Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 7

Somehow I'm back in Lawrence.

The skyline I've grown to love.

The last day was bittersweet for Team Rainbow, although knowing it would be the last morning showering at the Y was a comfort. We met our Rainbow Health Initiative Contact, Billy, at the Global Market for lunch and recap. I chose Asian for lunch, and got a rather remarkable fortune: A four-wheeled adventure will soon bring you happiness. Well would you look at that? It's already come true!

Our last service activity was to drive to different destinations across the city and put up various flyers. Most of them were connected to the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition or the Shot Clinic. I was a bit disappointed that we would not be interacting with people other than each other on our last day, but I did enjoy that we were able to get different views of Minneapolis. I fell in love with Lake Calhoun. I wish we had discovered it earlier in the week.

Flatjay is neither Team Gale nor
Team Peeta. Flatjay is team Ceasar.

With the rest of the evening free, we headed to the Mall of America to watch The Hunger Games and the KU game. Both of these turned out to be excellent; a splendid way to end the week. We arrived back at the Church around midnight, and had planned to get a few hours of sleep and then get on the road by 7 am. However, we decided that we were just too eager to get any real sleep, so we made a last minute decision to go ahead and hit the road. What a great decision that was. It was wonderful to be back in lawrence a little after 8 am. I was able to sleep a bit on the way, but I still feel a little van-lagged (is that a thing? It is now).

Kaitlyn rock chalking up at
BWW at the Mall of America.

It will be nice to sleep in an actual bed tonight, but there is another feeling that came with my return. It's a feeling I've experienced before and have referred to as Post-Conference Depression. Now I realize the wording can be a bit flexible, because I certainly am feeling Post-Alternative Break Depression. My days were full and exciting. I was always doing new things, gaining knowledge, getting that special feeling that comes with helping people. Now I'm back to the same old thing, left with an insatiable craving for a little bit of what I left behind in Minneapolis.

That is the very best thing about an Alternative Break. They instil a craving for service within. Being in an environment that was completely submerged in a service-driven lifestyle, even if just for a week, really does work to change perceptions and goals. I knew this was the goal of the break before I went on it, but I  was not entirely sure about how that goal would be reached, if at all, in myself. I'm very proud to say that I believe my Alternative Break impacted me in an extremely positive and inspiring way. I feel that my passion for equality for LGBTQ communities has been reenergized. I also now know that I must make service an integral part of my life to feel like I am getting the most out of my experiences. I really appreciate the fact that I have had this experience as a Freshman. I still have much time to make decisions to positively impact and maximize my contributions to my community and my world, be it in my daily choices, my next steps, or my future career path.

Thank you to my group for being so wonderful. Adam, Julie, Kaitlyn, Amanda, and Leigh: you guys are great and beautiful people, and I feel honored that I had the chance to work with you and get to know each of you.

A huge thank you to the University of Kansas Alternative Breaks. My Alternative Break has without a doubt been the best thing that has happened to me at KU so far, and I am absolutely confident it will be something I treasure and reference for years to come. It is something that will shape and transform the rest of my KU experience, as well as the rest of my life.

Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 6

Thursday was rainbow day. Each member of Team Rainbow proudly wore a different color, completing the whole spectrum. We are adorable.

We only had one project planned for the day: working with the Aliveness Project. However, it would be our longest project, as we were helping them plan for their annual Dining Out For Life event. They made sure there was plenty for us to do as far as mailings and cleaning and ironing aprons. There were other volunteers there that came and went as we worked. We had fun getting to know these people and interacting with them.

I think I cleaned and or ironed at least
100 aprons. That takes time.

The Aliveness Project has been the most inspiring organization to work for. Their mission, according to their website, is to "encourage self-empowerment and provide direct services for persons living with HIV/AIDS. Since 1985, The Aliveness Project has been a community resource and active leader in the HIV community in Minnesota. What started out as a small group of people gathering to share potluck meals has grown into a membership organization that now serves one out of four Minnesotans living with HIV/AIDS!" I was very impressed by both their outreach and their variety of programs. They have their meal program, serving 10 meals on 6 days of the week, a food shelf, which is meant to help supplement by the month and is designed specifically for the nutrition required by persons with HIV/AIDS, integrative therapy, case management, and they host many events for fundraising.

You don't even understand. I LOVE IKEA.

