Weekend fun

The past two weekends have been quite fun and busy. We started our weekend off last week by watching Newsies on Friday night as a house! It is such a great movie but it wasn't quite the same for me as watching a group of middle school boys from the Regis High School REACH perform it live as they did in the summer of 2006. On Saturday we had a relaxing morning at home and spent our afternoon with Eileen and Meg (an FJV from last year and my supervisor.) Eileen took us exploring along the beach and huckleberry picking, where Katie did her best Blueberries for Sal impression by eating nearly as many berries as she picked! For those of you who are like me and had never heard of huckleberries, they look like blueberries but are a bright red color (some can be blue though) and have a more tarty flavor. After we picked enough berries Eileen taught us how to properly clean the berries and get them prepared to make jam. Once it was time, it took a total team effort to turn the berries into the twelve half pints that we were able to make and save for later.

On Sunday, we all went to church at St. Gregory's where a retired priest from the Bronx resides! In the afternoon we went hiking with Eileen along Indian River and saw the very beginning of the Pink Salmon run. It has finally started to rain so hopefully the salmon will start running soon. We hiked for about three hours and the weather was constantly changing from sun to rain and back for the entire time. After our hike, Meg and Eileen invited us over for fish tacos where Meg was house sitting. Dinner was delicious and it was nice to hang out with them before our work week started.

Last night we had our first meeting with Bridget, an FJV and our support person. We had some brownies and ice cream and shared our motivations for applying to and choosing JVC Nortwest as well as our thoughts on which of the four values we felt would be the easiest and hardest for us to engage in, as well as our greatest fears for the year. For me, I think that what I am most afraid of is getting too emotional in my job; I am worried that at times I might get overwhelmed with emotions and be unable to give 100% in my job or separate what I experience at work from my own life and emotions. For this reason, I am blessed that I have such a strong support system here of my housemates, support people, FJVs and my coworkers on whom I can turn to help ensure that I am taking care of myself and dealing with things that come up and impact me one way or another.

Today, our house participated in a charity basketball tournament! Eileen financially backed our team to help benefit an organization called Young Alaskans Building Affordable Housing that she works for. We called our team the New JVs and had very low expectations for our team because most of us have never played basketball outside of gym class or pickup games in high school. We lost both of our games but we got awesome t-shirts, it was a great time and an even better cause!

Work--part of the reason I am here

So I started work on Monday of this week. I am working as the children's advocate at an organization called Sitkans Against Family Violence (SAFV.) My job consists of several parts that are all related to and focused on ensuring the safety and advocating on behalf of children both at the shelter and in the community. Part of my responsibilities will include childcare to help give moms a chance to participate in group meetings and attend appointments in town. I also will be an advocate for the children's needs as they arise both in and out of shelter and will be working on helping with planning and organizing Domestic Violence Awareness Month activities, Child Abuse Awareness Month and various holiday events for children. Once school starts, I will be helping to facilitate lunch and after school support groups and making safety presentations in the elementary schools.

It was a very busy, hectic week but I am really excited to have finally started and have an idea of what my job will be like and who I will be working with. My supervisor is Meg (an FJV from last year) who has been really good at introducing me to everyone, walking me through the procedures, and helping me understand both what we do in the children's program and how we do it. She has also been really great and checking in to make sure that I am doing ok both with the work and with adjusting to being here. Self care is something that she and SAFV stress and is something that I know will become more important as the year goes on (just like it would become more necessary later in the semester at school.)

After a week at work, I am starting to feel comfortable with my position and am adjusting to working a full time job. I was exhausted several days after work but also very fulfilled because I feel like I am doing something that matters. I feel that I have learned a LOT this week and am excited for what lies ahead. I am excited to learn more as I get more comfortable with my daily activities, excited to work with the children and anxious to get started with the school presentations and support groups.

Sitka!!!

