Registration Day

For those of you who don't know what I'm doing, I got accepted into an awesome program called City Year. City Year is a branch of the AmeriCorps National Service Network, and corps members (volunteers) have to complete an application, go through a series of interviews, and get accepted in order to be placed at one of 26 locations throughout the US. City Year Corps Members volunteer in schools within high-poverty communities, doing jobs such as teaching, tutoring, campus beautification, coordinating after-school activities, etc. As an applicant begins the process of applying, an option pops up to either select the location one wishes to be placed, or to "serve where most needed." When I was applying, I selected "serve where most needed," and that's how I ended up in Jacksonville, where I will be working in the Duval County Public School System.

Right now, none of the corps members in Jax know what school we will be placed at. Jacksonville has ten options, and I could end up at an elementary, middle, high, or special education school. I will get placed on my school team in a couple weeks, after training officially starts and the program directors are able to split up teams based on the different strengths and weaknesses of each individual. There should be about ten volunteers at each school, as City Year Jacksonville has 100 members.

Before training is able to start, every corps member has to go through a registration process. I had my registration day on Wednesday. I had to bring all my official documents, have them scanned and verified, and sit through a couple information sessions regarding the guidelines and expectations of being a corps member. Most of it was information we had been given before, but it was good to get refreshers and have the chance to ask questions.

At the registration day, we were also given the location of where we will begin our training on Monday. This is the part I didn't expect: instead of being a formal sit-down training session where all members are together, we are being split into groups and immediately beginning volunteer work! There is a group serving breakfast to the homeless, a group working a food bank, there are several groups doing outdoor stuff, and the group I got placed in is cleaning up and indoor/outdoor community center to prepare for an event. Just hearing that much, I thought it was cool but partly wished I had been placed into a group that was actually working with the people of Jax. That was until a group of us found a poster for the event that we are setting up for. It's for an organization called Rethreaded (a link to their website can be found here), and this is their mission statement:

"Rethreaded is a social entrepreneurship that is breaking the cycle of the sex trade by offering viable and creative work to those affected by the sex trade (i.e. human trafficking prostitution, drug addiction, pornography and strip clubs).

Our vision is to unravel the effects of the sex trade by fighting business with business on a global and local level.  The multibillion dollar sex industry is founded on the exploitation of mostly women and children. As a business we want to provide safe, viable, and dignity-giving work to survivors of the sex trade allowing them to be who they were created to be."

This is an awesome project, in my opinion, and I'm very excited to start work on Monday knowing that what I'm doing is going to a great cause. There will also be formal training mixed in to the volunteering we will be doing, but I'm hoping that we will continue to do cool projects like this one!

My First Few Days

Over the past few days, every single thing in my life has changed. That may seem a bit drastic but it's true: I packed up almost everything I own, drove 1200 miles from Michigan to Florida, moved into a new home with new roommates, and started a new job. Every day I'm doing things I've never done before, and many people encouraged me to start a blog to document my year... I've never blogged before, if you haven't gathered that much already, so these first few posts may be a little rough. But here goes!

The days leading up to my departure from Spring Lake were extremely hectic. My parents were at band camp and I was still working full time, so trying to pack up everything and still have time to spend with friends was difficult. Naturally I chose friends over packing more times than I probably should have, and my parents expected me to be packed by the time they got home, so I ended up cramming almost all of my packing into Thursday night. I think I did pretty well, considering how fast I had to do it. Four crates full of stuff, along with a couple more backpacks, and I was good to go (I actually started off with three crates and a lot of extra small things but my dad figured out how to get everything into four). I spent all of Saturday loading up the car and saying goodbyes, and then my parents and I took off at 4 am on Sunday.

We drove 17ish hours to my new home, and spent the next couple days on a cycle of sleep, hit every thrift shop possible, repeat. And by "every thrift shop possible", I mean at least twelve a day, even going to a couple of the same ones multiple times a day. The thrift shop scene down here is awesome, by the way. They're all extremely well organized and many are absolutely gigantic, getting tons of new stuff every day. When I got down here, all I had was a desk, but thanks to the thrift shops I now have a bed, dresser, side table, office chair, lamp, several pieces of artwork, a bunch of kitchen stuff,  and a cool new papasan chair.

So, to make a long story short, my parents and I spent the first few days of my new life in Jax buying everything I might possibly need over the next year, and writing a list of all the things I forgot to pack that they will have to mail to me. My parents left early Thursday morning, and here I am, living on my own and doing cool adult things like cooking and blogging and forgetting to drink water. My roommates are cool, I joined a gym, we're hosting a potluck tonight, I'm almost completely unpacked, I had my first day of work stuff and met a lot of cool people... things are looking pretty good so far.