What set the Aliveness Project apart to me was the way in which people were being helped. The Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition and Pride Alive both worked at prevention, while the Aliveness Project was focused on caring for those already infected and helping them improve their quality of life. One is not better than the other, they are both equally important. However, caring for people resonates more with me over prevention. It is just the type of service that I believe I would normally choose. I am so appreciative that we worked with the Aliveness Project, because I don't believe I would have had another opportunity to work with a similar organization. I was actually able to discover something about myself with regards to my development as a person committed to life-long service.

Some people on my team started to complain of feeling fatigued, and took to caffeinated beverages as a response. Usually feeling pretty pumped and energetic, I was surprised to find that sleep deprivation eventually yet suddenly took hold of me. One minute I was spot-treating aprons like a gold medalist, the next I was staring off into space. I finally gave in, and had a cranberry caffeine drink of Amanda's. I had no idea how quickly it would work...

One of the Aliveness Project employees, Josh, spoke with us about HIV and AIDS, from the basic acronyms to the advanced details of life with the virus. As an individual living with HIV, Josh was very informative and happy to answer all our questions. I really appreciate how easy it has been to talk with everyone on this trip. It's great to see how much people care about education and expanding views.

This thing was a bad idea...

I was pleased as punch when we were able to walk through IKEA during the evening, sampling their swedish meatballs and their decor. I just love that place. I ended the night with a large cappuccino, which turned out to be a bad idea considering I was up until 3am...

Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 5

The church is freezing.

I actually prefer sleeping in a cooler climate than a hotter one. I snuggle up in the blankets and enter what I like to call a "coma-like state." But this, this is a different chill. It gets me all the way down to the depths of my bones. It's bad enough during the day, especially when we are down in the basement, but trying to sleep through it is another thing entirely.

I have now established a nightly routine:

1. Go to bed in shorts and t-shirt and struggle to maximize coverage from the small and thin pathetic excuse for a blanket I regrettably decided to bring.
2. Fail completely at attempts to fall asleep, shiver for 30 minutes.
3. Finally nod off.
4. Wake up at some ungodly hour in the morning, such as 4am or 6am, miserable, tired, freezing, and unable to fall back asleep.
5. Begrudgingly put on sweats and a sweat shirt, silently wish I had thought to bring warm fuzzy socks.
6. Drift back to sleep until Adam's "fire alarm" wakes me up, give the general area of his slumber a dirty look.

It's art.

Open Arms! :)

For Wednesday we were scheduled to work for Open Arms, an organization that cooks and delivers free meals to people with life-threatening illnesses who are not able to shop or cook for themselves. We arrived at their headquarters, waited for our meals to be assembled, helped ourselves to some coffee, and then loaded up the cars to deliver meals to 5 different people. The meals are specifically tailored to meet the nutritional needs of individuals living with HIV/AIDS, MS, ALS, breast cancer and more than 60 other diseases, according to their website.

Because of my natural intelligence, knowledge, charisma, and convenient seat in shot gun, I took on the position as Chief Navigator for this adventure. Somehow, we had a few problems with our given directions, but nothing that an iPhone couldn't fix. We took the meals in sets of two. Because of the nature of Open Arms, we had specific instructions to be clandestine about our delivery. We were to simply say "food delivery!" and make no mention of Open Arms. It was a little awkward because I didn't feel like I could speak with the people at all. I knocked on the door, said hello, set the food on the counter, responded to small talk if they made it, and then wished them a good day and left. I felt very detached from what I was actually doing. Even though I knew all the information on Open Arms, that experience has been the least connective for me. I think it would be interesting to either do delivery for longer, or be able to be on the kitchen side of things.

The view from the endless bridge.

We had a bit of a free afternoon, so Team Rainbow decided to chase down the infamous "endless bridge" we kept hearing about. Turns out the endless bridge is not actually a bridge. It's a slight platform connected to the Guthrie that jets out a bit over the river. It provided a great view of the city. More time was spent perusing the Guthrie gift shop, exploring the University of Minnesota (which only made me appreciate how unique and beautiful our campus is), and taking a walk through Dinkytown - their equivalent of Mass St. or Aggieville.

Perfect graffiti is perfect.

