bread, and strawberries. During dinner we had yet another fantastic conversation, which like most of our conversations fluidly bounced from topic to topic. The dinner conversation is usually, in my opinion, one of the high points of the day.

The students are now done cleaning and journaling. They are patiently, yet loudly, waiting for me to finishing writing so we can have dessert. We have the Zanassi family to thank for our much-anticipated dessert of S’mores! I can only ask them play so many hands of cards before they will lose patience with me, so I will say goodnight.

I hope this finds you all well and in good spirits! Have a wonderful night. We are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!

Peace,
Theresa Vela

Day Nine

It is Tuesday morning and Theresa is supervising morning getting ready while I came over to the Spiritual Life Center to post a quick update. Yesterday was a quiet day, everybody was recovering from spending so many hour out in the sun on Sunday. No one was interested in writing a blog entry.

The focus of yesterday was Seniors in the Tenderloing. Marie O'Connor was our Saint Anthony Foundation host and she reminded us that we were all Seniors in Training. She led us in some reflections and gave us information about senior citizens in the United States and in the Tenderloin. For work, half went to Presentation Housing for Adult Day Health Care while the other half went to Saint Anthony's Madonna Housing for Adult Day Health Care and Senior Homeless Drop-in at Saint Anthony's Living Room. We returned for lunch in the Dining Room and after lunch we joined with a group of teenagers from the Houston area in San Francisco for a mission experience. We heard from JR, one of the young men in the Father Alfred Recovery Program. We finished our work day with Marie leading us in a reflection about how we encountered and beheld seniors in our lives and the seniors with whom we interacted during the morning.

We headed back to Saint Agnes for naps (much needed), cooking, cleaning, journaling, group reflection. We enjoyed a gread dinner of breakfast foods and some reading and relaxing time and then to bed.

Hopefully one of the students will have the energy to compose a blog today for posting tomorrow.

Michael Shaughnessy (aka shag)

Day Eight

Sorry we are so late again. We didn't have access to computer or internet at all yesterday, Sunday, so we are not posting;

Sunday morning, we all went to service at Glide. Although it wasn’t the Catholic mass most people were used to, we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The choir sang beautifully and vivaciously! Also, in honor of Pride day, they had a nice slideshow, displaying different ways of expressing gay pride.
After service, we were able to march in the Gay Pride Parade with Glide, walking behind the truck carrying the choir. We all held different signs, like “Justice For All,” “God Loves You,” “Glide is Love,” “Shine Your Light,” etc… it was a lot of fun, being able to march down Market street holding our signs for thousands of people to see.
After the excitement of the parade, we made our way over to the Pride festival, where we ended up taking donations for almost 3 hours!! Our collecting started slowing down, as people would blatantly ignore us as they walked past. We got back to St. Agnes around 6 completely exhausted!

- Audrey

Day Seven

Today we had the chance to sleep in until 10, which we took full advantage of. We then got ready to go to the laundromat and Shag was nice enough to take our clothes down in his car so we did not have to carry them all the way there. Going to the laundromat was an interesting experience as we played cards and read while we were waiting for our clothes to wash and dry. When we got back from the laundromat, we played an interesting game of charades, and we hope to play another game later tonight. Team Cold then made linner as Team Hot went to get stuff to make sandwiches for the Pride Parade tomorrow. We had a delicious meal of home fries, scrambled eggs, and toast. We then had a longer reflection where we discussed how we were doing on the four tenets of immersion: simple living, community, social justice, and spirituality. We decided as a group that we were living too easily and to cut back on some of the luxuries we have had this first week. For the next week none of us will eat snacks, some of us will shower every 3 days, and some will wear only 4 shirts in this next week. We are now journaling and will maybe watch a video later tonight. We are excited to see you all next Saturday for the potluck, and parents our invited to come to mass at 4:00.
Cristina Fowler
P.S. Mr. Dineen, we were able to give up snacks next week because all the chocolate crinkles were gone, and we hope to see them next Saturday.

