Budget

Hey Dielle! Wasn't sure how else to this, so I ended up using Blogger! I separated the screenshots of the budget statements by the date they occurred. Please keep in mind, all Lyft screenshots can be found separately below all the bank statements. Thank you!

5/21 - 5/28

5/28 - 6/3

6/4 - 6/5

6/10 - 6/14

6/17 - 6/19

6/20 - 6/24

6/24 - 6/27

6/27 - 7/5

7/5 - 7/10

7/11 - 7/15

7/15 - 7/18

7/17 - 7/22

7/22 - 7/24

7/25 - 7/26

7/25

Here's the Lyft section

Lyft
5/20 - 5/31


6/1 - 6/11


6/12 - 6/19


6/24 - 7/26

Week 9

Hey Dielle! Or, I guess, bye Dielle...

This was it... the last final week + weekend of CSOS... I'm really a mix of emotions, not gonna lie. CSOS has been a blast, and I really don't want it to end. I wanna continue spending time with these incredible people and working my job which I really enjoy, but I guess all good things must come to an end... Also, I guess I do feel like I need a break as well, but I wish that was all it was. A little homestay then back to the grind. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. I'll be really interested to see how our relationships with each other evolve over the school year, and I'm curious to see how my role at CEF will change. I was offered a leadership position as Tech Coordinator and I'm really excited about that! I basically work on helping populations without steady access to the internet/web/computers gain access. I've already got a couple ideas relating to nonprofits in the area that work in that field, but I'm excited to explore that goal! I'm tempted to also stay on the Housing Team but I wanna just try Tech Coordinator first and make sure it's not too much of a time commitment.

On Monday, in the office, I only had one meeting with a member I really like, so that was a fun day. Unfortunately, I had to tell him we'd no longer be working together due to the end of CSOS (sad) so that continues the sad trend of things being over.

Tuesday, was extremely similar. I had two member meetings, both of which with members I'd developed a great relationship with, so telling them I was gonna be gone sucked. The one upside to all of this is I always get to tell them I'm coming back in the Fall. To be honest, the timing also couldn't be any better because CEF is moving offices and will be closed August 14 - September 1, so by the time I'm settled in at school, I'll be able to get right to it and I won't have missed that many member meetings.

Wednesday was very interesting because I don't usually have member meetings on Wednesday, but this particular one I voluntarily came back in to meet with a member who I'd been having a difficult time with recently. The same one I talked about in last week's blog that had me in a tough position. I just really wanted to sort out his business before I left to Egypt. He technically came in on Monday as well, but he was 40 minutes late so we couldn't really do anything. This time he kept on insisting on the $200 Chapel Request, but we were hesitant. I got on the line with his landlord again and this time he confirmed the Member was getting locked out today. I pleaded with him for a while to let the member stay for 2 or 3 more days while the Chapel processed his request, but the landlord eventually hung up on me. I fulfilled the Chapel Request in a fashion that was both totally honest to the Member's complicated situation while still arguing on his behalf to get the money, but at the end of the meeting, I had to tell the Member there was nothing more I could do for him which was extremely difficult. In fact, not only did I tell him there was nothing more I could do for him, the one thing I could do was get him the address to the Durham Rescue Mission because he had nowhere to stay. I'd never seen anybody so look so defeated in front of me, and while I knew I wasn't at fault, I couldn't help but feel useless and inadequate for not being able to fix his situation. That was the first time I ended up crying at my job this summer.

Thursday, I met with a member I'd been meeting with for 7 weeks now to tell him I couldn't meet with him again: a recurring theme for this and next week. My other member was an old lady who needed her life insurance processed, so that was an easier meeting.

Friday was Seeds!!!!!!!!! I'm really happy with how the event turned out to be honest. I honestly didn't expect the turnout we got and I was honestly really happy serving food and dancing with all the kids. Although I had my doubts, the event was really great in my opinion.

On the weekend, we went to the Food Truck rodeo which I had no idea about but it ended up being really cool! I can't wait to go to things like that and the Farmers Market during the school year. I definitely feel really integrated into the Durham community and can't wait to try and spread that to my friends and other Duke students!

Here goes to the final week of CSOS... Thank you for everything, Dielle!!!!

Week 8

Hey, Dielle!