I have been contemplating our unique situation: not really volunteering for one organization all week, but many. I like that we are able to get a sample of many different ways of helping out the LGBTQ community, and we are able to meet more people and hear more stories. It is allowing us to grow and expand our horizons exponentially due to the seven different circumstances we are privileged to experience. Of course, there are always ups and downs. I sometimes feel like I've only just scratched the surface before we have to move onto the next activity, and I'm left wanting more. Everything we do is in small spurts, and I feel like I am not able to do as much as I could had I been doing the same thing the whole week. However, I understand that this Alternative Break is less about changing the world and more about changing me. I want it to change how I think and how I perceive and how I dedicate myself. With this as my goal, I do feel very blessed to have so many different experiences with different organizations to draw from, all in one week.

Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 4

There is something about this trip that completely exceeds my expectations on everything. I'm trying to view that as a sign of my future growth. For example, I had no idea that the church we are staying at would play such a large role in our trip.

As we cleaned up breakfast and mentally began to prepare for our second day of volunteering, we ran into June, the Trans Coordinator there at All God's Children. She found out that we would be doing work with the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition. Being a transgendered woman herself, she offered to answer any questions we may have. What started as a simple question and answer period quickly developed into June spilling her life story. She had a fascinating life perspective and offered us much insight into one woman's experience with the man to woman change. It was really cool that she was willing to teach us so much, and I never expected to gain so much knowledge just from the place I happened to be staying at.

Our first volunteering project of the day was working with the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition to make safer usage kits and condom kits. Billy from Rainbow Health Initiative met us there to be a supervisor of sorts over the assembly line we formed. The condom kits were first. We attacked our individual duties with zeal and were done soon, moving on to the safer usage kits. One of these kits was for safer usage of smoking crack, and the other was safer usage for injecting heroin. Some in our group were a little uncomfortable with making the kits, and understandably so. It did seem a little strange to be making things to help those who are addicted to drugs, but the intentions really are good. It's unrealistic to believe that you can stop everyone from abusing substances, but eliminating risk of exposure to diseases and infection really does make a difference. It's an interesting way to approach the problem, and I believe it was a new experience for everyone on our trip.

Our second bout of volunteering for the day was done for the Minnesota AIDS Project with Pride Alive. Pride Alive is an organization that works to improve the health of gay and bisexual men. The event we were working was making more condoms with local gay men. It had developed into a social event for Pride Alive, with pizza and soft drinks available, comfy couches to lounge on while creating the kits, and a large tv for our viewing pleasure. Had Glee been back on yet, we were told it would have surely been the show of choice. These condom kits were a bit more graphic and attention-getting, but at this point we were already considering ourselves condom-kit pros.

It was really fun to talk to all the men there. A few of them were affiliated with Delta Lambda Phi, a nationally known fraternity founded by gay men for all men. Some of the DLP men had recently visited the University of Kansas for a conference. Small world! It took me a little bit to try to talk to them; they were really engaged in their conversations that I kept listening in on. As soon as I broke into their circle, they were very charming and fun. We hugged goodbye. :)

We got back to the church right as a fundraising banquet for the Equality Riders from Soulforce was ending. Soulforce is an organization that is dedicated to relentless nonviolent resistance to achieve equality for LGBTQ people. They were almost getting ready to leave, but we had time to talk to a few and help them write affirming messages in easter eggs for the students at North Central University.

Very full and fun day!

Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 3

After getting used to church floors, we were able to finally catch some much needed sleep. Despite the restful night, the morning turned quite disadvantageous for me at least. My poor timing in securing a shower at the Y rendered the water as completely freezing cold. Perhaps I should do more camping.

We were all excited to wear our Alternative Break shirts for the first day that we would be volunteering. Unfortunately, disaster struck there as well when I spilled on my shirt, causing an unmistakable yellow stain. Frantically attacking my shirt with a borrowed Clorox bleach pen and then later a hair dryer, I managed to successfully remove the stain in time for us to be uniform for our meeting with Billy from Rainbow Health Initiative.

We also made it to the grocery store to buy more than just cereal. It seems like when our group isn’t frantically tweeting with hashtags, singing along to We Are Young (our group song), or volunteering of course, we’re eating. I blame it on the fact that food is not readily available to us; we all just go into “eat like there’s no tomorrow” apocalyptic mode.

