First Day!

Hey everyone! I am making this post from my first day at the Wintonia! Woohoo!  As my mom can attest, I was quite scared to start work today.  It turns out that the reason my supervisor hadn't called me back was because he had moved on to another agency, and I have a new supervisor! Her name is Sarah, and she's pretty much fantastic.

I'll start off talking about yesterday though, first!  The virtual house tour is coming, I promise! Since I don't have internet at home, it makes uploading pictures a little more challenging, so I have to load them onto my computer first and then head somewhere with WiFi.  You'll get the grand tour soon!  Yesterday was our first real day in the house, and I was so so happy with how much my housemates and I cleaned it!  The house was pretty cluttered and dirty from last year's tenants - eight people living in a house together is sure to create a little bit of a mess!  We went to TOWN on cleaning! The nice thing about having eight people together is when they get motivated to do something, they do it! Two people were on bicycle duty (getting the old bicycles ready for riding, getting parts, etc), two people were on kitchen duty, two people rearranged the furniture in the living room, etc.  I was on grocery shopping duty with Jen, which was a fun adventure.  We only have $105 per week to feed eight people, so that's pretty challenging.  We organized it so that we are having dinner together four nights a week, so each person only has to cook one meal, but you always come home to something hot! We paired the good cooks with the bad cooks, so everyone is learning something, too.

Jen and I went down to the Industrial District to the Grocery Outlet store for all of our food.  We had quite a long list, and I was AMAZED at the deals we found! This experience is going to revolutionize the way I look at grocery shopping.  Remind me never to have seven kids I have to feed! We did it though, and even managed to splurge on some delicious organic wheat bread, pretzel chips and turkey lunchmeat for everyone! We spent exactly $105! Whew!  We came home to a beautiful clean and organized house, which was so encouraging.

One of the big reasons we were cleaning was because we were hosting a BBQ for the other Seattle JV house, Cherry Abbey, and some former JVs (FJVs) and other friends.  We have a big grill on our porch, and yummm! We made some awesome burgers.  We had a great time showing off our house, and everyone was impressed with our hard work.  One person even told us that this was the cleanest they had ever seen the Mercy House! We were all pretty proud of that.  After everyone left, we gathered around our living room and applauded ourselves on our hard work and successful party, and then headed straight to bed because we all had our Big First Day.

I was pretty terrified, as I said earlier, mostly because I hadn't talked to my supervisor at all! I didn't even know what time to show up to work! One of my housemates has to drive to work because he does house visits, so he dropped me off around 8:30a.  I was scared, but I took a deep breath and walked right in.  I was immediately welcomed by my new supervisor, and given a whirlwind of information that has lasted until now.  It's been a fabulous first day, and I cannot wait to jump right in.

For the first few weeks, most of my job is simply to get to know people.  We have 92 units, so that's a lot of people I need to know! I need to know everybody's name, and I want everyone to get to know me! One resident was so excited that the new JV (me!) was there - he was waiting all morning, the front desk said, for me to come out so he could take my picture.  I have my own desk, my own work e-mail, and even went to my very first staff meeting today, which was a lovely welcome to the Wintonia.  One of the staff was even doing an outing (she's running a "Life Skills" series right now, and the current one is on fitness) and took me and a few of the residents in the van to the Seattle Arborteum, which was a real treat.  I'm so blessed to be able to be in this position, and simply to be a presence in people's lives.  They all have such stories, you know?  How many times do you ask people to tell them about themselves, especially people who have been through the things that these people have been through.  As for myself? Not often.

Well, I'm the last one at work because I'm using the internet, and I want to go explore the area around my work a bit.  We're in SUCH cool area! I'm going to go walk up to Broadway street and peruse the shops up there.  I've heard that that's the place to be! 

Sorry I'm picture-less.  One day I'm going to just do a massive photo dump.  Maybe tomorrow?

Happy birthday Auntie Nettie! I hope the family is all enjoying themselves - I know you guys are all out to dinner right now.

Peace,

K