CVV does Happy Hour!

Having a long week filled with bed bugs and just generally getting used to working 40 hours a week (remember, first year out of college for many of us, but not all. but for me...) + having only a small monthly stipend = figuring out how to get out of the house on a budget. LUCKILY there are dollar beers located conveniently between the two CVV houses! I would say we definitely needed a good break!

There is something awesome about picture where the person in front has no idea about the people and the back. This would be Tom in front, and I absolutely love him for not realizing what was actually happening ;-)

This is (going -->) Angela, Lianne (who both live in my house aka CoHO) and Joelle (who lives in the other house aka WoHo)
My old buddy Cody showing some funny affection to Laine
Danny surprisingly looks the least scary

This picture with me and Josie (on the far right) just makes me giggle a lot
This was a particularly special cheers! We had come to the same place the week before, but chose to sit inside. Little did we know that outside on the patio (largest in Denver mind you) each table has a number on it. Every hour or so they spin that big wheel you see in the back of the photo and if it lands on your tables number, everyone at the table gets a free shot! Somehow (they may have sort of help the wheel along) the wheel landed on my table's number! We thought since we had pushed three tables together it would only be for like 5 of us, and yet, they did it for all of us! It was a really fun end to a horrible week of bed bugs and not sleeping!!!!!!

General update?

Other than the bedbug fiasco, life here in Denver is pushing foward!

I love my job! Working at Metro CareRing is wonderful. The staff is small (including volunteer staff, 10 total) but the volunteers are plentiful and wonderfully dedicated. The staff are all committed to one another and to hunger relief. I was worried that in working at an agency that deals with so many working poor that some of my co workers could be jaded or negative about their work. On the contrary, everyone is active and passionate and committed. It's incredibly

rejuvenating. We are always all so busy so I am still getting to know everyone better. I look

forward to our staff retreat day (we are heading up the mountains!!!) when I will have a lot more face to face time with staff members that isn't focused on all the work to do. It still will be focused on work, but I get to spend time with my co workers, not just my clients :-D

A lot of what I am doing at work is working up front with the clients as they come in for services, but my more 'specialized' work is going to be helping with the ID project. A huge barrier for a lot of people is not having an ID or a birth certificate. They can be costly and difficult to come by. So many agencies require some kind of ID. It's something that I always took for granted. So I am currently training on taking appointments for out of state birth certificates. The process varies state to state, and some are far trickier than others. But a very useful skill to have, eh? I am also working on our referrals database. Since we offer limited services. we try to help people in the

direction of agencies that can help them in other areas. Keeping up with that information on file and keeping it organized is a pain. But it's now my job! I am trying to compile of a lot of referrals into one document ie creating a sheet that lists housing options just for women, or a sheet of all

the bilingual programs available. Then if they want more information on a few, we can do that too. I have had to mail information to two incarcerated people already, which is not something I expected. It's new and even though its a person i will likely never meet and who is very far from me, it's a strange thing to be asked for help in this way. I do try to do my best to give them the best information possible because I can't imagine being released from prison after 20+ years and then trying to figure out what to do now would be an easy task.

On some lighter notes! While I don't have photos of my house, I do have a few of my own room which I have tried to make as homey as possible, despite the fact that someone used to use it as an office:

I have plenty of space, that's for sure!! I just hope that there aren't any more yucky bugs in all of those spaces!!

FIASCO!!

Can you guess what this might be.....................?No, I am not helping to smuggle anything. And we don't have an excessive amount of garbage. But we did have a lot of laundry to do!

SOOOOOO We have had bed bugs in our house! This may or may not be one of the worst experiences ever. We had to do all the laundry in our house (of 10 people) and vacuum all (6000 sq ft) of it. BEFORE the exterminator came. And bag up our box springs and mattresses. Which can be noisy when you try to sleep and then roll over and it goesscrunchrustlerustlescrunchrustle as you try to get comfortable. I made sure to do some extra spray down in my room. Those bugs are so gross looking and so rude biting people all the time.

I love cleaning. Especially when everything in my room is all over the place!!!!!!!

better late than never

We made it! Pretty terrible views up there, ya know?

This is a hike we took during our two days up in the mountains. At 11,000 we were all sucking some air.

Who doesn't love a porch swing made from a ski lift?

So I need to take some more pictures. I will definitely take some more of the house and such once my room stops looking scary and looks a little more homey!!

New Start, New Blog

I figured i may as well start a block while I'm out in Denver so that I don't have to constantly repeat what I have been up to!

So I arrived here last Friday, and Kay was a wonderful host who took me in for the night! Saturday was the first 'official' day. Moved into the 'new' house, known as 'CoHo.' CVV has expanded this year from 13 volunteers to 20 volunteers, so there are 10 at each location. 'WoHo', or Woody's House, is the original site, made up of two town homes, or NoHo (North House) and SoHo(South House). The new location used to be housing offices for the Denver archdiocese and is barely two blocks from WoHo. Since we are between 16th and Colfax St, we are 'CoHo.' Have fun keeping track of that! We all have our own rooms, and plenty of space throughout. It's a very old house (most of hte rooms have fireplaces in them, but not mine :-( ) so there are definitely a couple kinks we're working out. Such as a lot of windows that are either painted shut, nailed shut, or just fall apart if you try to open them. We do have a really nice porch/balcony on the 2nd floor, which makes up for a lack of yard. The presence of the porch makes me a little bit extra sad about the rule of having a dry house, but so is life.

I love everyone in this program. I really really do. As in many similar situations, I know that there are some 'kindred spirits' I will be closer with, but I am so happy to be living in community and having dinner with 20 people at a time. This honeymoon period will not last, but I am loving it while I am in it. We did some high and low ropes team building during orientation and I really loved how we were able to come together during that and seriously kick some butt. And doing that kind of stuff in beautiful mountain-y area? Really cool.

I got to meet my supervisor for work yesterday! I am working at an agency called MetroCareRing. It's the largest food pantry in the metro area here in Denver. I really love the work they do because they go over the needs of each client and what is available in the pantry and include the client with the food choices instead of just handing them food. There is such a focus on treating people kindly and with dignity and there is no sense of any kind of hierarchy there. It's awesome. The staff there are so connected with one another, and they arent just co workers. Next week I have times set up to meet with each of them, including the executive director to just get to know their job better, and to get to know them as people. I will be doing a little of everything, but I have my own desk in a shared office, and my own extension and voicemail and such. Work starts on Monday!!

I will put up pictures from my first week here as soon as I figure out how to ( I'm terrible at this blogging stuff. Thus the very very simple set up).

If anyone is interested in finding out more about what I'm doing, or supporting the programs I'm a part of this year you can check out the Colorado Vincentian Volunteers or MetroCareRing!

I will post the next time I can get to Internet!