looking forward to volunteering

My thing lately has been to try to get into the volunteering circuit. I miss being out in the community, and there are so many nights I have nothing to do. I'm currently cleared to be a mentor for a Karen family that arrived on Thursday. I am so incredibly excited to meet them. It has been a long time since I was able to forge a relationship with a refugee family that I could keep around for a long time. While working in resettlement, I had to move on every 3 months and never got a chance to be close to a refugee family like I wanted. I already have tons of ideas of what I want to do with them to help them learn English and feel comfortable in their surroundings. My biggest thing now is that I want to find a way to record vocabulary, so they can listen to correct pronunciation on their own time. I hope to meet them this week sometime.

I'm also training to be a VITA volunteer (helping people complete their taxes). I had to do a lot of studying and take an online exam. It took me quite some time to finish the exam, but when I was finished, I only got 66%, and I needed 80% to pass. I had one more chance to take the exam, so I spent some more time studying, and passed the second try with 90%. That made me really happy. For some reason I enjoyed studying about taxes. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that I enjoyed learning something new. I think I will be volunteering Sundays to help with taxes. I think it will be an interesting experience.

So...I am off onto some new volunteering adventures. I am excited.

Me and Kurt didn't do a whole lot on Saturday. Yesterday I ran 4.25 miles, did some lifting, we bought some stuff for Kurt at Scheel's for his marathon training, stopped in to look at some stuff at Hobbytown, Kurt made Paneer and some other Indian food for dinner (which was delicious), and we watched 3 episodes of West Wing. Friday night we celebrated with our friend Tyne because she got a job! We had Lazzari's pizza (downtown Lincoln), where the guy who took our order was a total snot to me and Kurt. Then we went to Yogurtini. I had Thin Mint yogurt, which was AMAZING. Kurt ran 10 miles today for his marathon training.

Today is the Superbowl. It's such a bizarre type of "holiday". We're going to a friend's house. Tomorrow, back to the grind.