BTR, ? Hrs.

As you have probably read, early Wednesday morning I left for the Basic Training Retreat (BTR). Wednesday, I woke up at 5:00 am, said goodbye to Francheska and Pip, and hauled my luggage and sleeping bag onto a bus and over to the City Year Miami office. I was feeling really terrible with a cold, and upset stomach, and a fever, and was really thinking about skipping a trip, but I ended up getting on the bus anyway for a four or five hour drive to Kissimmee, Florida. When we arrived, we went right to the camp's dining hall, where I found out that no vegetarian food would be served during the weekend. : ( After that, the first day of the retreat was filled with teamwork building activities. I did learn what school I will be serving in, though: Robert Russa Moton Elementary School, which is a magnet school for the arts. Can you guess why they placed me there? ; ) I don't yet which grade I will be teaching, but it will most likely be 3rd grade. Wednesday evening, we closed at 9:00 and had free time until 11:00. During that time I spent some time and the campfire and then playing the game "Mafia", which is apparently a big deal at City Year retreats.

Thursday, we woke up at 6:30, practiced PT, had breakfast, and did some more teamwork-building activities. The highlight of the day was an exercise we did called "the privilege line". During that activity, the whole group started out in a horizontal line, and each person then could forward or backward for each command. Some of the commands were "step forward if both of your parents have college degrees" or "step backward if you have ever felt threatened because of your race". The result was people all over the spectrum, with the underprivileged people at the back of the field and the people born with lots of privileges at the front of the field. It was really and eye-opening activity, and showed, among other things, both that we will encounter in our lives people from all across the spectrum and that even people born with seemingly nothing can make something of themselves and get to something like City Year. Thursday evening, we played Mafia again (I was the first person killed!), and got in bed at 11:30.

Friday morning was spent on a low ropes course, and Friday afternoon was spent doing service work around the camp we were staying at. At one point, I got bit/stung by some sort of bug, my thumb turned purple and got really swollen, and I lost all feeling in my thumb to the point of where I couldn't even bend it! I took some Benedryl and my thumb is fine now, but how strange! We left the camp around 5:00 pm, but didn't get home until after midnight since one of the buses broke down and we waited with it for a while to make sure that there would be some way to get everyone home. When we got back to the office, Beth, Bar, Erin, Erin, M & M and I missed our bus by only a second, and had to wait at the bus stop for another hour for the next bus. We finally got home at 2:30 am, and I was able to crash at 3:00 am.

Today, all I plan to do is rest, do laundry, swim in our pool, and relax.

As for the question mark in the title of this post: I have no idea how many hours of our retreat will count toward my hours. I will find out on Monday when we fill out our time cards for this past week.

-Aly