Something happens here everyday. Everybody's daily schedule is built knowing that it will be broken. Somehow I was under the impression that the way to do things is to stick to your schedule and get everything done as soon as possible, and then you can have your leisure time. Sometimes I feel like I'm living that fantastic eighties song, Working for the Weekend. The downside of that though, is that my leisure time becomes scheduled, because I know it won't last forever, so I might as well cram as much fun into my free time before it's too late.

The last 3 weeks for me have been extre mely busy, and consequently, I haven't had any free time to write a blog or put pictures onto the website. The story is very long, and even though I'm omitting quite a bit, it's still going to be fairly lengthy. I know that I wouldn't want to read a story without a hero and a villain, because that's what makes every story great, so keep your eye out for heroic and villainous characteristics. As much as I wish I was the hero, I'm not the hero in this story. Many of you might wonder to yourselves as you're reading this, "Is Drew the Villain?" The simple answer to that is No. I'm not the villain. I'm just one of the towns people that lifts the hero up onto his shoulders and chants the hero's name in a gleefully passionate manner and parades him around town to see all of the banners people have quickly but carefully made in celebration of our wonderful hero. I might be getting carried away, let me start from the beginning and work my way to the end, instead of revealing the most exciting part first.

First, let me explain why I haven't updated my website in such a long time. It all started when Harvey, one of the boys from the program I'm working for, needed a place to live and all the accouterments necessary.

Harvey grew up with a mother dealing drugs, and doing drugs in front of him for as long as he could remember. He's got more stories about lessons learned the hard way than anybody I've ever spoken to. The worst part is, few of the lessons he's learned have been brought onto him by himself. He's been thrown into bad situations time after time, and hasn't gotten much support, so he's learned how to get by on his own. Stealing for him wasn't just for the sake of being rebellious, it was for survival. He'd steal everything from food to clothes, and the occasional valuable to sell for food and clothes. He was released from Rangeview, a juvenile detention center, with nowhere to go, which is where Michael and Dave picked him up. He hasn't heard from his mom in 8 months, and his dad's wife made his dad choose between her and Harvey, but they maintain contact, which is usually a 20 minute phone call every week or so.

Michael had no options other than moving me and Harvey into the house we were using for the school until some government funding came through for the program, at which point Michael would hire a full time staff member to live there and do what I was doing. The house was donated to Michael until funding came through and he could pay the owners rent, so it was a really good deal for us. The house didn't have a working internet connection until Friday, February 15th, so I couldn't update my site, or talk to anybody back home.

Harvey and I moved in on Wednesday, January 30th, and lived there until February 18th. After a week we had another boy move in, Nate. Nate needed a place to stay after his release from a juvenile detention center. Nate's father wants him to move back to South Africa, where he's from, and where his mom and brother live. Harvey and Nate's parents won't provide a place to live for them, so they have nowhere to go, other than the streets, or in Nick's case, back in South Africa. This program gives kids another option, and aims to restore hope in their futures.

The first week was easy enough, we pretty much just relaxed around the house, and explored the 18 acre property the house is on. People donated things to the school, such as exercise equipment, a few pairs of boxing gloves, punching bags, a pool table or two, a few ping-pong tables, air hockey tables, and a full size trampoline. The house also has a pool, and a spa, so finding something to do wasn't hard at all.

On Monday, February 11th, we had 2 more boys move in, Alex, and Eric. They got along pretty well, so each boy had a friend living in the same house. My job was to take care of driving them places they needed and wanted to go, and of course I had to make sure the house was clean and there was plenty of food in it. Also, when the occasional fight would break out I had to take care of that, and make sure when a fight would start that they kept the boxing gloves on.

I also work at an alternative school that Michael started for at risk youth, where Harvey, Nate and Alex all go. Everybody in the program is working on getting apprenticeships, and this program will help them find out what they want to do, and get school credit for things they're interested in, instead of forcing curriculum on them.

On friday during our lunch and recess time, two of the boys were playing pool and getting pretty angry with each other. They both were constantly picking on the other for the entire week leading up to it, and it was starting to get old, so instead of letting them hit each other with the pool cues they were swinging around, I grabbed the cues out of there hands, and told them to put on the boxing gloves. I asked one of the other boys to help me officiate and break up the fight if it got to the point where it needed to be broken up. Neither of them had landed a really good punch and both were frustrated by that, when one of them tripped the other and started kicking him on the ground. As I was going in to break it up, the kid on the ground got up and immediately land a punch with more force than I thought was possible for a kid his size. The punch spun the other kid around immediately, bloodying his nose, so he leaned up against a retaining wall trying to recover. The littler kid threw the gloves down and said, "if you want to kick and fight dirty lets go!" and ran at the bloodied dispirited older boy. I told him to go into the house while I tended to the second bloody nose I had to deal with that day, which ironically only made up for half of the noses that would have bleed by the end of the night. Nate and Harvey were boxing later that night and took things to far and bloodied each other's noses. The first bloody nose was just because of a sinus problem one of the kids at the school had.