I feel like this gif of Matt Damon growing old describes how I feel entering week 9 of CSOS. It's unreal to think this Friday will be our community event and the following one, CSOS will be over and I'll be flying out to Egypt. As far as the community event is concerned, I'm extremely thankful to Bre for being the main facilitator for it and making sure everything is happening. Personally, I'm on the catering team and games team, so my job wasn't too bad, I just had to coordinate with the Co-op for salads and the day of the event, I just have to keep the kids entertained with games. I really don't know how many people are going to show up considering we still don't have any RSVPs, but I hope it still works out. Then again, RSVP'ing isn't everyone's style, I would know, having not RSVP'd yet to the event.

Another reflection I've been having actually relates to what I was talking about earlier with respect to not being ready for CSOS to be over. I feel like that thought's been running through all our minds since like week 4 even though that was so far in the beginning, and I think we should've/should just enjoy our time here together instead of always worrying about how we're not ready to leave. Kinda flows with that adage, "Don't be sad it's over, be glad that it happened." 

Work's been goin pretty well. My to-do list is pretty much over, I just have to keep contacting landlords and whatnot. However, with my role in housing, I got a meeting on Monday that just really messed with me ethically, as an Advocate for CEF, and really just as a person. I had a Member come in saying he was going to be evicted later that day as he was 2 months late on rent, but there were a lot of details that weren't coming together. He also said he'd be getting a $2000 stipend from NCCU at the end of the month, so we called his landlord to tell him that and he said he needed physical evidence, but if he got it, he didn't mind letting the Member stay. Anyway, after a lot of digging, we found out that the Member had dropped out of NCCU over a year ago. We also found out he'd been paying his rent for the past 6 months using various emergency financial assistance services and churches, and he'd been using the $2000 stipend story to his landlord for a while. The landlord then called us on his own and complained about the Member's habits and how he even tried to convince the landlord to raise the rent on other tenants in order to pay off his own debts. So here I was, with this person who was behaving arguably unethically by lying to various churches in order to get financial assistance, but also, he's a living, breathing human, who does deserve a roof over his head, and it's unfair that we live in a world where that's what he had to do to get by. Out of curiosity, I later looked him up online and found out he was a refugee from the DRC, but he also had a Ph.D. in Chemistry from a French University, so he was this incredibly well-educated man, but due to language barriers and the systematic injustice and racism that plagues this country, he was about to be out living on the streets. I kind of just shut down after that meeting and walked to Biddle to play piano because I didn't know how else to deal with it.

Tuesday was a lot better. I had this sweet old lady come in for my first hour there, and basically, for an hour, I just helped her learn how to use her new laptop. It was something I felt totally prepared for and capable of helping, so that was a nice turnaround from the day before. She was also just extremely nice and funny, so that set a pretty good tone for the rest of the day. Later, Eka, Seayoung, and I all went to see Spiderman: Far From Home which was surprisingly good! I don't know how Marvel keeps doing it with all their movies, but I'm all for it.

I came back from the movie theater around 11ish and both Fran and I hadn't had dinner, so at 11:30, we started cooking dinner, and it was really my first time since the beginning of CSOS, so it was a nice throwback to when it took me 8 hours to cook chicken. This time, we made chicken and mushrooms with a white wine sauce, and it actually kinda slapped. Oh yeah, we also started a small fire!

Wednesday was a pretty chill day overall. Nothing crazy in our outside the workplace. I spent the majority of the day reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, which I actually really liked. I hadn't read a book that caused me to do that much soul searching in a while. That night, I also watched Coco for the first time, which was a really cute movie. Wednesday and Thursday were really similar for me this week, I don't know why, on both days, I was just reading a lot outside of work I think which is why they blend together.

Friday was a lot of fun, a lot of us went to the Swift pool for a little for the first time, and then David hosted us and all the BNs in the area for dinner which was fun! It was great to get to see everyone again, and I'm honestly surprised it took us up until the 8th week of CSOS to do that.

On Saturday, we went to the Farmers Market, and it was my first time! It was really cool and I honestly can't wait to go during the school year, I feel like that'll be really fun. Got me some goat cheese and a fruit bowl. 

Today, we got Dance Dance Revolution for our suite, so that's been fun, but I'm kinda scared of another noise complaint from the people below us. Loooottttt of stomping feet in that game. But yeah, that's been week 8, here's to week 9!!!

(Actual video of Sarah playing DDR)

Week 7

How's it goin, Dielle! I don't know about you, but I've grown pretty tired of, "Hey, Dielle!"

