Tales of Protesting, Cooking and a Discontinued Childhood (now with pictures!)

Starting a blog post is the worst. A nifty trick I learned while working at The University News (shameless plug because I can’t let go. I totally followed all the news stories about Biondi’s planned Sept. 1 departure. Judge me.) was that sometimes, the best way to start writing a story was to begin in the middle and then develop a beginning and an end later on. I rarely if ever wrote my lede (Google it. I’m done being the journalism nerd.*) first. It was usually the last thing I would write because I would need to tell the entire story first to really grasp what was the most important nugget of information and to think of a creative way to present it.

I do that with blogging too. Except I don’t have a tidy structure to follow, so I just begin wherever and see where that takes me. I could try to write a lede, but I know that’s likely a lost cause. Obviously everything in my life is extremely important, so it would be impossible to pick what to present as the MOST important. Ah, the struggles of being painfully interesting.

Let’s see…we left off with me expressing my enjoyment of this new city.

I still really, really like Chicago. But as the days grow shorter and August fades into September, there is something looming over this city. Every Chicagoian knows it. Some may even still fear it. We are haunted by a phrase ever present in the back of our minds, echoing as we enjoy our discoveries in this new place:

Winter is coming.

Yes, Chicago is basically a bigger Winterfell (Yeah, that’s a Game of Thrones reference. I won’t even bother to pretend I’m not a nerd about this one) and every Chicagoian is a Stark. I can’t even express my love of the city to anyone who lives here because I know they’ll just tell me I’ll hate it come winter. The sad reality is that they are probably right. I can’t stand being cold. This fact tends to surprise people because I’m from the northern state of New York. We not only have some pretty gnarly winters there, but it sometimes snow so much school gets canceled for a week.

So let me clarify: I am capable of existing cold weather. Doesn’t mean I like it.

The impending Chicago winter gives an almost sinister sheen to Lake Michigan. When I drive past it on my express bus going home, it’s scenic beauty almost seems to be whispering, “I’m going to make you so miserable in a few months. Get ready to hate everyone and everything.”

Lake Michigan is actually pretty scary, you guys.

Terrifying. 

Luckily, my commute is generally confined to temperature-controlled buses, so when winter finally does descend on the city, I'll only need to be out in it for like, ten minutes on a bad day.

I just wrapped up my first full week at the Elam Davies Social Service Center, which shall now forever be referred to as EDSSC because not only is abbreviating after the first reference proper AP style, but it'll save me like, two seconds of typing time. Looking back now, I'm not sure anything really exciting happened. Besides the saving the world and eradicating poverty bit. That’s always exciting.

The only day of work that really stands out to me this week is Friday, when the gravity of what I’m doing finally hit me in one of the worst ways possible: I had to turn a guest at the center down for services. EDSSC offers emergency food and clothes to guests, but you can only get these services so many times a month. If a guest has gotten a full set of clothing in one month, for example, they are not eligible for clothing until the next month. Food is a little more lax, as we have a bagged lunch program three days a week that we often offer to guests as an emergency food option, but even still, if a guest gets a bag of food from our pantry on Monday, they cannot get another one come Friday.

Emergency food and emergency clothes are supposed to be saved for emergency cases. More often, we encourage guests to make appointments for the food pantry or clothing closet. I like this model better because it puts the majority of the responsibility on the guests: they must make and keep the appointment, and in return they get to pick out their own items with a greater variety of choice. Emergency food and clothes are more of a Band-aid for the bigger issues, where as appointments can potentially sustain a guest for a much longer amount of time.

One guest has been to the center nearly every day since I started a week and a half ago. He received food and clothes and made appointments for both the pantry and the closet. Then there was a mix up (likely my fault because I was still learning the system, but no one pointed fingers at the new girl, thankfully) and he received additional clothing the next week when he shouldn’t have. We decided it wasn’t a big deal and that we would just have to explain the rules more carefully to him the next time he came in.

