It is weird to think that just over
a week ago I boarded a plane to start my journey to Indiana for orientation
that would officially mark the start of my JVC year. For the next year I will
be living in Nashville, TN working with the Odysessy Program at
Room In The Inn.
Orientation dedicated a day to each
of the four values (spirituality, community, social justice and simple living)
to get us familiarized with them and how we are going to be intentionally
living this next year. Amongst the info sessions there were also group bonding
exercises where we were given the opportunity to get to know our community (Alison,
Katie, Veronica, Jane, Tracy, Eileen and me), as well as the JVs in other
communities, better. I love the group of girls that I’ll be living with and I
think that we’re going to have an awesome year together. Over all orientation
was necessary and definitely helped me prepare for the upcoming year, but by
the middle of the week I was anxious to get to Nashville.
It took about 5 hours to get from
orientation to Nashville and along the way we stopped in Louisville for lunch,
as well as stopping at the “Welcome to Tennessee” sign for a mandatory picture.
When we got to the house in East Nashville, we all gathered for a pep talk
written by Katie and Veronica; the pep talk that was supposed to be in our
binder was missing so they wrote one that was personal to us which was a great
way to kick off the year. It was weird moving into a house that was already
decorated and furnished, it felt like we were more here for a visit rather than
moving in. All of the FJVs from last year left us detailed instructions on how
to get to work and various other details of what our jobs will entail; which we
greatly appreciated. We weren’t able to pick our stuff up until Monday so it
was hard to make our house feel homey at first, but we were able to bond over
cleaning and finding where exactly things were in our own house.
JVC has done a good job at making
sure we feel acclimated once arriving in Nashville. The day we first got here
one of our support people, Louisa, brought us dinner and then the next day Ben
and Jenny took us on a tour of the city and took us out to lunch. We also met
Brian, the FJV who was in my position last year and is staying in Nashville, as
well as a few of our neighbors. Everyone has been really nice and has made us
feel very welcomed.
We don’t start work until
Wednesday, but on Monday and Tuesday we went on Area Visits, during which all 7
of us went to each other’s agencies. Monday we went to The Oasis Center, where
both Katie and Veronica are working; Project Return, where Jane is working; and
Southern Migrant Legal Services, where Eileen is working. And then Tuesday we
went to Room in the Inn, my workplace; Catholic Charities, where Alison is
working; and The Bridge, where Tracy is working. All of the places seem really
great and everyone was very friendly. Visiting the workplaces definitely got us
more excited to start work.
