Welcome to Tennessee!

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.