A Week in Photos

After not really having many of my own photos to show for YAV program orientation in Stony Point, New York, I wanted to make a point of sharing with you all a little bit of what site orientation for our first week in Tucson looked like. On Tuesday, September 27, I woke up ridiculously early in our new time zone in our brand-new house with brand-new housemates to begin our year together!

A few hours later, here's Arial up and alive! She got in from her flight saga after the rest of us went to bed, and as we milled about figuring out how to use our first few hours, we sunk into our living room furniture to watch some TV and work up the energy to start cleaning our house to make it our own.

In the process of cleaning, we also discovered an uninvited housemate left by the previous tenants under a dresser. At certain times, it has felt like a lot of things were out to get us: moths, cockroaches, a mouse, other strange insects we had never seen before, a mug that decided to become two pieces in my hands as I literally was just washing it gently in the sink, the sink itself, mosquitoes (which we absolutely did not sign up for, coming to Tucson's reputed dry heat), dust bunnies (two of my housemates are allergic), and other allergies. But we are living simply and simply living!

Here's a fun addition to our house: Arial's and my new bikes! Tucson is emphasized as a bike-friendly city, and so our dedication to simple living includes commuting and transporting ourselves on bikes. Our program gave us a bike allowance, and before we even got to Tucson, Brandon had found a couple of bike deals, so Arial and I chose to take him up on the offer of finding us these sweet and sturdy hybrids.

Those bikes were camped in our long hallway from which branches off all the other rooms (the house used to be a boarding house so the setup is pretty unique), and here begins the tour of our new abode. Once I discovered the ping-pong table on the screened-in porch, that was when I knew that this house was a keeper.

Here is the porch door out to the backyard.

 

Our beautiful, zero-scaped backyard, complete with laundry drying in the sun and plenty of new vegetation to explore. While I may miss the lush green grass of Minnesota lawns, lawn grass tends to not be sustainable anywhere, much less in the desert. And it is a different feeling completely to wriggle your toes into warm sand. 

Palm trees, no big deal.

Birdfeeders.

This vegetation is really fascinating to me. I love the angles and shapes in how this cactus takes form.

Beautiful Heather doing laundry in the beautiful sunshine.

The back of our new house!

Oh, and we have chickens! The YAVs from last year invested in two chicken coops and ten hens that we will take care of in exchange for free fresh eggs every day!

To have and to hold...

Heather, after a year of working in a vet clinic, had the most primed instincts about animals (I really almost wrote animal instincts but realized that sounds funny...) of all of us, so her expertise was quite helpful in orienting ourselves to taking care of our flock.

The crazy chicken we needed to quarantine for her own safety, except chasing her around the yard and then out from under the smaller coop to put her in was a process in itself. And she earned the name Loquita.... (which means Little Crazy One)

Poor girl is either picked on by the other chickens or simply excluded from the communal food at feeding time, so we felt it was best to give her some individual attention in her own coop.

Hey!

"Do you mind? I'm trying to lay here!"

Amy Beth and her excitement about our new yard!

Another important way of settling into our new home was of course finding our way around the kitchen, so we tried our hand at maneuvering a few bodies around the tight space and turned out a pretty decent lunch, featuring guac made by Amy Beth.

Arial and Amy Beth preparing ingredients.

And Heather just looking adorable! And also preparing ingredients. Heather is adorable all of the time, but what really made me choose this picture over others is of course our coordinator Brandon's face in the background.

At the tail-end of monsoon season, the skies change at the drop of a hat.

We did a lot of cleaning this week, but we had to make sure we broke in the ping-pong table too.

Our first home-cooked dinner! The first night we were treated to pizza by Steve, one of the Tucson YAV board members after he helped us clean our house for half the day! We have some amazing support here, and I look forward to many more dinners with these folks.

Here's our first spin out on our bikes: Brandon rode with us to our bike safety class put on by the City of Tucson that is so invested in creating a bike-safe city that they made it free for everyone and set up a deal with a local bike shop so you can choose two out of three items for free as well: helmet, bike lock, and lights. All we had to do was devote a few hours of our time to our instructor Jorge, and we would be provided with knowledge and free equipment to hopefully keep us alive and well for the year.

