Relay For Life

Hey everyone- I have a plea for money... I have been on the Butler University Relay For Life committee the last 3 years but I am not this year since I graduated. However, I still love the work that Relay does and would love to support it. I know that money is tight these days, but I would really appreciate any support for our team. Every donation will help us find a cure for cancer! Please consider making a small donation on my personal page that can be found at: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY09National?px=9046718&pg=personal&fr_id=14230

Thank you in advance for your support!

Earth Hour

Check out this website...I would encourage you all to participate!
http://www.earthhourus.org/main.php

Atlanta!

Hey everyone! So, I am fully recovered from Atlanta after 2 days of lovely sleeping in without an alarm :) Now, let's see if I can get everything that happened into 1 post...

Background: I went as the only staff advisor on an Alternative Spring Break trip through IUPUI to Atlanta. There were 10 people including myself and the student advisor, Monica. All in all, it was a very interesting week but very good. The trip down may have been 14.5 of the longest hours of my life. We rented 2 mini vans through Enterprise and right outside Nashville one of the vans got a flat tire. We got it to a Firestone that was close to where we were (conveniently located by a mall...) and they said it would take max 1 1/2 hours to fix it. About an hour later Firestone called and told us that first of all they didn't have the right tire to fix our van and nobody in Nashville did either but also, the brakes on the van were bad and we should look for a hotel because they wouldn't be able to get it back to us until the next day. So, I called 1-800-RENTACAR and, long story short, spend over 2 hours on the phone getting us a replacement van. Being a Sunday, nobody was open but the airport so we had to drive teh 30 minutes to the airport (where Erik the manager was the biggest jerk on the face of the earth and cost us another 45 minutes due to his incompetence and arrogance), drive back to the mall to pick up the group, then drive the remaining 6 hours to Atlanta. To top it all off, about 30 minutes after we got out of Nashville, we got stuck in stop and go traffic for 45 minutes. I was seriously ready to cry/hit something/explode...whatever. But, we survived and made it to Atlanta about 11 pm.

The replacement "van" was a beautiful 2009 Durango that we liked a lot :)

Monday was our free day and everybody in the Durango decided to go downtown to the Coke factory and to see the Olympic sights. It was so much fun and I'm so glad we had the chance to do all of that!

Aleen, Joseph, Josie and I decided to try all 65 coke products offered in the Taste Room...and felt a little sick at the end!


Me with the 7-foot Coke polar bear

The Olympic Torch (from the car...stupid stop light)

The sign at the entrance to the Olympic Park


After we got a little fun out of our systems, we started working on Tuesday. The organization that we worked with is called Project Open Hand. They prepare and deliver meals to individuals in and around Atlanta (all the way to Savannah!) who are elderly, have a chronic illness, or for whatever reason are unable to prepare meals for themselves. In the 4 days that we worked, we delivered around 200 meals and prepared over 2300. They send out 5000+ meals every day! It is a really neat organization and it was fun to deliver the meals. We got to see a lot of different parts of Atlanta and we met some cool people. Most of the people on our routes weren't very chatty but there were a few that we talked to for quite awhile. We did have an interesting experience where one lady asked us not to come back because we were white. She told us that she was just acting the way she was raised and would prefer if somebody else would deliver her meals tomorrow. We kindly told her to have a good day and got back on the elevator to leave. It was a really different experience as far as the service goes working with Open Hand. I'm used to working on ASB's with the same people every day and doing something where you can see an immediate impact from the start of the day to the end of the day. I still enjoyed the work but I don't feel that it had as strong of an impact on me as some of my other trips have.

The assembly line used to prepare the meals

The machine used to seal the meals

The final product- hamburger patty (bun, fruit, and dessert were in a separated bag), sweet potato fries, and a vegetable medley.

One evening we had the chance to go to dinner at the Break Away headquarters. Break Away is the national organization for Alternative Breaks. Their entire office is dedicated to helping schools run effective, quality alternative break programs. You know, pretty much my dream job. I got the chance to talk with Jill, the director, and Sam for quite awhile and it was such a great networking opportunity! It was also a cool experience because there were 8 schools other than IUPUI there and we got to hear about all the great things that other schools are doing both in and outside of Atlanta. It is so inspiring to see that many people doing such great things and making an impact on a community that isn't even their own.

The big group picture with all of the schools (minus 2 that had to leave early)

On the last 2 days of work they had over-booked the kitchen, so we just delivered meals in the morning and had the afternoon free to do whatever. On Thursday all of us in the Durango decided to go check out Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain is basically a giant rock in the middle of nowhere that was made from volcanic activity. It sounds dumb, but it's awesome. We took a skyride up to the top and got to hike around on the top for over an hour. It was a perfect day for it-75 with a light breeze and sunny. I wish that we could have stayed up there longer, but the group had made plans to go to the Varsity for dinner.