Well, the next time he came in, I was the lucky sucker who had to explain to him that no, we can’t get him food and clothes right now because he got both already and yes, he would have to wait until his assigned appointments. I was wrong in thinking this would go over smoothly. I didn’t expect him to beg me to bend the rules and certainly didn’t expect such desperation from someone we had already assisted so much already. Our guest was visibly upset. I can handle being a stickler. I can’t handle not being able to help someone in need when it would be so easy to walk back and pack him a bag of food.

I did what I was supposed to do, which was give him some resources for other places that could help him and reminded him of his upcoming appointments. That didn’t make him any happier. Instead, he sat sort of moping in our lobby until security swept by and asked him to leave.

The worst part was that I had to walk past him multiple times to get other guests emergency food and clothes. That situation is just crappy for everyone.

I get why the rules are there: we don’t want people to become dependent on us. We want just the opposite, which is why we are currently working on expanding our case managements and housing projects. But it doesn’t make it suck any less when you can’t help someone who needs help. It’s not like you can even rationalize a way in which this guest doesn’t need help. He’s homeless.

I felt really overwhelmed by the situation and I can’t figure out why. I didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, but no one left the interaction going “I got something good out of this and can now continue my Friday in a pleasant manner.”

That sort of set the tone for the rest of my day, unfortunately. I missed getting to go on outreach this week because I was registering a guest who refused to give me any accurate information. No sir, I don’t believe you own the Drake Hotel and I don’t believe Chanel clothing store referred you to us. I can’t help people if they aren’t being honest, so once again, no one got anything good from the interaction.

I’d been looking forward to going out with Good Neighbors again all week, too.

I was so bummed, I went out and spent some of my stipend on a box of 70 green tea bags to keep in my desk. I rationalized the purchase in four ways: 1) Buying things is proven to make you happier. This is the result of a consumer society that thrives on and encourages the over-consumption of goods. While this is not the best society we could possibly be living in, all the social cues to go out and purchase things are alive and well. I am not a consumer drone, just a product of my unfortunate environment (humor me). 2) My office is really cold all the time. I wear long sleeve shirts and jeans to prevent hypothermia, despite it being 90+ degrees just outside my very tiny basement window. Having easy access to tea would be a good way to keep my blood from freezing. 3) Green tea is, like, super good for you. Everyone one says so. And 4) I just like green tea, okay?

So now I have 70 tea bags in my desk. Maybe I’ll add a counter to the blog so y’all can keep track of how much tea I drink at work. Wouldn’t that be exciting? (Again, humor me. I’m out of ideas as to how to make this blog fun.)

The protesters congregating in front of the Bean. 

On Wednesday, I decided to check out a protest at the Bean that I found out about on Facebook. It was a mixed group of Veterans for Peace and members of the LGBT Liberation group in Chicago who came out to protest the way the Obama administration handled the trial and sentencing of Chelsea (then still being referred to as Bradley) Manning. I'm not sure where I fall on the matter, as I didn't follow it as closely as I should have when it was still making headlines, but I'm always intrigued by issues of speech. I feel like that's what the recent discussions of how to deal with whistle blowers comes down to. Sure, whether or not they are harming their country and putting lives at risk is also a factor, but part of what makes our country so unique is how liberal we are with our protection of speech. Some out there might disagree with the use of the word "liberal" here, but in comparison to other countries, we're pretty easy going. But dealing with confidential information, like in the Manning case, tends to muddy the waters a bit. It's not as if the information she released was false, nor did it cause as much harm as administrators were saying it did. Did the public have a right to know about that video, or was this a gross violation of an agreement to keep this information confidential. And this situation also will bring more question about how to deal with Snowden. Shouldn't the public have a right to know that their government has this kind of access to their information? But at the same time, how much harm does widespread knowledge of such a system cause?

I'm just thinking out loud here, because it's my blog and I can do that. I have nothing of any real substance to say on the matter. So sue me. 

Shameless Bean selfie. How could I not?

