1.041.75 Hrs.

This week started out pretty well - Sunday was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bishop on Southeastern Florida, so there was a huge ceremony at my church that a lot of special people attended, including the Presiding Bishop.

The rest of this week has been the Advanced Training Academy, which is like the Basic Traning Academy we had for City Year during the very first month of my time here. On Monday, we held our meeting at the University of Miami, and got some reflection time, as well as behavior management training. Charlie Rose was also there and did some really cool teambuilding activities with us. Charlie Rose is the Vice President and Dean of City Year. On Tuesday, we met again at the University of Miami for some more teambuilding activities. Wednesday was a team day, which meant that our team got to spend the morning together eating breakfast and playing games. In the afternoon, everyone met at Crandon Park for a Bar-be-que. Yesterday, Steven Spalos visited from City Year Headquarters. Steven has been with City Year from almost the very beginning, and was visiting yesterday to give us a talk about "The Anatomy of Peace". This workshop was meant to help us work better within our teams. We all had dinner together afterwards, and then we had another talent show like the one we had at BTR. Yesterday was a twelve-hour day!

Today, everyone was supposed to meet at Oleta River State Park at 8:30 a.m. I took the bus, but my directions were not correct, so I ended up getting lost and wandering around Miami for two hours! : ( I finally made it, though, and was able to help with part of the service project, which was getting rid of some of the invasive plant species that have started to take over the park. After that, we had lunch and then got to spend some free time kayaking, swimming, and sun bathing.

My plan for this weekend is to do absolutely nothing.

-Aly