Well here I am at Orientation. We're staying at Stony Point Conference Center, which is in Stony Point, NY-- annnd is an "intentional community" -- as in, they grow their own vegetables, recycle everything... so obviously I'm loving it.
But - orientation itself, well this has been harder. We've been having lots of hard hard conversations about gender and race and power and caring for yourself well... As well as making about 65 new best friends (all of the international and national YAVs). It's so so much fun and I'm SO glad that they structure the program in this way, but it's heavy, world, and exhausting. All of the facilitators for the week are YAV Alumns (YAVA), and so they have lots of encouraging (and scary) stories and experiences to share-- yet another reason I'm very glad that they structure the program in this way. Plus we have worship in the morning and evening, and we're singing all kinds of weird songs in different languages to represent the different sites that people will be going to, which is always fun :)
Let's see-- Favorite orientation moment so far: We've been having total information overload these days, so today we got the afternoon off to relax and do whatever we wanted and then after worship, had an epic 2-hour dance party in the room where we've been having our sessions/workshops. Such a fun way to bond and be stupid and blow off steam! Especially since we're all so so white... hahah. A bunch of us also followed this dancing with a long massage train-- excellente.
Well that's about all that I have to report. Hope all are well! (Hopefully) contact info will be coming out soon...
bendiciones, juli
"Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Where shall I go from Your presence? If I ascend to Heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there... Even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me."
-Psalm 139:7-10
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