Well hello! Long time no talk! I didn't think blogging would be interesting while I'm here, but I realized that you people still want to know what's going on with me!
So I've officially been here for a month. I had flown down to Atlanta for training, then flew to Spartanburg to partially move into my new townhouse. After another training on Monday I flew back home to Maine to finsh up some loose ends and to get my car. I took a 2 day journey driving from Maine to South Carolina. For the first part of the trip my brother Brian and his girlfriend Lindsay were with me and I was able to drop them off in Maryland near DC, spend the night and continue the journey on my own from there. It was a long drive simply for the fact that the air conditioning in my car doesn't work and I was driving through the south. But I made it.
So now that I've been here for a month I'm getting a lay of the land. Have some good friends who are VISTAs here as well. They all work at different non-profit organizations around Spartanburg. I live with another VISTA and two others live in the same townhouse complex, so that's convenient.
At first the job was slow going and there wasn't much for me to do. With this job I am recruiting volunteers, interviewing them, interviewing parents and children and making those matches. So a lot of the work I can only learn by seeing them happen first. So now I am able to go out to college fairs and recruit volunteers on my own, I can now interview a volunteer on my own, I can now interview parents and children, so the work is starting to pick up. It was just earlier thi week that I had seen my first interview with a parent and child, and it is heart wrenching. It definitely made me realize why I'm here and doing what i do because these kids are in situations that aren't their fault and just need a positive role model in their lives. So I'm enjoying the job somewhat, sometimes it can be slow if there isn't much to do but I try to keep myself busy!
As for my social life here in SC it has been going really well. We've generally found a lot of things to do that are fun and cheap. This past weekend I did something that I neeeeever would have everdone before. I went Contra Dancing. We drove out to this middle of nowhere place, were surrounded by college kids as well as older adults and you learn the basic moves, then similar to line dancing learn a specific dance, have a partner that is a stranger and get to know them by sweating on them and getting very very dizzy spining in so many circles. But I had a great time and talked to strangers (that sounds bad, but was a good experience) and went out of my comfort zone and became comfortable with it. A couple weeks ago we also decided to go test out the local "dance club" Rome. It was quite interesting, a great place to go if you really enjoy dancing to techno music and have creeps around you at all times. But once again was a good experience to have.
I have gone to a couple events downtown that they have including "Music on Main" and "Jazz in the Square" which are just music shows downtown and being able to enjoy music and the downtown area. Coming up this week we are going to the Greek Festival which i am so excited to eat me a Gyro! And next weekend is their International Festival, so we've got a lot of cool culture activities to do around here and keep us busy.
So that's all I have for right now, but thought that I'd update as to what my last couple months have been like and it was pointed out that I should keep up with it even if this work isn't as exciting as what I was doing last year. So. I will try. Adios.
