Wandering around the neighborhood on foot lends a sort of familiarity to everything. I become a familiar face to the people just as much as they become a familiar face to me. What never becomes familiar to see though are the drug deals and needles that lay in the street, marring the innocence of the children who grow up here. I sat on my porch today, watching the family across the way (must learn their name) work on their front garden. The older little boy mimed his father’s every action, except in classic little boy form he somehow managed to be more of a hassle than a help. Picking up dirt he tossed it into the air and waved his wide open arms around in jubilation as the clods came tumbling back into the mound that his father slowly and methodically raked out as a flowerbed. Stumbling out of the front door next were the two little girls, they hurried about after one another in a frenzy of Spanish and English as they sucked their lollipops and fell in line with the other younger girls, strolling their streets—soon to be following in their mothers’ faithful footsteps of neighborhood guarding patrol. A kitten peeped out at me from underneath the family’s van. This kitten is a never ending story of adventuring; I really hope that it does not find its end under the tire of one of the teenage boys’ cars as they zoom through the neighborhood. Its little eyes searched, inquiringly, into the street, peering at everything with its yawning innocence just waiting to escape to our side of the street until…GOTCHA! The littlest girl hurried out to the kitten with arms spread hoping to have it leap into them. This endeavor was all but futile as the kitten, in its own form of spazy grace, skedaddled away toward the porch. Dad was on it, though, and he quickly harassed the kitty with a spurt of hose water, making it once more dash out into the trimmed grass with a stream of children on its tail. What I last saw was all of them huddled over, looking down into a corner of bush and porch waiting and wishing for the hissing kitten to come out to them. 2 little girls, roughly 8, one boy about 5 one about 3 and another neighbor friend (boy) about 4 all waiting. Night time came around and found me sitting on my couch reading Colette and brushing up on my Spanish. Mary came round to give us our schedules for orientation…I really wish it all would start already. I am getting tired of this useless feeling. Brendan collapsed upon the couch next to me we went over some Spanish words together, in a half-hearted/ humbled attempt to prepare for our students. Antonina and Megan are much fun. Antonina’s roommate has yet to get here; Sean just arrived from Boston and seems to be all sorts of “still waters run deep”. Now I am off to bed. While brushing my teeth some yells burst out of the night air. It’s crazy how the environment that you live in (i.e. the rough neighborhood that is this hood) can make everyday sounds take on a whole new meaning. Perhaps, if I heard this sort of yelling in Santa Cruz I would think little to nothing of it, but here—in a place where a girl was stabbed a night ago and a man was shot before then and there are gang initiations and drug deals a block away from home—things certainly do go bump in the night.