But anyway, I wanted to check out the protest to see what this side of the aisle has to say on the Manning matter. It wasn't a very well attended demonstration, but I got some literature and checked out the Bean area a bit. I've still got a soft spot for people who try to create change by standing in one place and yelling into a megaphone. 

As far as other things I do in my free time these days, I’ve really taken to heart a simple living-tip they gave us at orientation: Don’t actually buy stuff, just visit the stuff. Sounds weird, but its basically just window-shopping with zero ability to buy anything. When you visit stuff, you just check it out and then leave. Kind of like visiting relatives. I realized recently that I’ve been visiting stuff even before I was a JV. I would always browse stores to kill time or to pretend I could afford things. It’s not as lame as it sounds (yes it is). But anyway, my work location is a prime stuff-visiting spot. Last week, I went Crate and Barrel and visited a laundry hamper that cost more than my entire August stipend. This week, I went to Trader Joe’s and visited the liquor. It was all oddly satisfying.

So when it rained on Thursday this week, I decided that was the day I would visit the stuff in the Water Tower Place Mall. It kept me out of the rain and allowed me to get my pseudo-shopping fix.

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with this mall, but it is where the American Girl Doll store is located. American Girl is a cherished brand of my childhood. All the cool kids had an American Girl doll. They came with so many accessories, there was no way you could ever get bored with them like you would with Barbie (there’s only so many times you can play hair dresser…). To top it off, they all had such interesting back-stories. There was Josephina, a Pueblo Indian girl trying to navigate her desert landscape and changing culture. There was Addy, a slave girl who escaped north to freedom, but only ever wanted to be reunited with her father and brother, who were sold to a different owner. There was Felicity who…did something. I was never really sure what made Felicity interesting, besides being a colonial kid.

Naturally, I had the coolest doll of all: Kirsten Larson. 

LOOPS.

Not only was her name very similar to mine, but she also had a super unique story. She was a Swedish immigrant who, after losing her best friend to cholera, moved to the icy tundra that is Wisconsin. There, she did things like be a pioneer and meet Native Americans and fight off bears. Plus, she had the best hairstyle: two pigtail braids in LOOPS. LOOPS dude.

I decided on this rainy Thursday to go visit Kirsten and see what sort of new fun things the company had put her up to. As I strolled down the aisles, I felt an impressive wave of nostalgia as I passed Molly and Kit and Josephina and all the new dolls they’ve come out with and…

Hold the phone. Where was Kirsten?

A feeling akin to losing my bus pass swept over me, despite not having actually lost anything. But I did what I always do when I think I’ve lost something: I check everywhere three or four more times because usually, I just overlooked it and it’s been there the entire time and NO, AMERICAN GIRL DID NOT DISCONTINUE KIRSTEN.

I circled the store so many times I think I was worrying the nice looking sales clerk. No Kirsten. Still in denial, I booked it back to work ten minutes early to consult Google. Surely I was just going blind and they didn’t actually stop selling Kirsten, right?

Wrong. They pulled Kirsten from the shelves back in 2009. I was more than a little devastated. American Girl discontinued a part of my childhood. What was so wrong with Kirsten? Is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll suddenly perceived as threatening to young girls? Was her status as an immigrant too controversial for the times we live in now? Does the universe actually just hate me? Who knows, but all these questions won’t bring Kirsten back.

I spent the rest of the afternoon being unreasonably bitter. Sure, the kept Josephina, easily the least amusing of the group. She’s got all sorts of new and exciting stuff going on, while Kirsten is collecting dust in some warehouse somewhere. And what the hell is with all these new dolls? Why do we need a doll that looks like a hippy whose only interesting tidbit is that she’s from the ‘70s? I bet she does something stupid like meet Richard Nixon or something. Yeah, whatever. Kirsten fought a bear.

I lamented the situation to my housemates on our walk to the Salvation Army to buy mugs. I’m sure it didn’t help me as I continue to try to prove that I am not a crazy person and that I’ll be easy to live with for the next year.

