There are a town and a county in Virginia called Goochland...

...and maybe I'm immature but I find that hilarious. It's such an awkward name for a town. I think if I met someone and they told me they were from Goochland, I would probably laugh at them.

There's a lot that's happened since my last update and I probably can't even remember all of it.

CASA training finished on Thursday night and I did my two hours of court observation last week. It was really awkward to be in there observing because one of the two cases I saw was VERY personal. There was some really damaging evidence towards one of the parties and I was thinking that if I were those people, I wouldn't want anyone else in there hearing my whole life's story. But I'm kind of glad training is over because it gives me back Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I told them that it probably would be best to wait until January to put me on a case since exams will be coming up sooner than I realize. That way I can focus on getting through my first semester and then start adding on CASA duties.

I went on a trip with the Migrant Farmworkers Project a few weeks ago. MFP is an extension of the Legal Aid Justice Center here in Charlottesville. Apparently, Charlottesville/Albemarle is a really big apple picking area. MFP goes around to the migrant farmworker camps to talk to workers and tell them about their rights. We make sure the conditions are acceptable and the orchard owners are complying with minimum wage, health, and safety laws. If we see any problems, we report back to Legal Aid. They can then represent the farmworkers in a suit against the owner to make sure that he complies with the laws. All the workers we talked with last night were from Mexico. Most planned to head down to Florida in a few weeks to pick oranges. They ranged in age from 20 to probably early 50’s. It was really interesting to talk to them. One of the workers said he thought it was so nice that we students would take the time to come talk to them. He said that for one, they don’t get much in the way of visitors, and for two, since some of them may be undocumented, they are too afraid to ask or complain about anything because they don’t know that they DO have rights. He was so happy that someone was taking an interest in him and he was so happy that we all spoke Spanish. Of course, they have their little community of other workers there, but most people don’t notice or take an interest in them, so he was so happy we came. It was quite an experience. Unfortunately, the season here ends in November, so we won’t have a lot of opportunities to go out to talk to people, but we try to hit as many of the camps as we can.

I'm going to be applying for a fellowship to work in South Africa for the summer. There will be a variety of different places where we can work. The two fellows who went last summer said that legally, South Africa is a very interesting place to be right now because they have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It's only about 11 years old, and they're still trying to figure out how to implement it and what it all really means. They are also dealing with reparations for apartheid. I'm not sure whether I'll really have a high chance of getting selected because the agencies get to set the criteria for who they want, and they may want people who have human rights experience already. But I'm going to apply regardless, and we're supposed to know by December 1.

Mom and I flew out to Columbus on Skybus this weekend to go to the Ohio State-Kent State game. I went over to Block "O" during halftime and I got to see a whole bunch of people. We also went out to dinner with Stef after the game. It was nice to get to go back to visit, even if it was only a 20-hour trip.

Other than that, life has mostly been school, school, and more school. Today will be another busy day. And with that, I should probably finish getting ready for class...