Stone Mountain from the parking lot

The artwork on the side of Stone Mountain that was carved into it during the Civil War and is several hundred feet wide and tall.

The group before we headed down

All in all, it was a successful trip and a good first experience being the adult (even though one of the students was older than me...). I really enjoyed my time in Atlanta, it is a great city that held a lot of learning experiences for me. Thanks for sticking with me during this super long post!

Long time, No post

Hey all! Sorry to all of you who I gave a hard time for not updating your blogs...now I am in the slacker category too :(

Life here has been relatively uneventful (hence the no update...) but good. I started the report for the student survey I did-I'm pretty excited about it. It is 18 pages long and looks pretty professional, but I'm also a little biased. We are hopefully going to get it printed in a booklet and send it to all of our schools and to the national Campus Compact office! Woo! That has taken up most of my time at work lately-I am on the 3rd draft of it but it looks good. I finally decorated my desk at work...I've had a stack of pictures there for quite some time now and I decided that today was the day I needed to decorate. I even left space for my post it notes :)

Lindsay and I went to check out the EcoLab at Marian College earlier this week. It is a 55 acre natural wetlands that is pretty much in the middle of the city. It's awesome-we are hoping to go on a tour there for the May retreat. Stuff for that is really coming together. We also went to talk to this organization called Free Wheelin' that you can donate old bikes to and they rebuild them then sell them. They also have a program where they teach kids how to rebuild their bike and teach them proper bike maintenance, then they get the bike at the end of the program. Anyways, they are going to let us use some of the bikes for our bicycle tour of the brownfields for the retreat! I'm excited :)

I leave for Atlanta on Sunday to be a staff advisor for one of IUPUI's Alternative Spring Break trips. I'm pretty excited but a little anxious at being on the staff side of things for a few reasons. First, I'm the only staff advisor on the trip (there will only be 10 of us) so I'm hoping nothing goes wrong since I don't have anyone to turn to. I know that if something does go wrong, I will figure out what to do, but this is my first trip without having somebody else to turn to if I need it. Also, I know I will have to really check myself and allow the student leader, Monica, to step up into her role. I am used to being one of the people who steps in to help keep things moving, but that isn't my main role this time, so I will just have to keep that in mind.

Alright, seeing as it is after 10, it is past my bed time now! :) I probably won't update again until I get back from Atlanta, but I'm sure that will be a long entry! I hope you all have a great week, Happy St. Patrick's Day! :)

Caving!

Hey all! So, my weekend (and the first part of my week) were wonderful! Saturday I went to the Butler game and we won by 2-a super close game, and the last regular season home game. Go Dawgs! They entered the post-season ranked #22. On Sunday I got to go caving with my supervisor, Lindsay, and a couple friends. This cave consisted of: walking through chest deep water that was freezing cold, army crawling through really low spaces, the "back breaker"-where you were basically bent over walking as quickly as you could for about 20 minutes, and some low-intensity rock climbing. We were in the cave for about 5 1/2 hours and it was awesome-I definitely was sore the next day! In order to get into the cave, we had to tie this webbing (seatbelt material) around a tree and climb down into the cave. The entrance was basically a hole in the ground covered by a little iron covering. Sweet. Check out some of the pictures below!

Mom, Dad, Therese, Crissy, Carson, and Brooke came to visit me at work on Monday! We got to eat lunch together and hang out for a bit. They were here all day Sunday too but I didn't get to hang out much since we were caving until the evening. It was good to see them, even if it was a short visit :)

Nick got Liz and me free tickets to Fight Night at the Indiana state fairgrounds. Fight Night is basically amateur boxing. We saw 7 fights and it was actually really fun-I had never seen a boxing match before. We got a good mix of KO fights and a full 10-round championship fight with the underdog beating the #4 ranked woman in the US.

I got my 50th survey finished today! Yay!! My goal was to get 50 people to fill it out, and now that I have it I can start the report. I'm really excited about the report and have it all figured out in my head...hopefully that will translate well to paper and be a good report to send to all of our schools. I feel so professional doing stuff like this! Friday I get to sit in on an interview with a potential VISTA for our office. That should be pretty cool. I also found out that I for sure will be going to Atlanta as the staff advisor for IUPUI's ASB trip. Yeah! We will be working with Project Open Hand that makes and distributes food to individuals who can't leave home to get it or who aren't healthy enough to cook for themselves. We are staying in a hostel in downtown Atlanta that looks pretty cool-I'm really excited about it! Stuff for the May retreat is really coming together. We have 2 meetings early next week to hopefully finalize the service projects,and we will be able to pick the speakers based on our service projects so it should come together pretty quickly from there. Finally- I am fully certified in emergency preparedness, first aid, and adult/child/infant CPR again, so let me know if you need help. And due to the training being at night, I definitely get to sleep in tomorrow morning and go to work a little late! Yeah! Okay, here are some pictures!

