A long week.

I'm surprised I managed to wait all week to post a blog, but it was quite the week.

We did lots of trainings and planning this week, which was (for the most part) frustrating and boring. I realize it has to be done, but I think we were all so anxious to get into our flagship service next week that we just wanted to be done with training.

We got our uniforms this week, which was surprisingly nice. I wake up in the morning, iron my pants, and decide whether I want to wear a pull over or a fleece vest, and I'm dressed. We look like a corps now. It's cool :)

Thursday we ran through our Opening Day ceremony in Manchester. We did PT outside of City Hall, which was amazing. When we do PT in the Timberland parking lot, the only people that see it are the Timberland employees who are trickling into the building, and they're used to it. In Manchester, we were a spectacle. I think it was the fact that we were in uniform, in public, but we were so loud and so sharp! It was awesome, and people were stopping to watch what was going on. After the rehearsal, we went to a park and I helped facilitate a mock Fall Fest. Fall Fest is our first big event at the schools--kind of like field day, but inclusive and very City Year. I was on the planning team, but we only had an hour to plan a full hour of programming. Needless to say, it wasn't very well planned and therefore wasn't very well executed. But I think maybe that was part of the point--plan this event more than you think you'll need to. We got a lot of feedback and I think my team at least has an idea of what NOT to do at our Fall Fest.

We had the red jacket ceremony Thursday afternoon. We all got the City Year signature bomber jackets and dedicated them. They're kind of the symbol of our commitment to service this year. After the obligatory team pictures in jackets, we had dinner with the City Year New Hampshire board of directors.

Yesterday was a totally crazy day. We had to be at Timberland at 6am, which means I got up at 4:30am. We got there, and Angela gave me a key to one of the minivans and said, hey, can you drive? I assumed that this meant that this was something I was capable of doing, so I said sure. Sure, I'll drive a van I've never driven before into a town I don't know. Of course, this will be great, especially with 8 rowdy corps members in the van in the dark at 6am. Uh huh. But I held up the rear of the caravan and only got flipped off once. A gesture which prompted Aja, my navigator, to roll down the window and wave back.

It was raining, so our Opening Day ceremony was inside City Hall. Prior to the ceremony, I gave a little testimonial and talked about why I'm in City Year to a group of City Year champions (people who have given us lots of money and support). The Opening Day ceremony went well and pretty well attended despite the rain. Here's a picture of us afterwards. There should be some better ones on our network soon...




Afterwards, we went to the site where the Young Heroes group meets on the weekend and painted murals on boards to hang up on the walls. I was tired, but it was a fun and not too strenuous project. Once we finally got back to Timberland (apparently I'm not the only one who doesn't know my way around Manchester, because we had a very interesting van ride back with Matt driving) we helped unload the vans and finally went home. The roommates and I needed food for dinner, so we went to the grocery in full uniform and got plenty of interesting looks. This, for some reason, prompted us to drive by the beach on the way home, so that we could run to the ocean in boots and full uniform. This is what happens when you're deprived of sleep all week....

Uniforms and 15 passenger vans. Oh my.

So it was pretty much a useless day, but kind of exciting at the same time. A lot of the day was spent sitting around, which is incredibly frustrating. However--I am now certified to drive the giant 15 passenger van. My team's van is really special because it is covered in saran wrap-like material to make it very City Year. The other two big vans are just normal unmarked white, but ours is crazy. Because of the decorations, you can't see in or out the windows except the ones by the front seats (and the front and back windshield, of course). Some people call it the coffin van, others call it a surprise party on wheels. I suppose its all in your perception....

We also got our uniforms today, which is why we wound up sitting around waiting all afternoon. But I'm really excited to have them. We had a little lecture today on the meaning of the uniform--that by wearing we stand on the shoulders of the corps members who came before us and set the standard for those who will come after us. It's also a symbol of our commitment to service, and identifies us to kids as corps members. That way the kids have some continuity even though the corps changes every year. I washed my reds (fleece vest and pullover) and my roommates reds, ironed my pants, and wrote my name and Dave's name in our uniform pieces in magic marker. It felt very Mom-like.....

Opening Day is Friday! I was chosen as one of 3 corps members to schmooze with the City Year champions before hand. I'm excited to meet some of the people who give us the money to do our work. I'm looking forward to the ceremony, and really looking forward to starting our in-school service next week.

