Philadelphia Round 2!

My new phone!

Let me tell you- this week has been busy and exhausting. I am presently watching clips from previous Olympics. I watched Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes and Charlie White and Meryl Davis skate, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte swim, and then moved into Winter X Games. For as much as I am not a snow bunny, I sure love watching it all. I am doing this because I don't feel like doing anything else. I went to church and sang in choir and then retrieved to my bed for the rest of the afternoon and messed around with my new phone and my laptop. Folks, I have joined the smartphone world! This is pretty big in the life of Katie, I will be able to get picture messages and even go on the internet, pretty exciting stuff!
This week was so busy and exhausting because I had something going on every night as well as working 8 hour days at work. On Monday and Thursday night, I had choir rehearsal to prepare for service on Sunday as well as a performance that is happening next Friday called Evensong. We are learning 5 new pieces of music and rehearsing twice a week instead of one to prepare for it. On Tuesdays, we always have community dinner. Lately, we have not had that many attend, we had 7 people attend this week. We prepared breakfast food including eggs, pancakes, and sausage. I think it went well and I had fun at it. We have guests in our house from 7 till after 9 most Tuesdays. On Wednesday I went to Red Robin for the first time with my mentor Brigette, who was in the house last year and I can confide in a lot. I really enjoyed Red Robin, it was tasty and I really liked the atmosphere of it!
Work this week has been busy because I had my event- Community Service Fair! I had about 15 different organizations looking for volunteers come and table and recruit volunteers. I thought the event went very well- logistically it went without a hitch. Sound, food, most of the organizations were all there ready to go. I had all the tables, chairs, and everything prepared and ready well in advance. I had about 50-60 students attend this event. At first, I was pretty discouraged. Coming from MSU where there are 15,000 students, 50 students is not a very good percentage- but Dickinson has less than 2000 students. I got feedback from the organizations and they said that they got interested students and that it was well worth their time for tabling for two hours, which is what I really needed and wanted to hear! I definitely think this was a good and successful event, but I think I should have done it last semester- lesson learned and notes for next year were made!
I return to my old desk starting on Monday since our administrator that was on maternity leave comes back! I am a little sad to go back, I really liked having multiple jobs and wearing different hats. I got to interact with students much more because they came to me with many questions, but I think I will keep busy with just my work! I also go the exciting news this week that I am officially taking students on a service trip... to Georgia! I am very excited about this and I hope it will be a wonderful learning experience for me! I will be in Georgia in March, which is coming up very quickly! Pretty crazy to think about, actually!

Absalom Jones

The Sycamore House headed to Philly on Saturday to meet the Episcopal Service Corps house in Philly and met up with the New York- Staten Island crew again! We met the NY group at our retreat in the Poconos. We arrived in Philly around 9:30am and Philly is about an hour and 45 minutes away from Harrisburg. The first thing we did when we got to Philly was go to Absalom Jones service in West Philadelphia (....born and raised, the playground is where I spent most of my days...). This service was an experience I will never forget! There was so much life in the church and absolutely no pews. We all sat in chairs around the outskirts of the room. This was primarily a black church and it was so much more easy going and uplifting. Members were much more "into the service". They had a whole procession where they took all the flags and walked around the church, they had an African drum session, full drums set choir, boys and girls club singers, and a powerful sermon. It was very different from St. Stephens, which is much more traditional and clear cut. The service on Saturday was very good, but was very long- it lasted about 3 hours. Which, put the rest of our schedule for the day behind because we didn't realize it would run so long. The next thing we did was go to Reading Terminal Market. And, WOW! I have never seen so many different vendors, so many people, so many smells, and so many different food options in such a confined space. They had Greek food, Chinese, Mexican, Seafood, bakeries, sit down restaurants, chocolate stations, arts and crafts, and everything in between. I was overwhelmed by everything. I have attached a link to the website because I don't think I can do justice in explaining it- http://readingterminalmarket.org/merchants. After the market, we walked to the Philly house and met the members of their house and played games, drank beer, and ate pizza with them and the NY group. I thought the day was fun, I wish we could have done a little more around the city, but it was a good experience.
This week seems like it will be less busy- in theory. I have choir on Monday and Thursday, with performance on Friday at 7pm. After the performance the Sycamore House is having a fundraiser called Party Gras, which is like a Marti Gras party. We have Crawdad's catering, king cake, and musical entertainment. All the money raised from this will go to the Sycamore House in funding the rest of our retreat to Virginia and for the house next year. I have never had crawdads or king cake, so all of this will be an experience for me! I will let you all know how it goes!

Have a wonderful week- I am going to continue to be lazy this evening and watch the Grammys. Hunter Hayes is nominated, so you know I will be watching!

Love,
Katie