We arrived in Sitka on Saturday August 8 and were met at the airport by a slew of FJVs, our supervisors, and support persons which was awesome to say the least. Once we got to the house we brought all of our stuff in and talked for a few minutes with some FJVs who gave us a rundown of the house and Sitka. Our house is wonderful! We live above a business offering tours of Sitka, have 4 bedrooms (I am sharing a room with Greg, who I am sure will be featured here often), 1.5 bathrooms, a kitchen with more spices than I ever thought possible outside of a restaurant and our living room, which came fully stocked with books, comfortable couches and enough art supplies to power a kindergarten class for at least a year. Greg and my bedroom has one of the greatest views I have ever seen: when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see is the harbor (about 100 feet from our house) and mountains just beyond that that are often met by clouds along their peaks or just in front at a lower altitude. On our first night in Sitka, my housemates and I went out and explored the town. There are a good number of little shops along the main street along the water that seem to be geared towards the large number of tourists coming in from the cruise ships as well as a bunch of restaurants, coffee shops and pubs. We walked around further and saw the Russian Orthodox Church Cathedral as well as Murray Pacific (where we all got our Xtra Tuffs which are these boots that everyone in Sitka wears to stay dry) and a lighthouse on an outer island.

On Sunday morning, Eileen (an FJV from last year) took us to mass and had breakfast with us. Afterwards she drove us all around Sitka showing us where the trailheads for several trails were, took us to one of the largest sand beaches in Sitka (think maybe 30 feet of shoreline), and showed us where the roads end (there are 7 miles of road on each side of town.) Later on, she introduced us to Tyler, a local 3^rd grade teacher, who is a friend of the JVs and offered to take us fishing on Monday and Tuesday.

At 9am on Monday, along with Greg and Natalie, Tyler took us out to get ready for a day of fishing. After picking us up, Tyler taught us how to bait, which meant piercing the hook through the eye of a salmon’s head and ensuring the other end came up on the other side. We baited 15 hooks like this because we were going to lay a long line (think Mark Wahlberg in The Perfect Storm), hoping to catch some halibut when Katie and Evie returned on Tuesday to pull it up. After laying the long line and dropping a basket for crab, we set out to catch some salmon in Katlian Bay. Along the way I saw a seal and my first bald eagle!!! Before we got into the shallower water where the salmon were waiting to head upstream (they haven’t been able to head upstream due to the lack of rain this summer) we practiced casting and then started really fishing. Between the 3 of us, we caught about a dozen pink salmon and we headed for shore. Tyler then taught us how to fillet the fish (cut off their meat) as well as clean them off in the salt water to prevent the spread of bacteria and took us on a hike around Katlian Island where we saw thousands of salmon in the river, a bear bed and bear tracks! When we returned home, Tyler showed us how to bake the salmon that he had cased (gutted) and how to properly store the fish so that we can freeze them and have them in a couple weeks or months. Dinner was delicious and it was so exciting to eat something that we had caught ourselves.

Meet the Housemates

Before I get into describing the wonder that is Sitka, Alaska I figured I would briefly introduce you all to my housemates for the next year.

Evie is from just outside Seattle and went to Western Washington University. She found out about being accepted to JVC and her placement in Sitka very recently and is really good at mimicking accents. Last night she guided us along a quest to find our individual spirit animals. Mine was the owl!

Greg is my roommate and just graduated from St. Louis University. He grew up in Buffalo, went to Canisius High School (yay Jesuits!) and played ultimate Frisbee in high school and throughout college. He traveled to Africa for a class on International Social Work and Development so I am super pumped to share experiences from Tanzania and work through some of our shared experiences and challenges that we continue to face following our respective trips.

Katie is from about 45 minutes away from Baltimore and graduated from Mt. Saint Mary’s. She will be working for Big Brothers Big Sisters and also took 5 children’s books out of the library as soon as she got her library card; last night she read Fish is Fish to us aloud like kindergarten teachers do.

Natalie is from Southern Illinois and went to Marquette University. She is working with me at Sitkans Against Family Violence (SAFV) as a women’s advocate and is a great artist who has really taken to making origami cranes over the past couple of days.

Commissioning Liturgy

This mass gets its own entry because it might have been the best mass I have attended in a really long time (potentially rivaling Baccalaureate Mass and 7pm mass…sorry Paul.)The music for mass was great, including a Zulu gospel acclamation, a second year JV gave a fearless and inspiring reflection on her JV year right after the Gospel, and all 123 JVs in the Northwest were commissioned as were the JVC Northwest staff and board. We were called up by our area directors, who prayed over us, presented us with Jerusalem crosses (like many have received on retreats like Quest or Kairos), and gave a final blessing of their hopes and support for our community. Mass concluded with a spirited singing of Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Freedom Medley” where Fitts the Friendly led a train throughout the gymnasium and we concluded in a giant circle. It was an incredible way to close out the week and really inspired me about the level of community and support that exists among all of JVC Northwest. This week really reinforced my decision to serve as a volunteer in JVC Northwest because the entire experience was so personal and community oriented.