Speaking of the house, we have a new cooking rotation that started this week. My designated day is Monday.

So, it’s finally happened. I had to cook for my housemates. I was first in the line up of our new and improved “Anna from Virginia Should Not Have to Cook Every Meal in this House, Even if She Enjoys Doing It and Everything She Makes Tastes Like It was Prepared by Angels in Tiny Chef’s Hats” weekly-cooking schedule. Monday’s are slow days at the office, so I knew I would be able to leave on time and make it home to prepare a dinner for five. Problem is, I have zero creativity when it comes to cooking. The food I prepared for myself in college consisted almost solely of eggs, oatmeal and whatever I could throw in a pot that would make enough food to feed me for a week. I don’t have a refined palette in any sense of the phrase. When I drink wine, I don’t pick up on fruit flavors or subtle hints of wood. The best I can do is correctly identify that I am, in fact, drinking wine. Wine that was probably made from grapes. I’m the same way with cooking; I just don’t get fancy.

I won’t lie, having to cook for an audience created some anxiety. My jokes about accidently giving everyone food poisoning were mostly fear-induced premonitions. I would be the girl they told stories about at JVC orientation. The Chicago JV who was so bad at living in community, she killed off her housemates the first time she tried to cook for them. I was going to be one of those lost cause JVs who would go down in history as what exactly a JV shouldn’t be.

All because I can’t cook.

The Sunday night before, I gathered up all the cook books in the house to try and find some ideas of what to make. What do normal people make when they cook for people? I didn’t want to make pasta, but I didn’t want to completely try and fail at something fancy. The cookbooks weren’t helping at all. There some weird stuff in those books that are clearly just there to be filler.

I wracked my brain for things my mom used to make that always went over well. She did make a mean corn bread for a woman who lived her entire life in the north. I texted the twin to see if she could remember the recipe, which she fortunately did.

Alright, so we were going to be having corn bread. Problem is, corn bread isn’t a meal. Corn bread is at best a side dish. What do people eat with corn bread?

The obvious answer is barbecue  Or it should be, but I’ve been a vegetarian for like nine years now, so meat is never my first resort. I wouldn’t know how to cook meat even if I wanted to anyway.

Then I got it into my head that corn bread and chili were a good match. I did have a pretty good recipe for veggie chili that I’ve used before, but that was also when I was still cooking for myself and didn’t care if what I was eating tasted edible. But it was the best idea I had all night, so I settled.

I booked it home from work that Monday so I could have enough time to get everything ready. 

Naturally, I way underestimated how much time it would take to get everything ready. Six o’clock rolled around and all I had to show for my dinner efforts were kitchen counters littered with knives and spoons and bowls, but nothing anyone would call “food” yet. I didn’t have enough regular chili powder for the recipe, but I found a bottle of “Mexican” chili powder, so I settled for that. I don’t believe it was actually any different than the regular chili powder, but I was still really concerned that this different spice would ruin everything. Plus, it was hot as a sauna in hell in that kitchen. Our house doesn’t exactly have air conditioning and I had the oven and the stove going at once. I was sweating and stressing out. I was like a sitcom episode where the show’s token bachelor tires to cook for himself. I wistfully thought back to a time when I could have just ordered a pizza and called it a day.

Thankfully, everything somehow came together around 7:15. Even better: people seemed to like it. The best part? No one died.

Tune in next week for a new episode in Kristen’s Cooking Dramatics: Adventures in Eggplant Parmesan. Pray for me.

The only other exciting thing that happened this week was that my community finally met our support people. Community support people are generally former JV’s who’s job it is to hang out with us and make sure we all don’t starve to death. Last week, our support people were on vacation in Cape Cod, so we didn’t get to meet them until this Thursday.

Turns out, they’re this adorable newly wed couple who go by the names Colleen and Steve. They had us over for dinner and then took us to get ice cream. It was awesome, mostly because we didn’t have to do any of the cooking. Props to Colleen and Steve. I’m genuinely looking forward to getting to know them better.

