First month

I decided to make a blog to share my experience with everyone. I started Franciscorp almost a month ago in Syracuse. For those who don't know what Franciscorps is I'll tell you. It is a Catholic (but you don't have to be Catholic) volunteer program in Syracuse and in Costa Rica (you have to know Spanish to do that one). Along with me there are five other people participating in the Syracuse program. They are: Anthony (from St. John Fisher), Jeff (from University of Scranton), Megan (from Catholic), Kathy (from U of Dayton), and Sarah (from Saint Mary's College). We each have a different volunteer site where we work 40 hours a week at. My placement site is at the Northside CYO where I work in the youth program office, and I run the after school program and the teen boys program. The good thing is that I work with only a certain group of kids (for me it is ages 9-12) and starting next week I'll have college volunteers come and help out.

So far the kids have been pretty good but at times they can be crazy. I work on a four day schedule where each day there are two different activities for the kids to do. I spend part of my day planning what to do with the kids. The activities range from gym to community service, but since not a lot of kids have showed up me and the other JVC (Jesuit volunteer) don't plan much. The first day was extremely over whelming and I thought why was I placed here?? Now that I have the kids under control for the most part it isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Right now, me and the JVC are trying to figure out a bus route to pick up the kids that can't walk to the CYO. that means I HAVE TO DRIVE A SHORT BUS AND A 15 PASSAGER VAN!!! I have been tested for the passager van, but not the short bus yet because it was in the shop for repairs.

The other part of Franciscorp is about living in community with your house mates. For the first two weeks of the program, the Costa Rica people lived with us and we spent the first week doing orientation at Green Lakes and at the Jersey shore. It was a great to get to know them and we missed them a lot when they left. We have been able to keep in contact with them through letters and skyping. As for my community we have gotten along great and we have also discovered that we can all cook, which is good because the first night we discovered that none of us could cook (or thought we couldn't). We try to have dinner together 6 times a week with Saturday being left over night and we have nightly prayer together too. Each month we are trying to pick a weekend to do something together, and our first house weekend I think we may go to Ithaca/the Finger Lakes region. I think this is a great idea because just me, Anthony, and Kathy are from upstate NY, and it will be fun to show the other people around!

So, I might blog so more but it is lunch time and I am hungry!