JVC Northwest Orientation

Arrival at orientation (and much of orientation) was a surreal experience for me. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by several members of the JVC staff who were responsible for checking us in. As I approached the registration table, I was greeted with a giant "I know who you are!" and hug from my area director for Alaska (who I had never met prior to this) which really set the tone for the rest of the week for me.

Our first night included dinner and a Native American smudging ceremony in which cedar was burnt and each of us was invited to take the smoke in our hands and brush it over ourselves. We did this because it is believed that before a person can be healed or heal another, one must be cleansed both physically and spiritually of any bad feelings, negative thoughts, bad spirits or negative energy. This was a very new, unique and freeing experience for me and I think that it united us all together, opened us up to our surroundings and enabled us to enter the week in complete openness to all that we would hear and experience.

During orientation, each day was set aside to examine one of the JVC values: Social Justice, Community, Spirituality, and Simple Living. We began each day with songs that words cannot do justice for. To quote someone explaining JVC songs to me before I arrived, "it is basically Jesus Raffi." We had a variety of speakers (mainly Former JVs and people working in organizations in the Portland area) that included Fr. Jack Morris, one of the founders of JVC, who I was able to talk to before I left. He shared some stories about Holy Cross (one involving his honorary degree) and offered his hopes and prayers for my time in Sitka. It was really powerful for me to be able to meet and speak with him because he is the one who started it all and has spent his live working for peace and justice, including making a peace walk from Tacoma, WA to Bethlehem (where Jesus was born.)

Throughout the week the speakers sparked a variety of conversations and thoughts for me, however the most challenging and interesting quote for me came during the Top 10 list of JVC during Community day when one of the presenters shared the following quote with us: "Forgiveness is the letting go of all hope for a better past." I had never heard this quote before and had never thought of forgiveness in that manner before. I feel that this quote is one that will continue to come up for me over the course of this year and is one that I know will challenge me to grow spiritually, emotionally and socially.

The toughest part of orientation though was saying goodbye. One of the great things about orientation was that I met so many great people; one of the worst things about it though is that because we are in different parts of the northwest I may never see these people again. Saying goodbye to the people I connected with over the course of the week was weird but we were pretty positive in our hopes to keep in touch and someday meet again. The end of the week also meant that I had to say goodbye (for now) to the other 10 Holy Cross JVs and Mo, who came to visit us on Thursday and will be serving as a JV for 2 years in Peru. The JVC staff and family really put 110% into ensuring that each of us felt at home, was challenged, that each session served to benefit us individually and communally, and that a tightly knit community among the new JVs was established. Some of us plan on passing books (and letters) on throughout the year in order to stay in touch…it is something I am very excited about! It is also great to know that there are so many people serving in dozens of communities throughout the world; it is inspiring and serves as a reminder to myself and my community in Sitka that we are not alone.

Portland

So I left New York on August 1st with four of my incredible friends from Holy Cross for our pre-orientation adventure in Portland, OR. On Sunday, Alex, Avanti and I took Portland's version of the subway downtown to the Saturday Market, a gigantic market full of a variety of little shops, henna tatoos, caricature artists, and tons of food and locally brewed beers (Portland has something like 30 breweries.) After exploring the market we walked around downtown eventually finding our way to the Rose Test Garden (which was actually pretty cool) and of course the Oregon Zoo! We started by visiting the animals of the Great Northwest...mountain goats, black bears, and we tried to see the cougar but he was hiding. The highlight for me of course was seeing the sleeping Polar Bear who was hanging out in the shade under a sprinkler because it was 90 degrees outside. After the zoo we met up with Jeana, Lauren and Sarah and went to dinner at the Rockbottom Brewery (highly suggested by one of Portland's finest) where we consumed what we coined our "last burgers" and enjoyed some of the local brews and some good company. Eventually we headed back to the hotel and took in some Shark Week on TV.
On Monday, we headed back into the city to have lunch at the Blueplate Diner, which appeared on the Food Network and had one of the best ice cream floats I have ever had. Finally we decided that we should go to orientation and made our way over to the airport where we met a bunch of other JVs, some of the JVC staff and headed off to Camp Adams in a bunch of vans.