So we're switching it up! That's kinda how I feel about this week: switched up. Fourth of July really threw things outta wack but it's okay. 

On Monday, nothing too crazy happened at the office. It was all fairly standard meetings up until the end of office hours. It was such an uneventful day that it was actually the first time in 7 months I forgot to take a one second video, which I usually do on the daily. I'm still pretty upset about that and I've considered cheating by just adding throwing in a video for that day that didn't actually happen that day, but I haven't decided yet. If I recall correctly, after work, I went over to the Biddle music rooms and just played piano for a little bit; that wouldn't be too hard to replicate just for the essence of it...

Tuesday was a lot more eventful for whatever reason! We had our staff meeting early on in the morning, after which I just made some more phone calls and worked on a new spreadsheet. My project work has actually been accumulating a bit more quickly than I anticipated so my to-do list is actually pretty long now. I'm gonna spend pretty much all of Week 8 making sure I finish everything on it. I've been doing alright thus far crossing off items more quickly than they're added on, but we'll see how that changes next week as both Ben and Olivia are out of the office, meaning I'm going to be the lead housing advocate and housing support. Basically, I have to redesign part of the laptop test again, process a new laptop request, distribute and document fliers, work on calling LIHTC properties, properties Olivia gave me, and DHA waitlist properties, and create a new FPOD spreadsheet.

After work on Tuesday, I went and played soccer with Fran and one of his co-workers at Reality Ministries which was a lot of fun. We then went to North Street for Taco Tuesday, and I got to meet a lot more of Fran's coworkers and the people he works with at Reality, so that was great! To cap off the day, we then watched Argentina vs Brazil in the Copa America, but sadly, Argentina lost. After coming back, we had a meeting on our community event, and that was the day. 

Wednesday morning for CEF, we had group massage therapy which was extremely relaxing and much needed! I then had a meeting with Ben on what I need to do while he's gone at Dashi and had legit ramen for the first time in my life, which was nice! The rest of the day was very chill/lowkey and was just more to-do list items until the dinner, which was actually really cool! I really enjoyed getting to talk to the B.N. alums and honestly haven't found a single B.N. yet that isn't doing something interesting or cool. Big legacy to live up to!

Fourth of July was a bit of a bummer because of the rain, not gonna lie. I really wanted to have a grill day outside of Swift but it rained out so we couldn't do that. Most of the day I actually spent on my own because I just needed some alone time. It was very regenerative but also I felt like I wasn't spending my Fourth right since I was alone for most of it. At night, we went to the Bulls' stadium and watched the fireworks, which would've been fun, except there was a massive sign blocking out most of them in front of us.

The weekend as a whole was pretty good. USWNT won the world cup which was super exciting!!!! Megan Rapinoe is the G.O.A.T. no questions asked. Egypt choked in the African Cup, but honestly, I was fine with that with all the scandal the team's been going through recently. I didn't really watch any of their games, I just kinda kept up with the scores. We're also having a game night tonight and it seems like it's ripping us apart!! Monopoly Deal and Resistance are giving me major trust issues!!!! It's really fun though, and I can't wait for next week!

Week 6

Hey Dielle!

Hope everything is still going well on your end! Week 6 has come to a close and we're stepping into 7... I'm really not ready for CSOS to end, I feel like I'm finally in the rhythm of things, but unfortunately, that's all coming to an end.

This week was pretty good overall, with a couple exceptions. Monday was pretty rough at work... I had a new Member orientation, but this person was facing eviction on August 1 due to property damage caused by her kids. She has a Section 8 voucher but is afraid DHA will take it away after her landlord sent them a bad letter. The worst part about the letter is that the landlord included costs they never even notified the Member about. The Member also didn't have a reliable form of transportation in order to get around and she had some misdemeanors that would make it hard to go back for an education at Durham Tech like she wants. It was just really sobering to see all these oppressive systems in action against one person; I personally don't know if I would have the resiliency to keep going and fighting in her shoes. The rest of my meetings Monday were less intense, though. 

Later on Monday, we all went to Harris Teeter, which would've been great, but it was my week to buy groceries for the whole suite... I definitely thought I was under budget until that night and now I'm too scared to check how far over I am.