Wow, this was a long post. Do y’all remember when I was like “blogging is hard because I don’t know what to talk about?” It’s a great talent I have that I can make a short story super freaking long. Can you imagine how long this post would be if I didn’t actually have things to write about? I feel like I could probably write a novel out of nothing.

But that kind of wraps things up.

Thanks for reading. You rock.

PS: I want to get a library card. To do that, I need mail. If you feel like being generous and sending me a letter, shoot me an email at kmianogm@gmail.com and I’ll give you my mailing address. Thanks in advance.

PPS: I know the font style randomly changes in my posts. I don't know why and nothing I do to fix it works. I apologize for the inconvenience. 


*Lede- the most important line of a news story. Tells you the who, what, when, where, why, and occasionally, how. Not necessarily the first line you write, but burying the lede is often frowned upon in conservative news writing, as the idea is usually to get all the information upfront and to the reader as quickly as possible. And with that, I reassert my journalism nerdiness. 

Employment makes not having to work that much more exciting (and other things from my second week)

It’s the weekend! Yeeeeaaaaaaaah boi (XOXO smiley face chyea. Or something to that effect).

Now that I am an employed human being, I can get unreasonably excited about the weekend, where as before, I was just reasonably excited about the weekend.

That’s right: I wrapped up my first (semi)week on the job. My placement started this Wednesday, but we’ve been rolling since about 6 a.m. on Monday. Monday and Tuesday my housemates and I were bouncing all over the Chicago area to visit each other’s worksites. But before we could set off into the work force, we participated in an age-old tradition: a ceremony that has been passed down from JV to JV, from Catholic to Catholic, from Jesus Christ himself even…

We went to Church.

I mean, it makes sense that as a group of volunteers participating in a faith-based organization that we would make a point to go to Mass on Sunday, but anyone who knows my church-going history probably knows that this was a big deal for me. That’s because my church going history isn’t much of a history. I’ve got more of a church-going tweet going on.

I cannot tell you the last time I intentionally walked into a church for the purpose of sitting for a service. According to Foursquare, the last time I checked into a church building was a year ago (Foursquare can be a little judgmental like that). The Catholic Mass has a tendency to make me uncomfortable, but I feel like its something easy I can do to live the value of Spirituality (the Fish in FishBreadHouseBird). I give myself an A for effort.

What I keep forgetting, however, is that Catholic Mass moved on without me. I haven’t been to church since the mass changes, so I still have the responses from the first half of my life memorized. I find that being super lost during mass doesn’t necessarily detract from the experience of prayer and worship, but it is a tiny bit awkward when I’m trying to tell the priest that I want the Lord to be with him also and everyone else in the building wants the Lord to be with his spirit.

It wasn’t a bad time, though. The Chicago Bernardin community (that’s my house, by the way) met up with the Chicago Tolton community (that’s the other house in Chicago. There are two. You can probably guess which community is the cool community…) so it was a big old Mass party. We also got to meet some former JVs who live in the area. JVC is pretty neat that way. Not only are there a bunch of past volunteers who live in Chicago, but also most of them remember how much it sucks to be living on such a tiny stipend, so they are eager to do nice things for the current volunteers. In fact, we had a former JV bring us dinner on our first night in Chicago. Pretty awesome. 

On Monday, JVC had set us up so could visit three of the four placements my house is working at. While seeing where my housemates will be working was neat, the day was really an exercise in navigating the Chicago public transportation system. Thanks to some nifty GPS navigation skills by my housemate, Trish, I’d say the day was successful. We were only lost for a very short period of time.

We visited my worksite first. I didn’t really look up much information about where I would be working, save for checking out their website a bit. So you can imagine my surprise when our trip took us downtown to Michigan Ave. to what is essentially the most metropolitan area of Chicago. The church I’m working in is across the street from the John Hancock building, which I incorrectly assumed was the Sears Tower upon seeing it, and caddy corner to the American Girl Doll store. Every store I could think of is in walking distance from where I am and the avenue is lined with skyscrapers. I was elated. I knew I was going to be working in a city, but I didn’t think I would be in the city.