Fighting seems to be a part of all of these kids, they won't back down even if they know they'll get put in there place. I'm starting to see that fights aren't that uncommon here, and are imminent at any given time. For example, as I was driving to take pictures of the sunsets on the beach that are on Page 3 of my pictures, I saw a fight happening in the middle of a side street with about 4 guys involved. As I was passing on an adjacent street, a car pulled up to the fight, and 4 more guys jumped out with metal pipes, and bats. One of them threw a brick at the others, that luckily missed them all. I missed what happened after that because I thought instead of watching, I'd rather get out of there. On the way back from the beach, I saw the police pull up to break up the fight. On the second night I took pictures at the beach, a fight broke out on the beach as I was leaving. That fight wasn't as bad as the first one though, they weren't using weapons, it was just an old-fashioned, alcohol-induced brawl with fists, elbows, feet, and loud noises.

It's troubling seeing the issues the kids I work with are facing. For instance, Alex came to look at the school on the friday before he moved in, and I got some of his background story from the government youth workers that brought him there. Their are a few departments that refer kids to this program: the Department of Correctional Services, the Department of Child Protection, and the Department of Community Development (for time's sake, I'll just use the departments' initials from now on) The government youth workers jobs are to find a program that will be a good fit for the kids, and set everything up for them. Alex's mom is a junkie, that doesn't want him living at her house anymore. He's been kicked out before, and lived on the street for 6 months before she let him back. He's only 14. She was kicking him out again, so DCP stepped in and brought him around to look at schools and places for him to stay. Their last stop was this program, and his only other option if he didn't chose this program was the street. He seemed to favor the street until he talked to Dave. We were about to have a barbecue for lunch, and Dave invited him to stay and hang out and have some food before he left. He didn't seem to keen, and one of the gov't workers told us his other option was the street. Dave looked right at Alex and said, "If I had a choice between a barbecue and a garbage can, I'd pick the barbecue." I was surprised by this, and Dave noticed, and added, "What would you pick Drew?" I said I'd take a barbecue over a garbage can any day, and Alex put his head down to think. Monday morning he rolled up with a suitcase full of all his belongings and moved in, so it was an easy choice after all.

That monday was the first official day of school, but the program has been running similarly for longer than I've been here. By the end of the first week, there were 12 kids who enrolled. The kids all seemed excited when they heard that Michael wanted to help them find something they liked to do to get school credit and eventually get their year 10 certificate, which is what you need to get an apprenticeship in any trade.

I took the boys with me to the city that night to move Eric from his place to the house we were all calling home. We all got back, and got to know each other, slept and then woke up for school in the morning. I had to drive Eric to the train station so he could get to school, because he goes to a mainstream school, and just needs a place to live. School was going well, we were getting to know the boys and what they wanted to do so we could structure the school around their interests.

The weekend was going fine, I was supposed to get my first respite on Saturday, so on Thursday I told the boys I'd run them to the train station in the morning, give them money to catch the train, and then I'd pick them up at night around 7. I got them all dropped off by about 11, came back to the house where I caught Michael cleaning on his day off, so I chipped in, made some calls and sent some emails back home, and not 5 minutes after I got off the phone, I got a call from Harvey, Nate and Alex, saying they couldn't find anything to do and that they needed a ride back to the house. I picked them up, and took a 2 hour nap. When I woke up at 5 they had made plans to meet up with friends, so I drove them to the train station again, and on my way back from the station, Eric called me saying he was at the train station needing a ride. My day off wasn't very productive. I wanted to play some guitar, and record some songs I've been working on, but didn't get a chance to do much more than glance at my guitar. Dave decided to take me away from the house saturday night at 9 to go to his wife's boss's birthday party, so I went to that, and came back at about 1AM.

Now that I've provided you with any and all relevant details, I'll move on to the exciting part.

