Towards Excitement
National orientation was full of theoreticals, taught at us as we sat in an auditorium. That's what I spent the last 4 years of my life doing in undergrad. That's what I wanted to get away from by spending a year volunteering.
Not that theory is inherently bad, but it is incomplete. It's significantly more difficult to understand the meta-level without having informing experiences. Intellectual beliefs do not equal visceral knowledge.
I wanted to build relationships. I wanted to build experiential knowledge.
By the end of my time in New York, I was so ready to go back to New Orleans, to start building relationships with my roommates, to get to know the city that will be my home.
That's exactly what we've been doing this past week!
We have spent time talking about house expectations and having fun with one another (celebrating my birthday!). We have spent time meeting the people who we will be working with and even meeting some of the people that our housemates will be working with. We have spent time walking around and getting a feel for the culture of New Orleans.
Maybe one of my most enjoyable orientation activities from this week is a scavenger hunt that we did. We split up in groups of 2, were given a few days time and a list of things we needed to get pictures of. The only stipulation was that we had to ride the bus; no cars allowed.
I appreciated this activity for many reasons.
1) It got us out of the house and into the city! The first few days were exhausting because of moving and traveling, so we just stayed at the house. I didn't actually feel like I was in New Orleans at all. But even I, a person who hates crowds and loves staying at home, can get cabin fever. It was good to walk! It was good to see that I'm no longer in Richmond or Elon!
2) The scavenger hunt gave us the opportunity to be tourists in our city. I didn't appreciate what Richmond had to offer until I left for school. I didn't do anything touristy in Austria until I was 15 years old. What tourists see is a limited perspective of the city, but it's still an important one. Tourists enter a city with a lens of curiosity and awe. While thinking about the work that I will be doing surrounding human trafficking isn't necessarily uplifting, I could see so many things that people love about this city: the music, the art, the extravagance, the easy-going atmosphere.
3) There were only two of us together. We were no longer clearly out of place in a giant group of people needing to be ushered around. Giant groups stick out like sore thumbs. People notice you and I don't like being noticed by strangers. I felt significantly more comfortable walking around with just one other person.
4) We could do it at our own speed and make our own decisions. Just practically speaking, it's so much easier to get a consensus of two than one of six or seven or eight. There are less opinions to consider and less people to heard. Also we had a list to guide us, but no where that we had to be at a certain time. We could take more time looking around the art gallery or just sit and watch the River instead of being ushered to the next site.
5) It gave us hands-on experiences. We actually had to navigate the buses and the city on our own. We had to figure out how to get from point A to point B. By the end of the day, I was starting to have my own internal map of the city that wouldn't be possible if I was just driven around as a passive participant. This helped me to take ownership and internalize the material.
Not that theory is inherently bad, but it is incomplete. It's significantly more difficult to understand the meta-level without having informing experiences. Intellectual beliefs do not equal visceral knowledge.
I wanted to build relationships. I wanted to build experiential knowledge.
By the end of my time in New York, I was so ready to go back to New Orleans, to start building relationships with my roommates, to get to know the city that will be my home.
That's exactly what we've been doing this past week!
We have spent time talking about house expectations and having fun with one another (celebrating my birthday!). We have spent time meeting the people who we will be working with and even meeting some of the people that our housemates will be working with. We have spent time walking around and getting a feel for the culture of New Orleans.
 |
| frenchmen art market on my birthday |
Maybe one of my most enjoyable orientation activities from this week is a scavenger hunt that we did. We split up in groups of 2, were given a few days time and a list of things we needed to get pictures of. The only stipulation was that we had to ride the bus; no cars allowed.
I appreciated this activity for many reasons.
1) It got us out of the house and into the city! The first few days were exhausting because of moving and traveling, so we just stayed at the house. I didn't actually feel like I was in New Orleans at all. But even I, a person who hates crowds and loves staying at home, can get cabin fever. It was good to walk! It was good to see that I'm no longer in Richmond or Elon!
2) The scavenger hunt gave us the opportunity to be tourists in our city. I didn't appreciate what Richmond had to offer until I left for school. I didn't do anything touristy in Austria until I was 15 years old. What tourists see is a limited perspective of the city, but it's still an important one. Tourists enter a city with a lens of curiosity and awe. While thinking about the work that I will be doing surrounding human trafficking isn't necessarily uplifting, I could see so many things that people love about this city: the music, the art, the extravagance, the easy-going atmosphere.
3) There were only two of us together. We were no longer clearly out of place in a giant group of people needing to be ushered around. Giant groups stick out like sore thumbs. People notice you and I don't like being noticed by strangers. I felt significantly more comfortable walking around with just one other person.
4) We could do it at our own speed and make our own decisions. Just practically speaking, it's so much easier to get a consensus of two than one of six or seven or eight. There are less opinions to consider and less people to heard. Also we had a list to guide us, but no where that we had to be at a certain time. We could take more time looking around the art gallery or just sit and watch the River instead of being ushered to the next site.
5) It gave us hands-on experiences. We actually had to navigate the buses and the city on our own. We had to figure out how to get from point A to point B. By the end of the day, I was starting to have my own internal map of the city that wouldn't be possible if I was just driven around as a passive participant. This helped me to take ownership and internalize the material.
 |
| our scavenger list |
 |
| can officially say I've been on Bourbon St. |
 |
| apparently they are friendly |
 |
| picture with someone playing the sax |
 |
| picture with a streetcar |
 |
| staying true to the traditions of my Alma Mater, Elon University |
 |
| beignets and the Mississippi River |
No ground-breaking revelations for this week. Just excitement and hope for the year to come and the experiences and relationships that it will bring. I definitely still have worries and concerns, but for right now I'm leaning into the excitement of starting this journey that God has led me to.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13
Comments
Post a Comment