orientation

Well, it's the end of orientation week. I think I went through about 6 million emotion changes in the first couple days. On Tuesday, we introduced ourselves and Yvania, the graduate intern, gave us a presentation on resumes and how those are supposed to look. That was the first point at which I felt overwhelmed. She had said not to use experience from high school because it was now irrelevant. Well, the majority of activity in my life was in high school, so I freaked out. But then Christy, my friend who's also doing LA Term, showedme that I still have good stuff to put on there. Then we had a safety orientation and then the public transit scavenger hunt, which ended up being a lot less public transportation and a lot more walking, but whatever, I guess. It's good for me. But my group, Lydia, Jesse, and me, went to USC to check it out and I got to see my friend Nick, and then we went to Exposition Park where there are a lot of museums that I'll check out at a later point in LA Term.
On Wednesday, we were given little scenarios that we had to play out about living cross-culturally with our families. That was pretty cool. Then we met our professors and talked a little bit about all our classes. And then it was either this day or the next during which an LA Term alumnae came and talked with us about her experience. I'm not gonna lie, I was freaked out. She said it took her years to process all that happened during her term. I was pretty much terrified of all that was to come, and I know that's foolish, because I have nothing to be afraid of, but I know at least one other student was in the same boat as me. We were both asking ourselves, "What the heck am I doing here?" The last thing we did on Wednesday was to do an internship survey of a few sites. We split up into groups and went to these places and kind of found out what an intern would be doing there and what each place was like. My group, which consisted of Brittan, Brianna, Mackensie and me, went to El Camino Nuevo High School, P.A.T.H, and Faith/Action Collective. Out of those, I thought I'd be interested in the PATH internship, but it turned out that I really liked the Faith/Action Collective. An intern there would be doing a lot of community organizing around the issue of food justice which is something I don't have any previous knowledge about. But somehow, it drew me in; it could be because it incorporates my hometown. It's all about how LA farmers were pushed off their land and have to commute to Bakersfield on weekends to do what they love, while day laboring or working in sweatshops during the week. I'm also looking at two other internships that I didn't visit. One's called South Central LAMP, and it's a lot of working with parents and children to improve home life and social life. I was partially drawn to that one because of the possibility of teaching English as a second language in some of the classes for parents. I think that'd be great for me. But also, there's another internship at CHIRLA, which is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. It's exactly what it sounds like. I'm not sure if I should be looking at an internship that is something I'm somewhat familiar with (South Central LAMP) or something that's entirely new to me (food justice or immigration rights. But we'll see where God leads me after my interviews, which I still have to schedule.
On Thursday, we learned the history of the LA riots and all the violence that occurred in that time. On this day, we also got a quick facility orientation, and then two of the girls stayed behind to meet with Sarah one on one for internship advising. The rest of us went to Lost Soul's Cafe and hung out for hours. If anyone ever comes to visit me, we'll go there. It's sweet. But we spent forever doing different "minute mysteries," which are those things were someone says "Two men are found dead in a cabin in the middle of the forest." and then everyone else has to figure out what happened. We did a bunch of those, as well as played games like Black Magic and the Box Game. The games that only like two people know and the rest have to figure out how to play. Lots of mind games. Oh my goodness, Jonathon told us a riddle and we couldn't figure it out! It was so annoying, especially when he told us that someone got it right, but he wouldn't say who it was or what the answer was. Talk about frustration right there!
Yesterday was our last day of orientation, and we played the handbook game, basically trying to find out if we even read the thing, which of course, we did! Then we talked about ways to stay healthy physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. After that, we did more one-on-one advising and then we left for the weekend!
Today is our host family potluck. Then we're possibly going to the beach! I really like everyone in LA Term and am super excited to get to know each one.
Prayer time! Peace and confidence about interviews and internships. And I still have to call and set up the interviews to prayer about that, because I've never done that in my life. And in the middle of the week, I got really homesick/APU sick. I missed everyone terribly. So prayer for that area. We talked about it was important to have people outside of LA Term praying for you, so thank you guys SO much for supporting me. I appreciate it much more than you could know! Every time I begin to feel overwhelmed, I feel at peace minutes later.
Much love. Grace and Peace.
TJ