my jane & finch citizenship

my first day was pretty goood...
i got to jane and finch at 11am, and my summer mission began...
so i first met up with john knight and met 2 of the interns... asha and laura..

(asha's from bermuda, and she's graduating from York for bio in june, she's really cool, i just chilled with her, and learned a lot bout her background and that she just came to toronto for university and found a home here at jane and finch and the christian centre church, she's cool)
(laura's a cool girl from burlington, and she does graffiti, so she jsut started graffiti'ing some of the jr-high kids' tshirts for $2 each.. and all the kids all line up for her to graffiti stuff... she's also a skater girl, and she loves kids. im gonna get her to graffiti a tshirt for me :P)

then i moved into my apartment, which is at the corner of jane and shoreham, and the apartment has a sick view. it looks over the jane and finch corridor, and it opens up right there, so out the balcony, you can see the whole plaza infront of my building, the intersection of jane and shoreham, jane st, you can see apartments all around, you can see a bit of York housing, you can see Christian Centre Church, and brookview jr high next door, and the community center, you can even see the CN tower! like the view is amazing, and i love the apartment.. it's not as ghetto as i imagined. im rooming with Ian knight, john's brother, and andre who is this black guy who's from kitchener, goes to York, and plays bass for CCC. they're both awesome, friendly guys.

afterward, i went to the church and met some of the jr. high kids. (brookeview is a jr. high LITERALLY next door to the church, like 2 ft away from the church, with about 600-800 kids)
and we had like a basketball program during their lunch, just for whoever wanted to play...
when i did the bridletowne project a couple summers ago, workign with the inner city kids of scarborough, at warden and finch, i thought those kids were different in culture and attitude from what i've grown accustomed to seeing, but THESE kids are even more different.... kids interacting in a way i've never seen. the kids seemed a little selfish at times... like when playing basketball, the kids wouldn't pass the ball too often, and would usually try and do things by themselves. sometimes they would even steal the ball from their own teammates, often not trusting their abilities. and also another thing i noticed was how much the kids talk, and kinda talk at each other, putting each other down... it just seemed like i haven't seen kids act like that towards one another before.... (just the kids i saw yesterday)

after the basketball program, we had a staff meeting, went over some leadership stuff, the whole internship thing...etc.... and honestly, i feel that God has blessed me so much, because He's given me so much through fundraising already, and it didn't come as easily for the other interns and stuff. anyway, we filled out some forms and stuff, then me and asha headed over to john's house. john's house consists of himself, his wife, jessie, sarah, laura, asha, and soon there will be another girl living there too... hahah and the house isnt big either.... but it's like a 2 min walk from the church and like 3 houses down from the young adult's pastor. i talked with asha, and just learned about her, and the community, and the people and it was really cool hearing another side of seeing the people and community here.

by the way, this whole day they were fasting, so i didnt eat either, so we were all starving, so at 7pm we went over to the young adult's pastor, Pastor Olu, who lives 5 sec. away from john, and they had a young adults group there. mannn it's very diverse there... very multicultural, but people were still extremely warm and welcoming to me. There were some former hindu's there, some girls frm ghana, a guy from the carribean (i think), an asian woman, 2 brown girls, and me and the interns. it was extremely multicultural and diverse, and i never experience the act of worshipping and praising God with people of different skin colour and praying with them too, the prayer just seemed so powerful, cause it just seems like it's one of the groups' strengths... and the focus on prayer seems so intimate and so tremendous. after meeting so many nice, friendly people, we had a feast at the pastor's house and it was really cool meeting all the different people, learning about them, and how they all know each other...etc. it was really cool, esp. since a couple of them welcomed me to jane and finch several times... it was really nice. plus, a lot of the people seem so intellectual and a lot of them seem very insightful, and always wanting to discuss things to have a better understanding of things, or they will discuss small things that have 2 sides to it, but would try and exchange opinions to see different perspectives and stuff like that, it's really cool, and the people are great, and very spiritually mature.