Tuesday, I had a member who had a large electricity bill with no way to pay it as her only form of income was disability payments. That was fine for her rent, but not the debt because it was for the last month and for some reason, her payments didn't cover it. We tried to negotiate the debt down for a settlement, but unfortunately, Duke Energy was not accepting any settlements, so we looked into a couple emergency funds that she could reach out to. She thankfully has found a new place to live, though, so that's not a problem. I then had a really sweet experience with a Member's child. Since CEF allows Members to bring their kids, we have to keep them entertained somehow sometimes, so we just watched YouTube and ate popcorn together. The part that gave me hope though was that he refused to eat any popcorn unless I shared with him, so that made my day. 

 

Wednesday was my home workday, so I started up with a nice cup of iced coffee and got to work at the desk in our apartment I'm now calling "the office." All it is really is just my laptop plugged in, my notebook, a coaster, and some music from Fran's speakers, but it's got a nice window, so I'm content. Right now, home office work pretty much just consists of calling all the properties on our LIHTC spreadsheet and asking them the same questions, so it can get repetitive, but I understand its necessity. It's just annoying because some landlords can be really rude... 

Thursday, FMF hours were canceled, so I started off with some more phone calls, then I went to office hours. I'm actually now trying to help a Member try to start a podcast and get it on Spotify, so if you've got any insight, it would be much appreciated!

Friday, we went on a tour of Durham for Geraud which was interesting. There's still so much to learn about Durham I think, and even though it was really hot, the ice cream and scooting at the end helped. We also continued to plan out our community event which I'm really excited about! When we got back, Fran and I basically deep cleaned the apartment to the point that I think it was cleaner than how we got it. 

Probably the best and worst part of my weekend though was that I went back to Charlotte for a day to see my mom and also to get checked out by my Orthodontist. While I was back, my mom and I went to Brixx pizza in a nice shopping center in Charlotte with a couple other Egyptians to watch the Egyptian soccer team play. Can't really support the team right now since they failed to kick off a player who was found to be a serial sexual harasser, but I just wanted to see my friends and family again. As we're leaving, my mom is helping 4 Egyptian kids into their dad's car which he has stopped on the side of the road, totally out of the way on the side of the shopping center, so they can get in. Anyway, this white guy drives his pickup truck up and starts yelling at them to get off the side of the road. And then he gets OUT of his car, and starts yelling about how "This is America" and we should "learn how to live here" and a bunch of other stuff that was just so unnecessary. And the whole time he's ranting for god knows what reason, the Egyptian dad in the car is literally just apologizing, but the white guy is all "Sorry doesn't cut" like I just don't know what he wanted. Thankfully some people over at the Starbucks next to us were recording the encounter (cuz the guy was literally a crazy racist...) but yeah, he saw them, jumped back in his pickup truck and drove away. 

I've seen stuff like this before on Twitter, but for it to happen to my mom and family friends right in front of me... I was literally stunned. And frankly, afraid he was gonna pull out a gun or something. It really ruined the tone for the rest of the day, and I'm still shook by the fact that it happened, but I guess that's the world we live in.

Hopefully, week 7 can be a bit less xenophobic though.

Week 5

Heyyyyy Dielle!

Decided on a different opening GIF this time; figured the classic "Hey Dielle" was probably a bit overdone at this point. So, anyway, another week has passed and - oh, wait, it's not just any week, this week marks the halfway point of CSOS! I genuinely cannot believe that we've already done half of CSOS. Some part of me still thinks there's so much more and that CSOS is just beginning, but I guess I gotta touch base with reality. This week has been interesting, to say the least.

On Monday, I fell down on my elbows causing them to get pretty scraped up, but I was fine overall. On a totally unrelated note, we've all been scootering so much recently! I think I've done over 25 miles on just Lime alone, so that doesn't even take into account Spin miles. Besides being a ton of fun, though, scooters save me a decent bit of money. For instance, Lyfting from Swift to CEF would be $6.75, but scooting only costs just under two bucks. In other words, scooting is here to stay. Member meetings went fine on Monday, nothing too crazy happened so that was nice.

On Tuesday, I finished writing a Python computer program that did my spreadsheeting for me for CEF. I was supposed to go through a large government database and cross compare with our CEF database spreadsheets. My program essentially did that entire task for me, highlighting things it couldn't perfectly change so I could check up myself. It was nothing too crazy, but it was cool to be applying some of the stuff I learned at Duke in my internship.

On Wednesday, I had no office hours, so I mostly just perfected my program from in bed while also correcting the things it couldn't pick up on. It was really just a chill day, nothing much happened.

