My Homeless Journey....Destination St. Peter MN

After spending the night in the train station, sitting up the entire time in a not so comfortable chair and trying to hold a sleeping 6 year old morning finally came! That felt like the longest night of the year. Can't really say longest of my life, because i have certainly had some "long nights" in this lifetime! Once morning came, I had to start figuring out how we would get from St. Paul to St. Peter, I knew it would be by bus, just had to work out some final kinks in the last leg of this journey. At some points everything seemed so technical, it was quite an experience to e say the least. However, after a few hours and some work, we were finally on the way to the town of St. Peter. Some place we knew NOTHING about, didn't know what to expect or what to look forward to, but we were off!!

The bus ride from St. Paul to St. Peter, was not a bad ride at all, the bus was clean and spacious, and it was only about an hour and 15 to 20 minutes distance. Once we made it to St. Peter, we were dropped of at one of the drop off points that this bus uses, so again we aren't at our final destination, but we are ALMOST there. The drop off place was something like a grocery/ whole food store, not to big of a place so it wasn't scary, the entire town didn't appear to be too big which was ok with me, being from Clarkdale MS, which is not big at all, it felt less intimidating. We hung out at the grocery store until we could ask enough questions and do enough googling to figure out the best way to make it to our final destination, which was a shelter we had already been in contact with and approved to check into.

After calling the shelter again to get their exact location, attempting to get an uber/Lyft, and asking around to a few people about modes of transportation in the town, we learned that there was a city transit that we could catch. That was like music to my ears, so I googled the transit, got the number and set us up a ride. Keep in mind we still have about 6 or 7 bags/suitcases that we have been dragging, carrying, and pulling around for literally the last tow days! We left Clarksdale Jan. 2nd and we didn't arrive to St. Peter until Jan. 4th. We had been traveling for TOW DAYS, tired was an understatement! My son had been so great about trying to carry the bulk of the bags for us at sometimes to give us a break, he was awesome the entire trip, no complaints, just doing what he needed to do to help his mama and little sister!

One thing I can't fail to mention is the change in the weather, we had gone from the south, where coldest it got was in the teens on a really cold day to a type of cold we had never experienced before. It was cold, brutally cold, snowing and the windchill was making it feel like it was colder than it was. I remember the first week we were here it was for sure below zero. After calling the transit and setting up the ride, we waited for them to come once they picked us up , we had to once again load up all our belongings onto a smaller transit which had a few other people on it, it was kind of embarrassing, because the way they looked at us having all that stuff, but I was too tired to even care, we loaded our belongings and told them were we wanted to be dropped off! It only took a few minutes to get to the shelter, it was just a few blocks over. When we pulled up, I exhaled a sigh of relief because we had finally made it, but also inhaled another deep breath of ok, what next? I had been having to have my brave face on through all of this because I did not want my babies to see me afraid. I knew if I showed fear, they would surely be fearful as well. I had been in contact with the director of the shelter the whole trip, because they were holding our room for us, since we had so many delays and arrived a day later than we were scheduled to, I had been keeping her in the loop, so once we arrived there, they were waiting for us. They were nice, friendly people, who smiled a lot and were very welcoming. they were waiting in the office to greet us, hand us a key and show us to our new temporary home.

The shelter was an old hotel/motel that had been turned into a homeless shelter, his meant to our surprise we had our own private area. It was not like the shelters I had seen on TV where you had to all be in one room on tiny cots or beds, smh I don't know why I even thought that at all. They showed us to our spot asked us if we needed anything and decided since it had been such a long trip they would let us just relax for the day, which is what I had told her I needed. A shower and bed. They said I could get the tour and fill out all the paperwork needed the next day. They gave us our towels and toiletries and left us alone. The room had one large room with two beds and a dresser in it and one smaller room with a bed, mini fridge and dresser in it. It had a small bathroom with a standing shower, sink, and toilet and a window. It was a cute little mini apartment to me and we were very grateful to be there.

So here we are in our temporary home, in our new city, state and culture after two days of traveling, from bus, train, back to bus then transit. We had finally arrived. We were cold, tired, and probably smelly as well, but we were together, we were whole and we were full of anticipation of what the future held for us all, but mainly that day we were just tired! We all agreed to shower and hit the bed to get some much-needed rest before we could do anything else. And that's just what we did, showered, claimed a bed and we all laid down to rest, relax and recharge from our journey from Clarksdale MS to St Peter MN! Good night, all! Stay tuned for the next episode in this series of "my homelessness journey."