I arrived in PA on Saturday morning and spent the last several days with family in the area, but today marks my first day as an MCCer. We SALTers were asked to arrive at the Welcoming Place starting at three this afternoon. There are 39 of us and 25 IVEPers at orientation this week. My grandparents dropped me off around three-thirty, and I had some time to explore the beautiful campus, settle into my room, and get to know a few of my housemates.
Dinner of groundnut stew and snap peas was at 5:15, then we played get-to-know you games including Giant Dutch Blitz and getting-in-groups-based-on-what-we-have-in-common. My guess is you'll see some videos of Dutch Blitz pretty soon on the @mccpeace Instagram story! I got acquainted with the one other SALTer who's going to Honduras, Kara. She'll be serving in Tegucigalpa. She was worried that she'd be the only MCCer there, but I was able to tell her about Keyla, the YAMENer who will be in Tegucigalpa as well. (I met Keyla on the FB group for IVEP/SALT/YAMEN and we've had a fairly extensive conversation over Messenger - I'm really looking forward to meeting her in-country!) Since I'll be working in the MCC office in SPS, I'll have the support of the Country Reps and Connecting Peoples Coordinator on a daily basis, which will be nice. I'm glad Keyla and Kara won't be alone, but it's hard not to wish that another compañerx from one of MCC's young adult programs would be serving in SPS with me. This past term (2018-19), I believe there were 7 YALTers in Honduras, three in Tegucigalpa and four in SPS. That must have been a blast! But a smaller group can be good for forming close connections with one another.
Each morning during the next six days of orientation, we'll have devotions and hear music from a different region. Tomorrow morning will be music from the US and Canada. Anyone who wanted to stay and prepare was welcome, so I stuck around for a few minutes to help pick songs. We were pretty unanimous about "Be Thou My Vision" and thought we'd also do another hymn and one praise song. There seemed to be enough singers in the group, so I left it to their capable voices... and then decided to start a blog! So here we are.
It still hasn't entirely sunk in yet what's in store for me this next year. My last day of work was nearly three weeks ago on the 26th of July, but it almost still feels like an extended vacation. Picturing the renters living in my house is the thought that hits home the reality of all this the most. Eso, y extrañar fuerte a mis amigxs.
"amigxs" y "companerxs". I love it!
ReplyDelete- Nicole