Pictures will be coming soon (and by soon I mean hopefully in the next month.) Today is the first day I have been online in over a week and I have to say I'm not complaining. I am sitting in Dunkin' Donuts with two of my lovely housemates, checking email, Facebook, blogs, and whatever else I missed online this week. I also checked Syracuse weather for the coming week and it looks like we get to enjoy summer a little bit longer; fingers crossed that it lasts into September. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I will try to catch you up on things (and hopefully my long-winded self can keep it brief) since I left home two Thursdays ago.
To begin, I almost missed my first flight but made it in the nick of time. After transferring in Atlanta and making it to Baltimore-Washington airport I found the group of people that looked to be about my age and talking about service. I enjoyed saying hello to some fellow SLU grads and catching up with them while at the same time I began to meet my new community members and fellow east coast volunteers. The bus ride allowed me to snooze for just a bit which was necessary since I had been up for almost 8 hours by noon and hadn't slept well on top of that. At Orientation we: listened to talks about the four JVC values, experienced what eating like a JV will be like...aka lots of vegetarian meals with homegrown veggies since meat is expensive, had two masses outside to celebrate the Eucharist together, enjoyed an afternoon of silence, hiked on the Appalachian trail, and much more! We were able to meet everyone who is serving in the eastern region of the country this year and also get to know our individual communities better. Orientation lasted from Thursday to Tuesday morning and then each community got into a bus or car to travel to their homes. My community drove two cars north to Syracuse.
We were greeted at our house by our two community-support people (former Jesuit Volunteers) who brought over pizza and locally brewed beer to celebrate our arrival. We choose rooms, unpacked boxes and the next day began Local Orientation. Local O consisted of all of us visiting each other's work sites (and seeing them for the first time ourselves), checking out cool spots in town, getting to know the area, setting up our bank account, and having a delicious dinner at an FJV's house. In our "free time" we were spending time as a community, listening to music, talking, cooking, eating, cleaning, and getting ice cream at a super good local spot! (and yes, "getting ice cream" is different that "eating" because as one of my community members commented "Ice cream is gonna be a big thing with us isn't it?" YES!)
Yesterday some of us went and picked blueberries at a local farm. We are part of a CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) and were giving some of our time to the same farm we get produce from each week. This morning we all went to mass together and will be enjoying the evening together (perhaps getting ice cream again?...it is a great way to spend our monthly stipends!) and then getting to bed relatively early before work in the morning.
I left out many details of the past week and a half but so much of this experience is hard to put into words. It is hard to show you the smile on my face and the warmth in my heart because of the gratitude I feel for being here and beginning to live with intentionality in so many ways. Hopefully my next update will include aspects of my new job! And hopefully next time I write a post my housemate won't be sitting next to me chuckling at my corny 5-year old self. (I wasn't able to hold back my many quirks as long as I had hoped.) For better or worse (and I KNOW it is for the best) I am part of the "Berrigan Bunch" this year!
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