Heather backpacking-up for the ride. 

Here's us on another necessary errand: our first trip grocery shopping. Our intention was to go visit all of our work placements so we would get to see where everyone worked and we would feel comfortable with our commutes, but we ended up only having time for my placement at BorderLinks and Amy Beth's at Southside. We did have time to swing through Food City though (one of the plethora of grocery shopping options in this city!), and literally half of our cart (and then over half of our fridge) was fresh produce.  

    

So excited about healthy food!

 

While we started fending for ourselves in terms of preparing food, we would never turn away a free meal. Friday night, Brandon invited us over to his home in an intentional community about ten minutes away by bike. I am not exactly sure how many people live there, but they make a point of sharing meals as well as chores as a community. Brandon and his wife, as well as their two daughters, have lived here for the past few years, and it was so sweet of them to invite us into their home as well as into their community over the common feast. Before the meal was ready though, he brought us up to his roof to orient us in the city of Tucson, because apparently you can do so by knowing which mountain range you are looking at: Catalinas to the north, Tucsons to the west, Santa Ritas to the south, and Tortolitas (also known as tortellinis to us who cannot remember their rightful name) to the northwest.

I hope I never lose the sense of amazement at these skies.

The whole crew on the roof (photo credit: Ali Wood, Tucson YAVA and now board chair): Brandon,  me, Heather, Arial, Amy Beth, and Tyler.

Saturday morning was a bit of a long day because we had part two of our bike class. After almost six hours in the sun, we had passed our group bike ride, parking lot drills, test, and graduated with a sunburn. Heather was also the guinea pig to learn how to change a flat tire, shown here with our awesome instructor, Jorge.

Another thing that brightened my weekend other than an awesome house with incredible company with whom to share it for the next year was an unexpected visitor: this guy came to visit me! My novio Mauricio took on a 15-hour round-trip drive from visiting his family in Southern California to hang out with me and my new housemates for less than 24 hours - what a sweetheart!

Our final housemate, Steph, actually also arrived on Saturday, so our crew was finaly in full force. She is a fiesty personality from Puerto Rico with a huge heart and incredible passion for justice issues who felt she had unfinished business following her YAV year, so she decided to stick around for another year in Tucson to live with us and work with the Florence Project: "a nonprofit organization providing free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Arizona." I so look forward to learning more about her work and her experience so far in Tucson!

There you have it, a few days in photos of new life in Tucson. More photos, stories, and reflections to come!

Traveling to Tucson

Travel day was both physically and emotionally exhausting, but never fear, my whole house made it to our new home in Tucson, Arizona safe and sound. The first reason why it was exhausting was entirely within my control, but it was so rewarding to choose lack of sleep in order to stay up with, hug, and bid bon voyage to each of the YAV travel groups leaving Stony Point before my 6:15 van with nine others. After the night's official activities wound down, the unofficial ones began - packing and then spending as much silly time with these amazing young people as possible. Guitaring, singing, conversing, hugging, trying (and semi-failing) to not fall asleep... And finally wishing people well on their way at 2:30am, 3:30am, 5:15am, and then finally it was my round to shove a lot of bags and bodies and sleep on our way to the airport. 

Out of the ten, four of us were on a Southwest flight to Austin, so it was nice to travel with that pack, until we touched down in Austin and had to say goodbye to half of that crew. We realized shortly before touching down in Austin that this plane was slated to awkwardly continue on to Las Vegas, so Austin YAVs Lauren and Catherine waved bye from their row, and YAVA Luke and I stayed on as travel buddies. We were to journey together from Stony Point to the Newark airport, Newark to Austin, Austin to Las Vegas, and from there, part ways - me for Tucson and him for eastern Oregon. He served in Tucson two years before, so it was so fun to 1) have him as a travel buddy because he's an awesome person that I didn't get to know until travel day, 2) hear stories and thoughts about his Tucson experiences, and 3) bond over playing Division III college tennis!

