Journal #3 August 14, 2009 11:55pm

Today was the first full day of JVC Orientation, and woah, it was quite a full day. I woke up after sleeping quite poorly at 6:00am to go shower, take care of business, and to journal. I would have gone running FOR SURE, but I smartly forgot to bring my running shoes, so I saved my run until the afternoon. Let me describe my dorm situation, or shall I say, my barracks situation. WE are in the basement of the conference building with about 14 cots, all of which have the worst and most uncomfortable mattresses known to mankind. On top of that, with the large number of smelly men sleeping there it gets quite dank, but its all good, it’s a place to sleep. I just feel the need to complain just a little, its something to talk about and a memory I need to record. After seeing the sunrise, journaling quite extensively (4 pages I believe), I went back downstairs to take a little nap before breakfast.
So back to the day, breakfast was pretty good, I had Cherrios and a wheat bagel, and sat by Rob, Nick, Matt, and someone else, who is failing to come to me right now. Discussion was kinda modest, kinda awk, kinda first-day-at-camp-and-i-don’t-feel-comfortable-in-my-own-skin kinda awk.
After breakfast we went to our morning talk/lecture thing, who was it? Oh yeah, it was that head lady’s dad who is a worker for Catholic Relief Services who works abroad and in the US. He was talking about solidarity and social justice. I guess I really haven’t defined those terms for myself recently. Solidarity, the practice of living with in harmony and walking in stride with someone or some-people. IT is experiencing some of the same things, to live in respect of the other, to reflect on one’s own upbringing and understand that at the core of it all, we share a common humanity no matter how different people may be at times. It is living in collaboration, it is a partnership, it is one person allowing another person to enter their home. It is working to begin to understand another person’s life story, or a people’s shared experiences. Much like in el Salvador where we learned of the atrocities of the civil war, it brought our thinking to a different plane, we became aware of a situation we would have never known existed. It allows us to take off the blinders which we routinely wear, which only expose us to our own experience while blinding out all others. Hmm, not a bad definition. Social Justice, is the work which people do in order to give equal opportunity to all, to allow all persons to be given the same opportunities but also the free will to make their own decisions, to be allowed to make mistakes or successes. It works to right wrongs which favor certain groups in the population, it works to understand what is needed, what is desired. Social Justice is work to understand WHY things are the way they are, why certain people are not given opportunities, why hunger exists, why education is not yet universal, why certain things in the world are not just or the way they should be (in an ideal world). From studying the WHY, we learn how we are able to make a difference, to learn from those we are serving, to walk with those we are serving. One good point which was brought up today is that these people that we are serving would be fine without us, they don’t REALLLY need us, they would continue to live, but they wouldn’t know us. We have so much more to offer and to take than just the service we provide. Anyhoo that was the just of the lecture we got today. Lunch was great, we had a community lunch with grilled cheese sandwiches and it was just great to sit down with our community and chat it up. Kiersten is going to be (and already is) such a good resource for our house. She’s been there and she knows all the ins and outs of the organization. She knows how we need to budget, she knows where to go, how to have fun, and will be a great asset to our house. Already I’m excited. Its been so good today, I went running and got to see a bit of the Appalacian Trails, which are absolutely beautiful. I think I should have been using the singular in the previous sentence but I’m just typing so fast that I just missed it. There is just one trail, it is quite rocky, and I think that next time that I run to it I’m going to climb up it as far as I can go, because I’m pretty sure that it is a loop that will take me back to the site. This afternoon after the run I showered, had dinner with some great peeps, Nick included, and talked it up. I realized that there are so many connections I have, I met the cousin of Caitlin Gambee who goes to USD, I believe her name is Katie??? Probably wrong. But anyways, I’m learning of all these people I know who know JVs. Pat knows Kristin Williams too. Crazy. After Lunch we had (sorry this is our of order) we had a Jesuit priest who works at National Geographic speak to us about the Jesuit Order, which was semi-interesting, but confirmed a lot of what I already knew about Jesuits, they do a lot of different stuff and are sometimes controversial. But anyhoo, after dinner we had a small Jesuit Ceremony (very short) and then went to meet with our Area Coordinator, who seems very nice. We went over the basics or JVC, the Who, Why,How, and then we celebrated a girls birthday with cupcakes and icecream (with oreos) and then just talked about just how much fun our houses are going to have together. Parties are already planned!!!!! Awesome!!!!! I love JVC already and know that I made the right decision!