Best Service Day EVER

Today was Servapalooza, a huge day-long service event with Timberland. Timberland employees do service all over the world, so that for 24 hours the sun never sets on Timberland service. Yesterday my team went to Seabrook Middle School, where we're doing our in-school service, to prep the site for the service today. Sara, Taylor and I sketched a beach themed mural on a huge concrete planting area outside the front of the school. It was about 3 feet tall, and 20 feet long. Taylor made the design using different elements from 8 different student drawings. We also sorted a bunch of tools yesterday for other projects at the school, including something called a phonics garden (I haven't seen this yet, so I'm not exactly sure what it is) and a bunch of stuff for building picnic tables.

Today was the actual event, with gazillions of Timberland employees on busses going all over the place to service sites. We painted the mural at Seabrook with help from the students whose elements we were using, some PTA volunteers, and Timberland employees. The mural turned out GREAT. I got really sunburned again, even though I stole Sara's hat. We got pretty loopy at the end, and wound up with a white whale on one end of the mural, while a sunburned guy reads Moby Dick on the other end. Nevertheless, the mural looks great, and I'll get to see it every day on my way into school. So even on my worst days, at least I can enjoy our beautiful whale. I don't have any pictures right now, because my camera batteries died, but I will definitely post pictures soon.

After the service part was finished, we went back to Stratham for the Palooza party. I worked in the Arts and Crafts tent, taught kids to make yarn stars, and started crocheting a scarf when I didn't have any kids around. We even managed to get out of clean up duty, so I got home "early" after only about 12 or so hours of work.... I think I'll go finish my scarf to end my amazing day. :)

First day in school

Today was our first day in Seabrook Middle School. We went in for observations and got a little bit of a chance to interact with the kids. I thought that I would prefer working with 5th or 6th grade, but now I really hope I'll be placed in 7th or 8th grade. They seemed way more into the lessons and more like little people than strange, foreign creatures. The school is nice and we seem to have lots of resources--the teachers are super supportive and really like City Year. I really really like my team. Its an odd dynamic, but I feel like I can actually get along with all the people on the team right now. I'm writing this down so that in the future I can remember that I felt like this at one point :) We got to go out to the low ropes course and play around on that. We debriefed out in this cool outdoor classroom and had some good bonding time.

In other news... In science class today, I learned that "oughta" and "water" rhyme in New Hampshire.

BTR, RTB!

What an intense week.

We left Wednesday for BTR, City Year's Basic Training Retreat. It was pretty much great. We did lots of team building stuff--most interesting to note is the challenge course... We had to get our whole team through a tire suspended above my head between two trees. And we did! We build bunkers and forts in the paintball course at the camp, and did lots of training stuff too. The talent show was amazing. When I get the pictures on my computer I'll post some of the best ones. My team made a new Putting Idealism To Work quip about how to better do our work: "Don't be that guy." Then we were "that team" by doing interpretive dance to our Up the River founding story in the talent show. The pictures may or may not clear up the meaning of the last two sentences... But just trust me when I say it was a good time.

Today we worked at Reach the Beach, which is a 200 mile, 24 hour relay race from the mountains in northern New Hampshire to Hampton Beach. I worked from 7:30 this morning until 7:30 this evening, the last two hours of which were motivated by the promise of a free dinner, and later inspired by a huge box of free Emergen-C packets. My roommate Mary spent the whole day cheering on the runners by doing jumping jacks and chanting "Reach The Beach! Reach The Beach!" Other great moments of the day included a chat with an older man who had Type 1 Diabetes and runs marathons and this relay race every year. He was awesome. When I was cleaning up the finish line area after dinner, these great kids jumped in and started helping me pick up trash off the beach, and were genuinely sad when they had to stop. They were amazing.

I snatched these pictures of my team off the internet:


We found out our teams by putting together puzzle pieces.




Seabrook Up the River team CYNH 07
Back row: Eric (team buddy), Will, and Timona
Middle row: Kristine, Mike (team buddy), Sara (my awesome team leader), me, Stephen, Matt
Front: Haroula

"What do we still have to find?" "Seabrook..."

It's 5:51am, and I'm in 15 minutes leaving for three days on a retreat today. This week has been great--we were assigned to our teams on Monday. I'm on the Seabrook Up the River Team. (All of the teams are named after City Year founding stories). Yesterday we went out on our teams to explore the communities. Ask me sometime about how much fun that was :) We not only explored Seabrook, but the whole seacoast. All 11 miles of it :) We even stopped at a state park and played on a playground that overlooked the rocky coast. It was phenomenal.