yep, so after dinner, and after walking a new friend home, me and ian walked back to our place and chilled, and i had some cupcakes which was really nice. i couldnt really sleep till like 2am, and we had to wake up at 6:30am for a basketball tournament the next day...
so at 7am we all meet together at the church and get on a bus to go to trenton, which is like 2 hours away, near kingston... sorta..... and there was a basketball tournament at some air force/military base. it was cool. i felt soo minority... first of all, all the teams there were mostly white people, from trenton, pickton....etc... then we brought 2 teams from jane and finch, so our teams were all black, except for me, john, and ian. and i was the only asian guy in the whole tournament. our team consisted of me, john, ian, and 4 gr.10 kids who are actually pretty good, and the other team consisted of a bunch of gr.11s who all play together in highschool. our team lost the first game by 18 (against the championship team of really old/jacked black guys from toronto), won the second game by 13 (against one of the trenton teams), then went into overtime in the third game AT THE BUZZER, after being down by 14 pts, with 3 mins left... we came back, made a huge run and tied it at the buzzer to send it into OT, but then i pulled my calf muscle, and we kinda didnt really play well and we lost by 4 in the last game. we ended up in 6th place. the other team won their first game by 33 pts, lost their second game (aganst the championship team) by 6 pts, and lost their last game by 4 pts, and they ended up 3rd place overall. after the tourney... we went to the local trenton church for the afterparty...

at the church, they have this upstairs part with like this old brick wall, and they have a traffic light, and a whole bunch of street signs, and it looks like a cafe, and there's 2 pool tables, and a stage for like a youth group service, it was a pretty cool place, and they hosted the tournament, so there was hot dogs, sandwiches, chips, popcorn, pizza, and pop and stuff....for free.. and then they gave out awards and medals. this one guy from the championship team, shared his testimony bout how he used to sell weed and rob people and stuff, then he came to know Christ... and it was new, hearing the urban language in his testimony about giving his life to God... "but like yooo, God's there for you, still... and like yoooo God does big tings, yo, trust." hahah stuff like that, no but it was cool, i have nothing against it, i just thought it was.... something i dont hear too often.

then after this, we all got on the bus, and went back home... dropping some of the kids home and then going back to the church. honestly, this was a crazy experience in just this one day, hanging out with these inner city highschool kids, they're all black, and they'd all be listening to lil wayne and other rap music, and so deeply consumed in the rap culture and stuff like that, and some involved in gangs and stuff, like they would be talking about bloods and crips and stuff, and they make fun of each other a LOT, and they yell a lot, they're very rowdy, very agressive, but also sometimes very funny, but 99% of them would be talking non-stop... hahaha, most of them have a lot to say. HONESTLY, im not even joking... it's like the kids in the movie 'Hardball" with keanu reaves, or from "coach carter" or from "grid iron gang"... like the youth are just like that... some of them even look like those guys.... honestly, i felt like i was in those movies today, especially when we all got to trenton, being in a completely new and foreign environment, playing in a dominantly white place, beign the minority and playing basketball, kinda like we have somethign to prove, then going to that trenton church, where it seemed like those kids were just so amazed at all the new stuff.... it's exactly like the kids in 'Hardball' when they got new uniforms and made it to the final game and stuff and had pizza... just like something new and exciting for them, that they can enjoy, a break from some of the troubling, and hard lives that some of them have to live everyday... it was kinda bittersweet in that way..

in the late afternoon, we came back to jane and finch, and me, ian, and john walked down jane street to block buster to rent a movie, and we got some christian movie about a used car salesman.... it was a low budget film produced by some church in georgia.... the acting was TERRRIBLE, but for a whole production made by a church, it was not bad, but the whole thing was really cheesy, lol. but yeah anyway the walk down jane street was cool, it really shows you had small and close the community can be, we bumped into like 6 or 7 people that john knew, and it was cool meeting some of them.... it was cool just walking down the street and just really living out the community and experiencing it first hand.

the people here, especially most of the people i see, are dominantly black, but there are still a lot of other cultures... very multicultural and diverse, like muslims, mandarin people )though, i've only seen maybe 4 or 5 chinese people), spanish people, and a lot of people from islands like bermuda, carribean, and stuff like that. most of the housing complexes and apartments are either government subsidized housing, or some market rent apartment buildings.

but yeah, tomorrow i'll be going to their sunday service, for my first time, and i hear it's very..... NOT-CONSERVATIVE... and i hear it's very diverse and very powerful... i guess we'l see.
if you have any questions or comments or anything... DEFINTELY feel free to leave me a comment, and i'll try to get back to you asap.

im exhausted right now from 4.5 hours of sleep, and a whole exhausting day of traveling and basketball, so im dead tired, and i mustve made a lot of spelling and grammar errors. sorry.
anyway, thanks for reading... God bless

nts: survival kit, cupcakes, andrea volcheck, cardboard box, walk-home-...