For today’s shelter visit we planned on having Christiana speak about the Adam’s County Housing Authority: the current site of her work study and an establishment which is conveniently related to the residents at the homeless shelter. We knew that she would have a lot of information that could potentially be boring so as a back up I created a Halloween Bingo game that could break up long, information filled speeches. As we began the lesson, everyone attending--of which there were only three-- was openly cynical about the Housing Authority--and rightly so seeing how many have had many far from positive experiences trying to get housing in the area. As someone who knew little about the subject, I simply sat back and listened as Christiana began to speak. Since many of the resident seemed hesitent or too fed-up to ask questions I asked some of my own in an attempt to get things going. The whole talk was a huge success! Christiana did an absolutely fantastic job of sharing all the information about the programs at the Housing Authority and she was able to come across as a “good guy” who was clearly out to help these people. She answered questions, thoroughly described the Authority’s many programs--especially that of Turning point as it is a family oriented program that currently has a couple of openings, and patiently repeated information that different people wanted to hear over and over again. It was nice to see her making herself available with the resources that she could offer in order to help the residents acquire housing while at the same time not hiding the truth that there were huge waiting lists for many of the programs. In the end, we had absolutely no need of my wonderful Bingo boards because all of us were getting questions--that we answered willingly but not as well as Christiana--and discussing plans with the residents. I was struck as she was talking about how bone weary all of the women at the shelter looked this week. Many of them are mothers who maintain jobs during the day and they simply looked so through with all the world had to offer them that day. It was amazing to see the weariness and cynicism at the world and at the Housing Authority turn into maybe a little ray of hope, that they might be able to escape the shelter and go live in an apartment with their families one day soon. I hope that in our continued visits we will be able to help them in any way we can and that we maybe will be able to help facilitate that leaving process to the best of our very limited abilities.