Sunday was a much different day. I rolled them all out of bed because I was going to church, so they went into town. After church we went back to the house, went swimming, and just went about doing whatever we wanted to do. At 3 that afternoon I was in my room playing guitar, the first time I had the opportunity to in a week, and I heard Alex yell my name saying there was somebody there to see me. When I opened my door I knew something was going on, It was one of those weird feelings I can't explain, but I knew it wasn't good news at all. The house owner's kids were there, and were asking me questions left and right, then told me that they weren't going to allow us to use the house anymore, for the program or anything. They had already told the boys that were living there, which was an incredibly tacky, heartless, senselessly moronic thing to do. They drive up in a $35,000 car, wearing designer clothes, and they tell homeless kids it was back to the streets for them so they can take their donation back and try to make money off of it after we clean it up and make it look like a home and make improvements on it. Funding from DCP, DCS and DCD hadn't come through, even though it was supposed to by then, there was a delay in finalizing it in the paperwork side of things. The kids weren't happy with not having heaps of money in their pockets, so instead of working for it the honorable way, they decide to take a donation back. That's like giving a gift to somebody for their birthday, and when you see the glow in their eye as they open the gift, you realize you want it. You devise a plan to take that gift back, you are going to punch them in the face, bite a few fingers off, take their money, and then grab the gift and run from the party cackling like the Wicked Witch from the West.

In the midst of settling the boys down, trying to assure them it'll all work out for the better, something even I didn't believe, and trying to talk to the house owner's kids, I found time to call Michael who came to the house as soon as he could. Once I had the owner's kids away from the boys that were living there, I tried to speak to them from the heart, something that only works on people that have hearts, so I wasn't very effective. I tried to show them the progress the boys had made already, I told them that without this house and school their other option was the street. They didn't seem to care at all, I swear I saw a smirk on their face when I brought up how I felt bad for the kids. When Michael arrived a quickly called Dave so we had a full posse organized, and went outside to talk with the house owner's kids and Michael. The first thing I heard was the daughter completely aping my angle where I brought up empathizing with the students who had nothing. My parents did a good job teaching me my manners, and most people that know me would agree with that, but when the house owner's daughter brought up empathy with Michael, the most empathetic and benevolent person I've met, I just laughed at her shear stupidity. I was also taught when I was younger not to laugh at somebody behind their back, so I figure it was better that she knew I thought she was stupid than to leave any mystery in her mind. I'd hate for her to think that maybe I thought she was at least of average intelligence, because that'd just be wrong. Michael had 24 hours to work on finding a place for all 4 boys to live, and for a place for the school, because as of 4:30 PM on monday, we were to vacate the house, and all of the school's possessions have to be off the premises 2 weeks after that date.

Monday morning I woke up and got Eric to the train station, and got the other boys up for school, where Michael would be telling all of us what was going on and what was next. Unfortunately he hadn't come up with a place to have school, so he was forced to shut the program down. We brought all the boys either to the train station or back to their houses and said keep in contact and we'll help you find a program that'll work for you with what you want to do. Everybody left around 11 AM. I stayed back and packed my stuff with Harvey and Nate; Alex went to the train station to hang out with another boy in the program in a suburb down the train line from the Clarkson train station. Just before 1 PM I got a call from Michael, he said that there was a school, and that he found a place. That phone call is what made me start to think of my last 3 weeks as a made for TV movie.

When I picked up Eric from the train station at 4, I saw Alex and told him to come and pack up and help clean up before we had to leave. He said he was waiting for another friend that he wanted to hang out with for 5 minutes and he'd be ready. It was pretty clear it was a drug deal, so I told him to get in the car so we could all pack, because Eric hadn't even started and he didn't have much time. Alex didn't get in the car and I said that he had to find a way to the house on his own. At 6 we packed up all of our things and headed to Michael's house where Harvey, Nate, and I would be staying briefly. We still hadn't heard from alex. I drove Eric back to his mom's spare unit in the city, and found out he was missing a few things, a cell phone, $70, and his house key. I called his mom about the key and she took care of getting a key there so that wasn't a problem. At 10 o'clock on my way back, I got a call from the manager of a bar a few kilometers north of the house we were staying at. He said Alex was there and if I didn't come get him, he'd call the police. Luckily, Alex gave him my number so I could go out of my way to help him. I called Michael and Michael picked Alex up. Alex ended up spending the night at Michael's as well, and in the morning he asked for a ride to the train station. He lost his phone, but he has my number on a piece of paper in his pocket, and I told him to call collect from a pay phone so I could pick him up from the train station. He had bragged to Harvey and Nate that he'd stolen Eric's phone, money and keys, trying to impress the older boys, but they found the stolen phone in his bag while he was gone and gave it to me, which I returned to Eric that afternoon.

Something happens every day. Everything you've read so far is just the tip of the ice berg. Some day I hope to feel bored again, but for now, that's just not going to happen. Before I came, nothing special or important happened to me regularly, and you could usually tell when something big was going to happen, because it was typically around birthdays, or the end of school years. I was average Drew-- a boy who was ready to take on any small task without any fear whatsoever. Now whenever there's big development or situation that arises, it won't take me by surprise, because no task is too big as long as you believe you can do it, and you have people around you supporting you.

I still haven't heard from Alex.