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I'm in Virginia and online. Life is tiring but hopeful. I'm homesick too, a bit. It's not so much Minneapolis as (1) the proximity of friends in Northfield and (2) the sense that I knew how to navigate my surroundings. It's exhausting to figure out a new public transportation system, not to mention a whole new group of people. The people at the Youth Venture headquarters are very tight-knit. Of course, right now, I'm not only dealing with them but also the people from all around the country who are coming in for the orientation. I just got back from a pizza dinner to welcome some of the new people getting into town.
AmeriCorps orientation in Atlanta was exhausting-- that word is getting to be a refrain. Most of the stuff we "learned" was simply annoying and common sense, but we had to sit there from 8:30 to 5:30 every day to learn it and listen respectfully to other people's inane comments or else risk not being allowed to become an AmeriCorps VISTA. Some of specific information about benefits or the history and structure of VISTA was useful, but that was far and few in between. On the up side, we got good hot meals, stayed in a pretty nice hotel, and got to explore Atlanta at night.
The travel agency that AmeriCorps used booked those of us coming from Atlanta to DC on a flight to Washington-Dulles, the airport that's way out of town(as opposed to Washington-Reagan, where you can see the Mall from the tarmac). And Lorraine, the person in charge of the orientation, expected me to go to the office as soon as I got in, so Friday's arrival took much more time than I would have liked. Becca and I (Becca also went to the Atlanta training) got in around 6, waited for our baggage, walked out to a bus area, were told to buy tickets and then turned around after buying them to see the bus taking off, waited around for awhile and learned about all of the various bus options available to us, took a bus in, then a metro, and finally got to the office. Lorraine gave us schedules, and gave me a pizza. But then I went back down to the metro, and had to take two metro trains to get to the bus stop. I was five minutes late for one of the buses, so I had a whole 55 minutes to wait around in the cold weather. I ended up exploring two local grocery stores and sitting down in a cafe that was luckily still open at 10:30 at night. Then bus ride in followed with a long procession through the dark in a housing development I'd only seen once with my suitcase, backpack, AmeriCorps bag with orientation binder, and a half-gallon of orange juice I had purchased. I was *so*, *so* glad to arrive here last night.
AmeriCorps orientation in Atlanta was exhausting-- that word is getting to be a refrain. Most of the stuff we "learned" was simply annoying and common sense, but we had to sit there from 8:30 to 5:30 every day to learn it and listen respectfully to other people's inane comments or else risk not being allowed to become an AmeriCorps VISTA. Some of specific information about benefits or the history and structure of VISTA was useful, but that was far and few in between. On the up side, we got good hot meals, stayed in a pretty nice hotel, and got to explore Atlanta at night.
The travel agency that AmeriCorps used booked those of us coming from Atlanta to DC on a flight to Washington-Dulles, the airport that's way out of town(as opposed to Washington-Reagan, where you can see the Mall from the tarmac). And Lorraine, the person in charge of the orientation, expected me to go to the office as soon as I got in, so Friday's arrival took much more time than I would have liked. Becca and I (Becca also went to the Atlanta training) got in around 6, waited for our baggage, walked out to a bus area, were told to buy tickets and then turned around after buying them to see the bus taking off, waited around for awhile and learned about all of the various bus options available to us, took a bus in, then a metro, and finally got to the office. Lorraine gave us schedules, and gave me a pizza. But then I went back down to the metro, and had to take two metro trains to get to the bus stop. I was five minutes late for one of the buses, so I had a whole 55 minutes to wait around in the cold weather. I ended up exploring two local grocery stores and sitting down in a cafe that was luckily still open at 10:30 at night. Then bus ride in followed with a long procession through the dark in a housing development I'd only seen once with my suitcase, backpack, AmeriCorps bag with orientation binder, and a half-gallon of orange juice I had purchased. I was *so*, *so* glad to arrive here last night.