Here's Las Vegas from under the clouds.

Because we had some time to kill, and I had never gambled before, my dear mentor YAVA Luke convinced me that we should play penny slots. Way to set a good example.

 We only allowed ourselves to put in $1 each, and we stopped when we felt good about our luck. Luke managed to double his money, but with my semi-unfortunate luck, I walked away with $1.07.

Pleased with himself.

I'm an adult!

After a wonderful day with my new travel buddy and so many stories and pieces of advice tucked into my Tucson toolkit, Luke and I parted ways, only allowable under the premise that he would come visit all of us and play tennis with me.

And a little while later... I'm down in Tucson!

After another long travel day, I was met at the airport by a voice who knew my name, accompanied by a tall, wiry, bearded man who would be my site coordinator for the upcoming year - Brandon! Since all four of us were on different flights, he got stuck with airport pickup and house drop-off duty, which unfortunately only got longer as everything that could have gone wrong for Arial's flights did. The poor girl got on the bus at 10am from Stony Point and did not arrive at our house in Tucson until just after the rest of us were no longer capable of making rooming decisions and fell asleep camped on our sink-into living room furniture. It took some of us longer than others, but thankfully we all made it to our new home city safely! We were also welcomed to the house by our other new housemate, Tyler, who is not a YAV but is also doing a service year program, and it will be good to get to know him more as well!

Tyler, me, Amy Beth, and Heather brain-tired and silly on our first night together.

Camping out in the living room (on our ridiculously comfortable furniture!) to save choosing rooms for when we had decision-making capabilities.

Day one in Tucson:
- Woke up way too early. Body is still on Eastern, not Pacific time.
- Realized I was in the living room of new house I'll be in for the next year with some amazing housemates. Awesome.
- Ate a little breakfast with the other girls, conscientious of each others' health and nutritional needs.
- Reunited with our fourth YAV who got in after the rest of us crashed last night.
- Saw our zero-scaped backyard in the daylight and met our chickens!
- Built up the soles of my feet by walking around barefoot, learning that black ants bite, stepping on a tiny cactus spine, and toasting them on our sun-baked wooden porch floor. 
- Discovered what a huge difference the swamp cooler makes (for those of you who don't know what the heck a swamp cooler is (like I didn't), instead of producing cooler air like an A/C, it adds moisture to the air when it pumps it into the house, thereby cooling and circulating the air.
- Finally chose rooms after much thinking and taking each others' thoughts into account.
- Found three Allen wrenches, a dead insect about four inches long, random silver rings, and oodles of dust left over by the previous tenants as we cleaned our house from top to bottom. 
- Treated to gluten-free pizza and wine in our own home by the lay pastor from a nearby congregation who had just spent the previous five hours helping us clean.
- Went over the week's schedule for orienting us to our new city with our coordinator.
- Said "thank you" in my head for every minute of this experience.

Check and mate.

Moving Into the World

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were as much of a blur as the first few days, but we shifted gears one last time to preparing our hearts and minds to go out into the world and be critically culturally competent, thoughtful, respectful, open-minded, and willing to learn from and work alongside our new communities. Thankfully there is pictorial documentation for your pleasure as well!

Welcome to sunrise canoeing! This is how a few of us started our Friday morning.

I have no idea what lake this was, but it was somehow three pools linked by culverts (see off in the distance the bridge with the arch underneath for canoers and kayakers.

This is a photo taken by one of the other canoers - I'm actually just cut off on the canoe to the right, but the girl in the front of my boat is Amy Beth - one of my Tucson housemates-to-be! This was good bonding and a jump start on learning to work as a team.

 

Remember those culverts? Our group took the last one on as a collective challenge, and after linking three canoes abreast, we discovered that many could indeed fit through the culvert together! And we managed to fit half the kayak with us as well, and Mark, the YAV with the most wilderness and canoeing experience had gotten stuck without a partner so he graciously took our picture.   

Another sunlit view.

A bench on which to enjoy life.

  

Lovely new friend Tara with a water lily she brought back from the journey.