This was right after I tripped and fell (in the shallow water) and got wet pretty much up to my neck. It was just a little bit cold....

Jarod, me, Lindsay, and Jason wading through some water.

We all invested in the world's largest sandwiches-they were breakfast, lunch, and dinner and there was still a little to spare!

Taking a much needed rest in the "back breaker"

Networking Council Meeting!

Hello all! We survived and it went really well! Woo! :) I made it waking up at 5-thankfully I set 3 alarms because I didn't wake up until the 3rd one. I have much more admiration for Laura for waking up that early every day- she's a champ! Lindsay, Emily and I rode up together and had some good conversation both ways then we went to dinner at Rock Bottom once we got back. It was really fun-I really enjoy my time with them and love that we are getting to be such good friends :)

The meeting went really smooth, which was great. I was a little bummed-the student session (that I spent about 2 solid weeks working on resources for) ended up being split between students and faculty/staff so the whole thing kind of changed. It was good that we adapted it to fit the audience better but I was a little bummed that we used about 1/4 of the resources that I had put together. I just feel like it was kind of a waste of time that I could have been doing other things. I learned a lot and I can hopefully use it somewhere down the road, but I was a little frustrated at the time. My other point of frustration on teh day came from this student that I met with about a month ago. She was having issues with the programming on her campus and wanted to meet with Lindsay and me. So she showed up 1 1/2 hours late and got there when we should have been leaving, then talked for close to 1 1/2 hours before we left. So at the end of the meeting she started talking to me and was repeating all of her problems she had been having before our last meeting. So I started addressing solutions we had offered her last time and every single one she was like yeah I haven't done that, nope I haven't done that either. So she never did anything we had suggested and was telling me the same problems today. It was basically a repeat of our last meeting and I was trying to come up with different ideas for how to get her to do something instead of just complaining. After awhile she said nobody did their work so I suggested a weekly goal card that is hung up where they will see it every day that they talk about in their meetings each week (like we did in the VC-yeah!) and she freakin started crying. So here I am with this girl having a meltdown and half the staff from my office was standing right by us and had been kind of listening to the convo and they were standing behind her making faces at me cuz I made her cry. Then Lindsay saved the day and came up and started talking to her- but you better believe they gave me a hard time about making her cry! haha, I might not hear the end of that one for awhile...

I really love working there. Today (and the last couple weeks) had the potential to be really stressful but it never was. Everyone was really organized and held up their end of things and we all even left early yesterday! I feel like I really belong there and get along so well with everyone and that is just such a great feeling. All in all, my first Networking Council Meeting was a success! Let's hope the one in September goes just as well! Happy weekend :)

Inspired.

Today I am feeling inspired. I just went to our monthly Bread for the World meeting. We had a representative for the Heifer International- IUPUI chapter come in to talk with us about collaboration. It is so inspiring to learn about all of the incredible organizations that work to make this world a better place. Heifer works with communities (not single families-the whole community has to be on board) to create self-sustaining communities around the world. Individuals donate money to support projects, most of which focus on animal husbandry. For example, a project might include a village applying for a herd of cattle to create food, income, jobs, etc. For the direct families that receive a cow in the first round, they have to give their first-born cow to a family that had not received one at the beginning. Some of the projects have shown success rates of over 6 generations of giving. They have also started projects in the US that include working with Native American populations out west as well as working with youth in cities to make urban gardens on rooftops. We are actually tentatively changing our plans for the IPI retreat to include a day of education about Heifer International as well as hopefully getting an urban garden going in a community near IUPUI. We will start making some calls probably next week after the Networking Council Meeting. It is so cool to see stuff like this and to hopefully have the chance to help implement it into the Indianapolis community. Check out their website: http://www.heifer.org/

Another reason I am feeling inspired is because I am reviewing applicants for the Wood Award. The Wood Award is a Student Community Committment Award that honors students who have a huge impact on the community from their work with service. So, I'm reading about all these awesome things that the students are doing and it makes me want to get out there and do something! Speaking of doing something...I leave for Atlanta in 19 days! I am going to Atlanta instead of Kansas City for the IUPUI ASB trip now! I will be working with a food bank that packs the food and distributes it to individuals who aren't able to go pick it up for various reasons. I'm really excited!