Amanda, Julie, Shelby (ME AGAIN!), Kaitlyn, Leigh,
and Adam, all stoked to finally be at RHI

Flat Jay gets a chance to make a phone call

After a quick introduction to Rainbow Health Initiative, Billy gave us some information on what we would be doing the rest of the week. We were being put to use in a variety of ways, branching out into other organizations. At the end of the week, we would be proud volunteers for seven different organizations. We left Rainbow Health Initiative feeling excited and eager for the new activities each day had in store.

Two quick stops and 30 minutes of goof-off time later, we were in the van again headed to volunteer at a phone bank with Minnesotans United for all Families. We went through training and then were put on the phones to call Minnesotan voters, asking them to vote no on the proposition that would ban gay marriage in the Minnesotan constitution. Our script had two main questions in the style of a survey, but the rest of the text was more of a conversation. We asked them about what they felt, what their concerns were, what their stories were. In some cases we shared personal stories. One of my best friends still in high school is gay, and I shared with two voters how much I want to see him be able to marry the man of his dreams.

We were taught about the concept of a ‘moved’ voter. A moved voter did not always switch extremes. For example, there would almost never be a case of switching from 100% Support to 100% Oppose. Rather, a moved voter was something we had to intuit. Even if the person started undecided and remained undecided, if something we said or something we asked them caused them to rethink the issue in a different light and possibly give it more thought, then we had a moved voter. We were told about half of us would experience moving a voter. I was a little nervous, and very hopeful that I would get to have such an experience. You can imagine my delight when I moved not one, but two voters.

I was lucky to not have very bad experiences. Those who fully supported the proposal were polite to me. Some in our group were not so lucky, and spoke with people who used abusive language and tones. The fact that there is still so much anger and ignorance on this issue is disappointing, but progress is being made. By the end of the evening, we had had almost 150 conversations with voters, and 75 of those had fully opposed the proposal! At the start of the week, I was a bit unsure as to the impact I would be making. I loved phone banking because I felt like it was quite possible that I was actually making a difference. What if the outcome only comes down to a few votes? What if one of those few votes was someone I called and made aware or even moved? It’s a tantalizing thought, and one that everyone in our group felt as we drove back to meet our dear church floor for another night.

Shelby and the Rainbow Road, Day 1 & 2

The complete team, plus a random guy we picked up.
He's metal, so he doesn't need to eat much.

On March 17th, approximately 5:30 pm, Team Rainbow finally made it through the grueling 8 hour drive from Lawrence, Kansas, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Team Rainbow is composed of Thunder and Lighting, our site leaders, as well as Red, Guatemala, Mystique, and me, Doodle. Our mission was simple: one week of volunteering with Rainbow Health Initiative.

Stage one of our mission: actually getting to our destination. The drive was sprinkled with pit stops and interesting encounters, including an Amish horse buggy, a lead singer to a "soon to be famous" tribute band, a very large barn of some importance, and Urbandale, where we snacked on Quizno's and the infamous Urbandale Voice was born.

Upon finally arriving in Minneapolis, we quickly located the church with whose floors we would quickly become comfortable with: All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church. We were excited to meet Reverend Kevin, or as we fondly call him, Rev Kev. After getting some things straightened out at the Y, Rev Kev took us out on the town for dinner. We had fabulous BBQ despite being far from the saucy capital of Kansas City. We met with a few other members of the congregation and shared stories and laughter. I was so inspired to hear about how these men were able to persevere through and hold such strong faith despite criticisms in their past about them being openly gay. Their stories were all encouraging and hopeful.

The following day we attended service at the church. I absolutely loved everything about it. It was refreshing to hear a message that was not hateful or condescending, and the diversity within the congregation was wonderful.

Celebrating the game with over 100 other Jayhawks!

With Sunday as our free day, we spent most of the afternoon at the Mall of America, right after enjoying the beautiful weather in the statue garden by the Walker Museum of Art. Some of us did some “hardcore shopping” while others just tried to take in all the sights. Feeling tired and somewhat defeated, yet still toting our full shopping bags, we left the mall seeking a place to catch the KU game. We lucked out when we found Tiffany’s Sports Lounge, the official headquarters of KU for the Twin Cities. A very stressful game, but somehow we pulled it off. Good times were had by all, even as one of us caught up on sleep right there in the establishment.

Two full days, and at this point we hadn’t even met with our organization. I was exhausted, yet eagerly anticipating the next day.

The ghost of Adam haunts us all.