Thursday, I had a team meeting at 12 at Luna's, which was really good. Basically, I found out, Olivia is leaving and Ben is going to have to take over housing while she's gone and I'm Ben's backup/support. It's gonna be a big responsibility to take on, but I'm excited about it as well. I was in and out of office hours until 8:30, and then afterward, a couple of the interns went bowling together, which was really fun! I also learned I'm so bad at bowling, I bowl better with my nondominant hand, so that's fun!

Friday was pretty cool at the Connected Durham conference we went to. A lot of the speakers were really cool and I honestly felt like it had really useful sessions. Unfortunately, I can't say that our presence there was helpful. We were supposed to be helping out, but I can't think of anything useful we actually did.

The main thing I guess I'd say about this week is probably: pretty routine. Given that it was so routine, though, we found our own ways to break the monotony, which was fun. We mostly just scooted, but also got to try out some cool restaurants. 

Here's to Week 6!

Week 4

Hey Dielle!

Was debating whether or not I should make a new GIF, but time's running out, so I guess we'll be running with this one. Last week was the first full week of work and it was... not as busy as I had expected. Monday was pretty casual, worked at Joe van Gogh from 11 to 3 and then had office hours until 7. Nothing too crazy happened, in fact, only 1 of 4 Members I was supposed to meet with showed up, but that was an interesting interaction. The Member, who will remain unnamed for obvious reasons, was struggling with an eviction; to be specific, he had already been evicted. He was simply living in the apartment he was evicted from until the landlord locked the room, which was obviously very scary for both him and us, as that could happen whenever. We tried to talk with him about his immediate plans for if he came back one day to the apartment locked, and while he seemed to be in contact with some friends for couch surfing, he (understandably) seemed averse to the idea of staying in a shelter. The Member wanted our help to contact various landlords and companies to try and find him a new place to stay. We tried to explain to him that the likelihood of a landlord accepting him with his outstanding debt to his previous landlord was close to none and that we should work on reducing that debt and improving his credit, but he was adamant about contacting more landlords at the moment. Since at CEF we only help people reach the goals they want us to help guide them towards, we of course obliged and made several calls. It was just difficult because we knew that nobody would take him in if he didn't get rid of his debt, but in his trauma and with his current mindset, he wouldn't budge and didn't want to work on credit. 

This was definitely a moment of conflict for me. In helping him do what he wanted, I knew that we weren't getting him any closer to his actual goal of finding new housing. However, I also knew it was not my place to tell him what to do especially after he didn't listen to our recommendation the first few times around.

Tuesday, we had a staff meeting from 9-10:30 am, and then office hours 3-5 pm. Neither of my members showed up during office hours, so the office was fairly boring during that time. I just worked on my laptop assessment, which is coming along very nicely! I should be done with it by next Tuesday. 

Wednesday, there was a "philosophy time," which is an analysis of a reading, from 10-11 am. The article was on healing-centered engagement, which was a relatively new concept to me, but it makes sense in that its focused on grassroots healing and positive aspects of people instead of defining them by their traumas. I also just don't have office hours on Wednesday, so I spent the rest of the day working on the laptop test and my Low Income Housing Tax Credit spreadsheets. I'm basically supposed to compare two sheets and update CEF's version to contain all the information on the other two. I started writing a program to do that for me, so we'll see how that comes along.

Thursday was another interesting day. In the morning, we had our Durham tour, which was very informative. We learned about different neighborhoods, their origins, their current state, and we talked about how members felt about them. McDougald Terrace is apparently the one members try and stay away from the most. After that, I had a small lunch break at Swift, and then went to Families Moving Forward, at which, my member didn't attend. At the office, my first member was like 40 minutes late, so we didn't have much time to do anything. She came in with a housing voucher though, so we decided next week, we would email and call landlords at properties she wanted to visit. The next member I had, I simply went through downloading Google and Bandcamp on his phone. 

For dinner Thursday, I had it with two coworkers and a Member, which was really nice to get to know them out of the workplace! The one weird thing, however, was that having met with the Member before, I knew that he wasn't supposed to meet with female advocates, and both my coworkers were girls. He made some potentially problematic statements, but I wasn't sure whether to intervene or not make a scene, so I didn't say anything, especially considering they didn't seem bothered at all. It was just a weird situation to be in, but nothing bad came out of it, so I just brought it up to them afterward.

Friday was fun, we rode Lime scooters to ReCity, it was just a little disappointing our tour was cut out.

Here comes Week 5!