The lily again thriving in the collective bowl upon our return. The simplicity of this beauty was refreshing as we continued to learn more about how the Presbyterian Church's goals for international work and its office in the United Nations are advocating for social justice for all God's children in whatever iterations they can. The world is made up of moral guidelines, individual cases, gray areas, and gradients in my book, and figuring out how to love others to the best of our abilities all of the time is complicated. In order to resist the temptation to oversimplify complex matters and human interactions, sometimes it helps to take a step back and just appreciate the beauty in a small thing.

Each night, the setup for vespers was a little different, but there were always candles "To remember who we are and whose we are."

Two things were different about Friday's vespers: first, it was to be followed by a surprise ice cream party put on by the program, and second, once people started finding out I am a Zumba instructor, they asked me to offer a session so I made an announcement at vespers and a number of us burnt off our ice cream with a Zumba class! Both activities were so wonderfully therapeutic, in very different ways of course, but small things that helped us practiced self-care and rack up some endorphins before rest time.

Saturday morning we got some nourishment into our systems and we were off to the races... intellectually at least. From our seats in the auditorium we did our final bible study with Rick and then moved into one of the most helpful pieces contextualizing our social justice work within the forces of globalization. Rick Ufford-Chase first clued us into some of the amazing work he has done, other than serving as the General Assembly's (the highest governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA)) youngest moderator and founding this interfaith intentional community and retreat center. What I was not aware of previously, while he had mentioned involvement with U.S.-Mexico border work, was that he got into the field through a Witness for Peace (an organization I've been involved with for three years now) delegation to Nicaragua as the organization was just beginning and was focused on peaceful presence by U.S. citizens to witness the U.S.' role in supporting oppressive regimes and armed conflicts in Central America, he then ended up working on the ground on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the Sanctuary Movement's underground railroad for undocumented refugees fleeing those wars, and then he was one of the founders of BorderLinks, the organization I will now be working for! There are so many amazing ties to the work I have done and will do, and I hope I get the chance to talk with him about it sometime.

Anyways, through a very helpful visual skit he walked us through how the forces of globalization, interconnected economies, and free trade policies have resulted in a Catch-22 for many Latin American countries as our policies have trended towards undercutting their economies and especially traditional food production methods, thereby destroying farmers' livelihoods and still closing our borders when people's last resort is to migrate for better possibilities of feeding their families. As many times as I have gone over these push and pull factors in studying International Relations and Latin American Studies, this overview was still helpful for me too, and I am thankful the whole YAV crew will walk into their year with more insight into how a whole host of well-intentioned people (because let's be real, economic theorists, banks who are responsible to their shareholders, family-owned businesses, small farmers, etc. are largely all well-intentioned people who are responsible for the needs of others) fit into a system that perpetuates and exacerbates oppression and lack of opportunities for many involved.

The communities we will be working with will have experienced these forces of globalization, either directly or indirectly, at a more visceral level than many of us have, and especially as I walk into border work, understanding the reasons people are fleeing their homeland in droves and facing such hardship to come to this country is so fundamental to even begin the discussion on working in solidarity with border communities, but I'm glad others will have a deeper understanding of this more specific context as well.

Sorry for all the heaviness there! During the afternoon we moved into rotations of advice sessions with alums on topics such as culture shock, relationships, and conflict (a much-discussed topic in relation to intentional community), all good things to keep in mind for the upcoming year. 

Speaking of intentional community, here is me on the right with the three lovely ladies with whom I will be living in intentional community: meet Heather, Arial, and Amy Beth. You'll hear more about them in the future for sure!