Some Pictures

Day Six

Good Morning: This is Saturday morning and the students are enjoying their one sleep in morning:

It is 8:30 on Friday night and we just finished a fabulous meal made by team “Hot” of baked potatoes, tofu, bacon, steamed broccoli, and Theresa’s very tasty cake cookies. As I write this, the rest of team “Cold” is finishing cleaning up the kitchen while the others are back at the sleeping quarters showering and journaling. Today was a pretty great day. We woke up, some with more difficulty than others, and headed out the door to the Muni stop. When we arrived at St. Anthony’s we were welcomed by Eddie, our host for the day. We began by playing “The Wage is NOT right,” a spinoff of The Price is Right. We guessed the prices of items based on the cost of living in the Tenderloin. We looked at situations with poorer folks compared to some of the richest in the nation. The person I was worked at Yahoo and had a yearly salary of $360 million. He made over $100,000 an HOUR!! It took some of these people only seconds to make the wage it takes other people in the Tenderloin a whole week. It’s ridiculous if you think about it. Then we were split into groups and three of us went to work at Salvation Army again while the others worked St. Anthony’s Dining Room for a second time. Katie, Jordan, Mr. Shaughnessy and I went to Meals That Heal with Salvation Army. This was the second time for most of us aside from Katie, so we were experts—or so we thought. I went with Mr. Shaughnessy and a man named Robert who had been helping out with the program for quite a while. He had us deliver the meals solo as opposed to together, which was definitely a new experience for us. When we were finished with all of the deliveries, we headed back to the Dining Room and got in line with the other clients waiting for lunch. Lunch was lentils and chicken with salad and melon. It was good, but what was better was the company. I ate with this man named Anthony who I had actually met while delivering food earlier in the day. I found out he had attended Riordan high school of all places! It’s so neat how there are so many people that you meet and who actually remember you. It really is like a little community with everybody looking out for one another. Then we helped out for a while in the staff room, folding napkins for dishing out meals. We met Eddie, a cousin of the member of the staff who came all the way from Milan, Italy to help out. He’s almost from as far as we are! ☺ When we were all back together, we met up with Angelina again and we returned to the meeting room for some role playing. We pretended we were citizens of Pleasantville and that we had an issue with the homeless individuals in our area. Some of us wanted to help the homeless population get back on their feet while others simply wanted them out of our hair. It was all in fun, but it was cool to act in a way that we might not have necessarily agreed with. We were getting pretty into it, taking on the identites of organizations and individuals that would have had a say in the situation. We left St. Anthony’s for the day and returned for a one and a half hour napping time. Then we got a nice surprise of bundles of letters and care packages, which was nice after a long day at the center! Now the day is winding down. Tomorrow we’ll be able to sleep in until at least 9:00. Haha, that’s a change from my normal sleep in time of 1pm! We’ll get to wash our clothes tomorrow and have some variation from the normal schedule since it will be Saturday! See you in 8 days!
-Alessandra Zanassi!!!

Finally.....a group picture!!!! more to come!

Day 5

Sorry this is so late. We didn't have access to the computer all day yesterday, so Jordan recreated his journal entry for yesterday after our work day today...