Though I’m working with an organization that is housed by Fourth Presbyterian church, my actual office is in the basement of this modern looking building that has nifty things like a receptionist and security guards. My housemates and I were met by my coworker, Abby, a fast talking girl from Kentucky. We had allotted about three hours for the visit, but Abby got us through the tour and out of the building in about 20 minutes, which was fine because it gave us a chance to explore Michigan Ave some more.

For those who are deathly curious what my job actually entails, I’m pretty much an active secretary. I help guests set up appointments for Service Center’s food pantry and clothing closet, call people to remind them when they have appointments, and process lots and lots of paper work. My boss, a lovely fellow named Dan, told me that the Center just received a grant to digitize all the paper files we have, and despite being the new kid, I’m so pumped. So much of my time is spent digging through the Center’s ancient file cabinet for folders and flipping through stacks of paper that the thought of being able to do the work digitally already seems like a godsend. I can’t wait until they get started.

We spent the rest of Monday roaming the Chicago streets, visiting two other worksites and complaining about how much our feet hurt from walking (okay, that was just me). We also invited Chicago Tolton down south for a community dinner. I really enjoy that we have two communities in Chicago. It’s sort of like we came to the city with nine automatic friends. We’ll see how long it takes us to get sick of each other.

Tuesday was more of the same, except we only had one placement to visit and had the rest of the day off. It was the first down time we had really had since orientation, so that was nice. My roommate Anna and I took a little trip to the dollar store to get some craft supplies for future crafting activities, but that was really all that happened that day. Which was good, because the next day was…

* Insert frightening crash of thunder and some lightening *

THE FIRST DAY OF WORK.

Actually, the first day wasn’t bad. It was a lot of learning to do things and asking what I’m sure were stupid questions. I got to interact with some guests on my first day and set up my voicemail, which I made way more complicated than it needed to be. Despite being in an office like setting, my job is pretty hectic. It’s a lot of running back and forth, answering calls and getting things for people. While it can be stressful at times, it makes the time go by quickly.

On Friday, I sat down at my desk to find an email from Dan telling me that I was going to do outreach that afternoon with some Northwestern medical students. After asking him what that meant exactly, I was introduced to Warren and Q, two members of the Good Neighbors outreach team. They were both Northwestern kids and they were nice enough to ask if I was a Northwestern grad student as well. I laughed and told them Northwestern was a school for smart people, so no, I was not a grad student there. I tried explaining that I was a JV and what that meant exactly, but all I could manage were statements like, “Oh, well, I like Jesus, so I moved into a house with a bunch of people I don’t know so I could come work with homeless people in this basement everyday. What? No, I’m not getting paid…”

Despite the disconnect in our life trajectories, Warren and Q were awesome, especially once we got out onto the street. With the Social Service Center, outreach means we walk up and down Michigan Ave. and talk to people we see just hanging out on the sidewalks with signs or change cups. We’ll ask them their name, if they’re in this area often, and find out if they need some food or anything and do our best to send them off with some granola bars or toiletries. We’re encouraged, however, to let the people we meet do most of the talking. Most of the time, the people we found we eager to tell us their story and occasionally lament their situation. There was only so much we could do in that moment, but we usually handed them a business card for the Service Center before we parted ways. Since the Center already has some emergency services and is working to get a housing placement project going, it was really nice to know that we could send them somewhere that was equipped to help them out.

Doing outreach was probably the highlight of my workweek, and I’m really looking forward to doing it again next week now that I know what it’s all about.

Otherwise, I’ve just been spending most of my time being in love with Chicago. I’m totally still in the “new city honeymoon” phase of my relocation. But so far I’ve been very impressed with this Illinois city. I can take a bus pretty much anywhere and there’s actually places that stay open past 9:00 pm. The people here are really fascinating too, and by that I mean that there are so. Many. Hipsters. They are everywhere, riding their bikes and wearing their jorts. I’m not sure if Chicagoians are aware of their hipsterness or if it’s the way the city is, but I’m a fan.