Our basic training retreat starts tonight, after a full day of physical service for the United Way Day of Caring. I'll be gone until Friday and probably won't have cell phone service.

Until then...

Putting Idealism to Work...

Today was our first physical service day. We went to Camp Lincoln and cleaned up the camp for the kids. I worked on building a fence, which means I spent the whole day digging holes two and a half feet into the ground. And despite some major setbacks--rocks, roots, electrical wires, and bad measurements--we finished it! I've never worked so hard in my life. Other teams cleaned out the canoes and built a canoe rack, painted the cabins and bathrooms, did landscaping, and fixed and stained the adirondack chairs that were scattered across the camp. It was great to finally get to do service together.

I had a great night last night spending time with my roommates and hanging out. We got really slap happy and managed to get really silly about some of our "City Year culture": "Mary, are you ready for dinner?" "City Year is always ready!"

I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend and spending some time in York. We've certainly earned some time off this weekend. Monday we'll find out which teams we're on, and Wednesday we go to our Basic Training Retreat. I will need a lot of battery charging time for this week....

Spirit, Discipline, Purpose, and Pride.

Today was about a million times better than yesterday. We did a lot of team buildling activities, both for the purpose of getting to know each other, and to learn them to do later with our kids. We finally got a chance to talk to each other, to laugh together, and have some fun, in addition to learning some things that we'll actually need to know. Thank God we didn't have another day of being talked at. Tomorrow we'll learn more about the communities where the different teams are serving and what projects the teams will be working on.

After work tomorrow we have a mini lesson on acquiring food stamps. Hooray!

Another hooray for Verizon, for being super cool about giving us a discounted phone and cheap internet.

We had a household dinner tonight. I'm happy with the roommates I wound up with; though it was mostly chance that we're living together, it seems to be a good fit. After dinner we walked to the beach (about a five minute walk!!) and waded in the very cold water. Pictures! In the group shot, it's (left to right) me, Dave, Ernie, Jensine, and Mary.

The world needs more Ben Mercer.

A frustrating day for the most part. Left the house at 7:15. We sat around and listened to people talk at us. Then we had lunch. Then we listened to more people talk at us. Tried on boots, left Timberland, ran errands, came home. I feel like I just ate dinner, and now I'm already late for bed time. Today was a lot of "Yay Timberland, you give us money! And clothes!" Plus some very basic, general City Year stuff that would have been more helpful if we'd had a little bit of context. Hopefully the more useful stuff starts tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the basic and necessary things are really difficult. We can't get any time off until the week after next, which means three weeks of work before we can even apply for food stamps. I can't get in touch with anyone to make an appointment for an interview for heating assistance, because they are closed when we leave at 7:15 and closed when we return at 6ish. We don't get cell phone service at Timberland either, so we can't call on our lunch break. We can't get internet at the house for three weeks because they don't have any weekend appointments until then. And the only way we could get an appointment during the week is between 4:30 and 6:30, and we can't leave Timberland until 5:30 at the earliest. We might get free internet from Comcast, but no one knows for sure. We also might get free cell phones from T-Mobile... but no one knows about it.

All I want is food, housing, and maybe my own internet connection.

That would be nice.

Woah.

We finally got to move into our house today. It was everything we could have asked for, and then some. When my roommate Mary walked upstairs to where the living room/kitchen area is, she said, "Are you SERIOUS??"

It's amazing. The rooms are pretty small, but the living room and kitchen have vaulted ceilings, sky lights, and a huge deck that looks out onto the ocean. It's beautifully decorated and I'm pretty sure it's the nicest AmeriCorps housing EVER.

Dave and I walked on the beach this afternoon, since it's about a five minute walk from our house. Here, have some pictures of our beach....







Work starts tomorrow. I'm getting up at 6:15, so that we can leave at 7:15. I haven't done this since high school

First day

I had my first day at City Year on Friday, even though our official start date isn't until Tuesday. We did all the typical get-to-know you stuff, filled out paperwork (otherwise known as signed our lives away to City Year and AmeriCorps for the next ten months), and tried on our uniforms. Even though the uniform is bright red, has elastic in the waistband, and is not exactly flattering... It was kind of exciting. My roommates are great, the house looks great (from outside, anyway), and the staff and corps seems nice. We're moving into the house tomorrow, and maybe we'll even have electricity...