June 21,2007

Hello everybody, this is Jordan Suero writing on behalf of SF07 for our fifth day on immersion. In the morning it was a little hard getting up. The bathroom was very crowded in the and in addition to that we had to move all of our sleeping bags and duffell bags into the other room because there would be a meeting later on that night. We caught the 71 Limited, so the faster bus, and made it right on time to St. Anthony’s.Our leader for the day was Colleen and she gave us a nice morning talk about budget cuts and where the cities money was being put. She was telling us this because later on in the day we would attend a rally talking about the city and budget spending. After Colleen finished her talk we split into groups to go to either Salvation Army’s program“Meals that Heal” or the San Francisco Adult Day Health Center across the street from Glide Memorial. I went to Salvation Army with Alessandra, Theresa (our co-leader), Rian, Christina, and Audrey, while Bianca, Shag, Katie, and Sumner went to the Adult Day Health Center. After both groups finished our work, we headed back to the dining hall to have lunch. We were in a hurry because we had to be ready to leave at 1:50, but by the time most of us got seated it was already 1:40! And by the way, the lunch served was Moussaka, and it was awesome. Well we ended up making it alright, and after lunch we headed to a program called “Care Through Touch” to hear from Maryanne Finch about how she began this program. It was very touching, she sang us a song to start off, which almost set the room afire with laughter, but we were able to control ourselves and listen to her stories about how she had come to discover that just spending time with homeless people, and especially giving massages, even just hand massages, could mean so much. She gave us a real insight on how the homeless feel when panhandling because she had sat with one for 45 minuites and no one looked at them once. Afterwards we went straight to City Hall where the budget rally was taking place, and it was a very real experience. Team Cold (Jordan, Shag, Christina, Bianca, and Alessandra) had to leave early to finish our shopping so we could make our Eggplant Parmesian, served with a side of pasta cooked in olive oil, needless to say, dinner was awesome. After dinner, we had journal time, and our reflection out in the park since it was the Summer Solstice, but the last thing we did before bed was have a team match of charades, and Team A-Jordan, Rian, Audrey Christina, and Theresa versus Team B- Shag, Bianca, Katie, Sumner and Alessandra. Team A won, by a landslide.

Day Four

Well, today was a slow day but still a good one. I woke up at around 7am, and we went to St. Anthony’s. Fitz talked to us today about the working poor and the ladder of society. He talked about how many people were in the middle rungs, but somehow they lost their footing and ended up on the bottom rung. Fitz also said the lowest of the low wwere immigrants because they start out with absolutely nothing, and they are still poor. After that, I did the Meals that Heal program with the Salvation Army. That’s where we bring food to people that are home bounded. I did it with Audrey, and we walked all around the Tenderloin serving meals. It was a pretty fun experience because we got to see the SROs and interact with different people. Mr. Shag, Sumner, Cristina, and Rian did it as well but separate from Audrey and me. After that part, we got back to the Salvation Army and we helped out this guy named Larry by loading clothes in a plastic bag and then putting it somewhere upstairs. We then went to St. Anthony’s and ate lunch. I ate lunch by myself today! I was nervous at first, but I felt pretty comfortable. In line to get lunch, I met this really great guy named Dennis, and he was so nice. He told me many stories about his life and how hard he worked. He told me that he had a job that started at 4pm and it would go until 4am. It was fun talking to him because he was very talkative. Then during lunch I met this other guy who called himself Frankenstein. He is the probably the funniest guy I met in the Tenderloin. He’d make fun of me in a joking manner and then he’d laugh at his own jokes with such a weird laugh. I think he was once a comedian before he ended up in the Tenderloin because he was so hilarious. Anyway, after he left, I met this woman named Gilda who was very sweet. She reminded me of the kind of resilience Fitz was talking about today. She told me that she is a drug addict, and that she’s addicted to cocaine. She is really trying to get into one particular rehab program. I hope she got in because she said she had a meeting at 1pm. I also told her about the St. Anthony’s drug rehabilitation program, and she said she’s look into it. She was a very sweet lady. I really admired her determination to get over her addiciton because she told me that her addiction is killing her. So after that, we went back upstairs and Fitz introduced us to this guy named Daniel. He elaboprated more aobut the working poor and it was kind of interesting. However, he showed us a video that was really boring (to be honest) and I did not pay attention at all. When we finished up at St. Anthony’s, we went to the produce market and we bought 2 meals for under 20 dollars. It was pretty amazing. So now I’m back at the St. Francis room and I’m writin in my journal.