One this I’ve really loved so far is running in the city. When I lived in St. Louis, I picked running routes that I knew already from having been in those areas thousands of times. While the familiarity was nice, it got boring quickly, which meant I had to make an effort to switch it up or just not run. More often than not I went with the later. But everything is still fresh and new in Chicago. There’s always something new to see or people to watch, even if I run the same way everyday. Plus, I discovered the other day (mostly by accident) that if I make myself run far enough I can run on the trail next to Lake Michigan. It’s such a scenic route that I find myself upping my mileage just so I can run there. Talk about killer motivation.

I’m also still a big fan of the girls in my community. I really lucked out in that department. I love my job, but it’s been a joy this week to come home and chat with my housemates. We’ve even made dinner together a few nights, which is a good way to start because I’m fairly positive we won’t still be friends once I have to cook for my house on my own. That being said, if anyone out there has some fool proof, cheap and tasty recipes they want to send my way, I am more than open to that.

All and all, things remain awesome here. I eventually hope to see this blog turn into a platform for stories and other fun things and less of a play by play of every day of my week. I wish I had something more exciting to write about at this point, but hey, I've got a whole year here. Something's bound to happen eventually. 

Thanks for reading. Keep being awesome (who ever you are). 

Welcome to Chicago!

Live from lovely Roscoe Village in Chicago, I bring you…well, me.

And I’m not even sure if I’m really technically located in Roscoe, but more on that later.

Finally, after a year of essays and applications and nagging various wonderful people in my life for recommendations and donations, I can officially call myself a Jesuit Volunteer. More specifically, I can call myself a Jesuit Volunteer of the Chicago-Bernardin Community. In reality, I just call myself a JV. 

Or Kristen. I’ve been known to go by that too.

Oddly enough, moving into a strange apartment in a new city with four other [wonderful, marvelous, beautiful, intelligent, socially conscious, etc. *] girls I only kind of know was a relief after the last week I had. Before any JV can go save the world, they have to be orientated. So early Sunday (Aug. 4), I shipped out of LGA on a flight that would end up in Morgantown, Indiana. After four years of flying from St. Louis to New York, I had evidently racked up enough miles to travel to orientation in first class.

The irony of beginning my year of simple living in first class is not lost on me. But I got a free bowl of oatmeal out of it, so I won’t judge myself too harshly.

Once I landed in Indianapolis International Airport, I found myself with some time to kill. The JV staffers had sent those flying to Indiana an email stating we wouldn’t get picked up until about 3 p.m. that day, so I settled down with my suitcase and sleeping bag in some isolated corner of the terminal and prepared myself to sit quietly until it was time to go.

Almost immediately, a girl came up to me and excitedly asked if I was a JV. Startled, I didn’t have a chance to come up with a compelling lie, so I truthfully acknowledged that I was.

“Great! There’s a bunch of us sitting over there!”

Moments later, I was in the midst of a group of about thirty 20-somethings, all equipped with pillows and backpacks. I shook everyone’s hand, but remembered no one’s name. Off to a good start, I felt.

At three o’clock, we all were introduced to a JV staffer by the name of Maggie. Maggie directed the lot of us to a big old bus and we were off to our retreat site.

I was genuinely impressed with how far out in the middle of nowhere this place was. I know I tend to be judgey of any location where one has to drive more than ten minutes to find a grocery store, but my judgment was more than justified in the case of Waycross retreat center.  As we trekked further and further away from civilization and most human contact, I found myself wondering A.) Who in their right mind comes out here? And B.) Who was the crazy person who came out here and was like, “This would be a stellar place to build some cabins and a church!”

I think I was probably just salty that there was zero cell service. Not that that ended up mattering in the slightest, because one of the first things that happened when we got off the bus was that the JV staff took our cell phones.

