Pre Service Orientation

This past week I did my pre-service training for Americorps VISTA in Santa Fe, NM. Arriving at Santa Fe I was extremely nervous and overwhelmed. I had just said goodbye to my Dad earlier that morning in Albuquerque and it tore me apart. What was I doing moving to an isolated part of the country when I could be in MA with my family and friends. It pretty much took all of my willpower to not drive back to Massachusetts. However, a bit into training I felt much better about this whole Americorps thing. Through training I was able to meet several other individuals who would be serving as VISTAs in tribal communities across the country. Many of them had the same worries I did. It was good to be able to hash it all out.

Training everyday was intense. We would have breakfast around 7:30 and be in training sessions by 8:30. This training was a first for Americorps. Although they have been doing PSOs for many years this was the first PSO design specifically for VISTA’s serving in tribal communities. The purpose of this PSO was to not only train people to be VISTAs but also to bring a greater understanding about the unique communities that we will be serving. One of the things that I was surprised by was it was continually repeated that many people in the communities we would be serving might be stand offish or right down upset about our presence. Additionally, they told us that it would take us a while to be welcomed into the communities. Well that threw me for a bit of a loop. One of the things that stresses me about the year is being lonely and isolated and now I am finding out that it will be pretty much guaranteed L

However, on the up and up PSO gave me a time and place to have a really fun experience before heading off to service. I met a bunch of really neat people and we had a ton of fun at meals getting to know each other. Also we had the evening free and we just had fun hanging out. One night we even ventured to the pool and hot tub. One of the awesome things we did was a service project at the Santa Fe Indian School. All 25 VISTAs were put in smaller groups and sent out to do various projects. Other groups had to pick up trash off school grounds and clean windows and toilets. My group lucked out in our service project in the middle school dormitory. We were brought to what seemed to be a huge closet that had boxes and shelves. What we found out was it was supposed to be a library/reading room for the kids but no one had the time to shelve the books. My group got to work and in no time we created a really nice space for the kids to relax (see picture). The final night in Santa Fe a bunch of us headed out for a night on the town and we hit up some of Santa Fe’s bars for dancing. On Friday it was sad to say goodbye to so many cool people. Luckily some of us are posted near each other and have plans to go hiking and maybe even a road trip to North Dakota?!?! Overall, I am excited for a year of service and also to a year of making memories with some new good friends.