Bianca Manalansan

Day Three

June 19, 2007

As I sit down to contribute to our burgeoning immersion blog, the day has winded down; everyone sits around playing cards, prepares to take a shower, or talks about random day experiences.
Earlier on Immersion, Mr. Shaughnessy broke the group up into two smaller groups to prepare evening meals; the groups, entitled “Hot” and “Cold,” made dinner both last night and tonight for eighteen dollars. Tonight, team “Cold” – Cristina, Bianca, Jordan, Alessandra, and Mr. Shaughnessy – made macaroni and cheese for all of us. The dinner tasted delicious as the group worked relatively from scratch and included zucchini and watermelon slices in order to round out the meal. After the meal, team “Hot” did the dishes and spent an especially long amount of time getting dried cheese out of the cheese grater.
After dinner, everyone went upstairs to a meeting room where Alessandra and I led the group in our evening reflection. Our reflection focused on simple living; we read a passage from the Sermon on the Mount and played the song “Bare Necessities.” Our group discussed the disparities of government spending on federal buildings versus combating homelessness.
Now, our group prepares for bed, and we continue to have increasingly strange conversations as the night wanes. At the moment, the topic of conversation is obscure dog mixes – golden doodle. We plan to spend the next couple of days massaging individuals, working in the kitchen, and preparing meals.
Goodnight,
Rian Dineen

Day Two

It’s ten of six on the second day of our San Francisco Immersion. Today we met Fitz, the director of justice education for interns, volunteers, and advocates. He talked to us in the morning about the lives of Francesco Bernadone (St. Francis), Chiara Fernadone (St. Clare), and Fernando Buglioni (St. Anthony). We watched a part of Brother, Son, Sister, Moon where St. Francis took off all his clothes and was “born again” in front of the Bishop and the whole town.
I’m getting pretty accustomed to the Tenderloin and the people in it. I was a little afraid of being uncomfortable for two weeks, but a lot of that has already faded away. I love these people. Even with the sadness, you can just laugh so easily with them as if there was not a care in the world. I met a blues pianist named Chili yesterday, and I met his daughter and granddaughter today. I think a lot of people don’t ever put a face to “the poor”; it’s not a very personalized term. But just being down here and seeing all the same people at lunch I talked with yesterday (since we served and cleaned the dining room today) made me feel like there exists a great community.
Maybe I’ll talk to y’all soon. I seem to be getting a reputation of a sleeper, so I don’t know when my next chance to blog will be.

Peace out,

Sumner Fontaine

Day One

June 18, 2007

Today was our first full day of immersion. We all got up at 7:00 a.m. to make sure we would have enough time before we left. We left at 8:15 to catch the bus on Haight Street that would take us into the Tenderloin. After a full bus ride, we made it to St. Anthony’s. We were first introduced to Angelina, and SI alumna. She gave us an overview of what St. Anthony’s is, who goes there, and what its mision is. She also explained some facts about the Tenderloin neighborhood. We then got our nametags and walked a few blocks to the clothing store where we had our first job. We met the director there, Trish, who showed us where the families shopped and the rules/logistics for the clothing distribution. She then took us through the furniture/utensil store and into the back room. There, we hung all of the recently donated clothes. After this, we walked back to St. Anthony’s and paired up into the lunch line. After standing in line for a while, we got our lunch, and sat in pairs at different tables. When we were done, Angelina took us on a tour of the Tenderloin neighborhood. During this, a man claiming to be a historian, gave us a brief—and colorful—description of what the Tenderloin “really” is. This was the end of our day. We took the bus back to St. Agnes and took about an hour nap—we were tired. Then we got into our dinner groups that Mr. Shaughnessy randomly chose. I was in the shopping and cooking group with Audrey, Rian, Sumner, and Theresa. We bought a spaghetti dinner for $18.00!! It even included garlic bread and corn! While we were cooking and shopping, the other group was journaling and showering. After dinner the other group washed the dishes and we went back to do our journals. Then we all got together to do a group meditation/prayer and end the night. We walked back to our room, took showers, read/played games, and got ready for bed.
Katie Nolan