Hello all!
I hope you all had a happy holiday season. My time in Oklahoma City ended well. On my last day of work with Habitat, I got to use a staple gun on the roof with my favorite supervisor. It was a great ending to a great project. =) We had safe travels from Oklahoma back to Denver. Then, I got to go home to Michigan for a two week Christmas break and spend time with my family and friends. I saw Chris for the first time since August! It was such an awesome reunion. I had coffee in the mornings with my mom and played chess with my dad. I spent a lot of time with my sisters, and got to see quite a few friends and extended family. Unfortunately, it went by much too fast. But it was a really special, wonderful two weeks.
Home for the holidays!
Airport reunion.
Family date night.
I came back to Denver on Sunday and began my first transition week. We'll have a transition week in Denver between every project to get some important things done. We debrief on the project we just got done with, which basically entails having a conversation with staff about it's highlights, challenges and everything in between. We complete any additional training we need; for example, I had training for another team role I'm taking on: peer helper. A peer helper is someone on the team that receives training in active listening and signs a confidentiality agreement so that their teammates can have someone to talk to about personal issues they need to get off their chest without fear of everyone knowing their business. We brief on the project we are heading out to, which is another formal conversation with staff about our goals and what we know going in. Overall, it's been nice! It's good to see some friends from CTI, and we've had a little more free time this week than we did back then. I also got to have lunch with the national director of NCCC, Kate Raftery. I was really excited to have that opportunity!
There was a residence life activity this week called the black and white ball. Everyone was encouraged to dress "classy or trashy".. in nice clothes or in a trash bag costume!
Kind of blurry.. I decided to be batman!
My favorite costumes of the night! Trash bag Darth Vader and Princess Leia.
During transition week, the staff sometimes has to rearrange teams. A
few people have left the program since Round 1 began, and the teams need
to be rebalanced to make sure they are diverse and all have roughly the
same number of people. Nadav was switched from my team to a different
one... we
are going to miss him a lot! Then Eric, from another team, joined
ours. We like him a lot already and are looking forward to getting to
know him.
The plans for my Round 2 have changed! My team and I, along with 3 other teams, are going to spend the first few weeks of Round 2 in New York City helping with Hurricane Sandy relief. Mainly we'll be working in Queens, more specifically Breezy Point and Rockaway. I think our main responsibilities will be mucking, gutting and mold suppression. We'll be staying either in a fire house or the sanctuary of a church. We leave tomorrow morning... we'll fly to Philadelphia, spend a night there, and then drive to NYC the next morning and begin work soon after. I'll be there until January 30, come back to Denver and rest for a week, and then head out on another project to finish up Round 2! My team isn't sure what ours will be yet. There's a slight possibility that we could still go to Center Consolidated Schools, but we just don't know.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to post on here while I'm in NY. I doubt we'll have wifi, and I'm not bringing my laptop. Hopefully I'll find a computer at some point! But either way, I will take a ton of pictures and do a big update when I can. I'm so excited to have this opportunity. I think it will be a very challenging but very good.
Here's an interactive map of where the teams from my region will be this round. If you click on the little pins, you'll see a blurb with more info about that project!
http://www.batchgeo.com/map/4139e73cba46cd4c6df1106d86897aea
Happy new year! I'll stay in touch the best I can.