 

The night's silliness included a talent show, for which Amy Beth convinced me to sing and play guitar with her, and we also looped in Kalyn who has a gorgeous voice and had joined us for some of our guitaring-for-fun sessions the past few nights. It was such a hard time choosing a song that we all knew and would be the perfect one for these circumstances, but Amy Beth was inspired by the intentional reflection on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington that she suggested "We Shall Overcome," so away we went with our hour of free time to choose harmony and melody parts and perhaps practice a couple of times. And then, funny story, our music leader for worship also chose "We Shall Overcome" for a very moving part of vespers that night! Other talent show acts included some amazing music and poetry, as well as some pure entertainment. With our addition YAV just got a double dose of this incredibly powerful spiritual. Though I will probably be forever uncomfortable getting in the spotlight to sing and play, I'm so thankful Amy Beth convinced me to do it for the experience of blending our three voices and to share that song in particular in this supportive crowd all working for justice.

Photo from a YAV in the audience of Kalyn, Amy Beth, and me.

Following the talent show, someone had the brilliant idea of throwing on some music and doing a silly dance party, which was a hilarious way to cap off the night with this crowd of Christian kids who had basically been bonding non-stop for six days. More good rest was had.

Sunday morning we were all split into groups of four or five and went to over fifteen different congregations to share about our program and be commissioned into service. My group went with Pastor Abbie, who basically organized all of these church connections, to her congregation, Greenbush Presbyterian. It was an adorable, 200-year-old church with a tiny congregation of about twenty, mostly 80-year-old women but including an adorable, inspiring couple who have been together for 67 years. It was so nice that they all invited us to their church home, to participate in the service, to bless us for our YAV year, and to invite us to stay for coffee hour so they could ask us more about our work (or in the case of one woman, tell her everything we had said during the service because she's hard of hearing and didn't want to miss what we said!).

Pastor Abbie then took us out to show us a little around Nyack, an adorable town with a number of unique stores and streets that lead straight down to the Hudson River, and treated us to lunch. Here's Tara, Pastor Abbie, Jackson, and Rachel with our New York-style pizza that we obviously had to get while in NY!

I even got to have New York-style pizza myself because they had a gluten-free crust option!

Well-fed, we walked down a hill and through a park and - boom - there's the Hudson River! Here's the bay.

Putting my feet in the Hudson to say I have.

 

The crew doing the same.

Groups arrived back at the Stony Point center at different times, so we just got to hang out for the afternoon with the time we did have. Since we had literally all been sharing the same orientation experiences and activities for the past week, it was fun to talk with others about their different church services, and I also got time to just be with new friends like Sarah (my roommate!) and Mark (who I now consider to be a brother!) (photo by Maegen, my small-group leader).

Stealing Mark's hammock to call my parentals.

Free time transitioned into our final small group reflection. We have been meeting with this crew every day at least once to process, emote, and bond at least once daily, and I'm amazed how close I feel to some of these new friends! I'm so thankful for them, their thoughtfulness, and their openness, and especially those qualities in our leader Maegen as she shared openly with us about her struggles and joys with the program in addition to facilitating our processing. All while she was supposedly studying for upcoming ordination exams next week! Here's our silly self-taken group pic.

 

A blessed sky over our reflection walk.


We got back to the main building with time to spare, so I made sure I finished writing on the Prayer Wall - one of our projects throughout the week has been to write messages to all our fellow YAVs and YAVAs (YAV alums) to take with them for their year, which means we were challenged to meet every single person in this group of about 70! This is a program photo, but here's my small group leader Maegen again!


I snuck this picture prior to our final worship service, with all of our name sheets from the prayer wall now adorning the communal table.

I cannot believe how quickly this week has flown and how quickly we all leaped into caring for one another. In our final vespers service, we did all songs we had been learning and singing throughout the week, some joyous, some more reflective. There was much dancing, and hugging, and swaying with the music. And with our hearts hopefully primed for the experiences to come,  the YAVAs and program directors sent us out with words of blessings and encouragement, especially guiding us through the words of Ephesians 5, to go out and be children of light to others - a positive spirit, a boundless energy, and a huge heart for others. I just love this program photo as we all extended ourselves to our new brothers and sisters for worship one last time.

2013-2014 YAVs, it has been such a pleasure to get to know you and now call you my brothers and sisters! Now "live as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth" (Ephesians 5: 8-9). May you find your way in this world to best put your gifts and talents to work for justice for all God's children, and know you are never alone on your walk!