Boo. [Author’s note: Being cell phone free allows one to be present to themselves and others while on retreat. It’s actually a good place to be and I get that. But I also wanted to be able to check the weather periodically and tweet the stupid things I think.]

To provide a detailed explanation of everything that happened at orientation would require a better attention span than the one I have been blessed with, so get excited for some cliff notes:

 -I’m covered in mosquito bites.

- Eating vegetarian for a week was awesome. Being served fish sticks in a pita pocket, however, is confusing for both carnivores and veggies alike.

-I am bad at both following directions and dancing in a way that doesn’t make me look like the world’s biggest spazz. Contra dancing involves both of these things. It was awesome regardless.

- I’m that kid that loses her folder with all the incredibly important orientation papers on the very first day of retreat. I’m also that kid who finds her folder in her backpack (where she put it on the first day of retreat) two days later and has to sheepishly tell everyone they can stop looking for it.

-JVC is convinced my name is Kristin. Fortunately, that is how my name is pronounced, so there was minimal confusion.

-There is no issue in the House of Representatives, United States Senate, SCOTUS or the United Nations that is as difficult to solve as trying to pick the kind of milk that your community will buy.

- The four values of JVC are Spirituality, Simple Living, Community and Social Justice. When you draw these out as symbols, they become Fish, Bread, House, Bird. So if anyone asks, FishBreadHouseBird is the core of JVC.^

-Being “intentional” about literally everything you do is crucial. I’m intentionally blogging right this second. I’m already really good at being a JV, therefore.

-Just because the coffee is free does not mean it is socially acceptable to drink seven cups before noon.

-This year is going to be stellar.

I think that sums up my last week quite nicely. But in truth, Orientation was a great way to ease into what this next year is going to be. I actually need the chance to focus my attention on the months ahead, and the time at Waycross allowed me to do that. On the off chance that anyone who orchestrated that retreat reads this blog, I want to say thanks for the wonderful time.

But now I’m in the apartment I’ll be residing in for the next twelve months. It’s pretty excellent. A little dirty and a little cluttered from the years of JV’s before us, but it’s also giant and super comfy. I was pretty nervous JVC would place me in a cardboard box down by the Chicago River, so this place is definitely a vastly better option.

The only thing that bugs me is the basement where we do our laundry. It reminds me vaguely of the basement from The Conjuring, so if I neglect to update this blog in the next week or so, just assume I got offed by a demonic witch ghost and know that I probably considered you to be a dear friend.

In the coming days, we’ll be touring and learning cool things about Chicago. The area I’m in now is actually pretty nice and residential. Google maps tells me that I live in Roscoe Village, but we were warned that this is a point of debate. Still being green in the ways of Chicago neighborhoods, I’m sure I’ll eventually come to understand why this is such a point of contention, but for now I think it will suffice to say that I kind of live in Roscoe.

I start work at the Elam Davies Social Service Center on Wednesday. I’m pretty pumped and certainly unsure of what to expect. So that’ll be something to look forward to if you follow this blog.

Here’s the link to my Send Me to Serve page. JVC is still taking donations (hint hint, wink wink), but it’ll also be a good introduction as to my motivations for becoming a JV and a bit about my placement, assuming you aren’t an expert on the subject of me already:

http://jesuitvolunteers.myetap.org/fundraiser/smts13/individual.do?participationRef=37.0.826144447

That’s all for now. Thanks for taking an interest in my adventures. Leave a comment or something.

I’ve never been much of a blogger, so I don’t know how to end this post…

AMDG?

How bout just bye. Okay, bye.

*Just in case any of my housemates decide to read my blog. Hey ladies J.**

**The ladies I live with are truly all those adjectives, though. I promise I’m not just trying to get on their good side.***

***Though if this gets me on their good side, I’m not going to complain J.

^Credit for FishBreadHouseBird as a phrase goes to the marvelous Anna Bninski