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Sunday Sep 16, 2007

ASPIRE

It's two weeks in and I'm absolutely loving the work I'm doing! I've finally settled into Toynbee Hall and have started my work as the Ashtead Youth Work volunteer. The project I'm working on, ASPIRE, will be working with 60 year 10 students who have been identified as 'excluded within school' and will be based in six schools in Tower Hamlets (London's East End). Over the next year we'll be presenting them three different sections, Think, Express & Achieve - with this term to focus on citizenship; next term will be arts-based & will culiminate in a theatre production; and, finally, next summer will involve a 4-day residential sailing trip!

It's weird living just off Whitechapel High Street. Oddly enough, I've noticed on maps that Commercial Street is the mark point for the Congestion Charge scheme and it so aptly marks life in this area. If I turn east out of my door & travel 1000 feet, I may as well have travelled 1000 miles as that corner of London is known as Banglatown (I hope I spelled that right) and I feel as though I stick out like a sore thumb with my sunglasses & American accent. By the same token, if I turn west out of my door & travel the same distance, I'm in the City and surrounded by almost picturebook London with beautiful buildings & oodles of history practically oozing from the pavement.

Of course, the accents I encounter in either direction are still bending my ear into confusion, but that'll all sort itself out, right?

Someone recently asked me the best part so far - my answer is very, very simple. Brick Lane. Having lived in miles and miles from any sort of curry houes (good, bad or otherwise), I have to say I adore being able to walk to the next street over and drool my way down the street trying to decide where to eat.

Beyond that, I'm still trying to figure out just how to spend all the free time I seem to have, so I guess I'll say ta for now and start trolling through do-it's database to see what kind of stuff I can find to do.

Posted by Dana ( 2:19 PM )
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