The summer is coming

Hello dear friends!

It has been such a long time since I wrote to you! As always a lot has happened since I last communicated with you. Little things and big things and as always adventures!

So the last thing I wrote that I was going begin my full duties as an AmeriCorps!
Things that I have done since I last posted:
1) I have completed service Fridays at places all over the metro-Atlanta area
2) I planned my own service project that involved the Atlanta Science Expo
     (despite some hiccups we did a great job and the actual expo was awesome!!!)
3) We planned and executed a fantastic Global Youth Service Day. We involved over 1200 youth that day
4) I had a very relaxing spring break. I had small adventures into Carrolton with some AmeriCorps members and despite the rain we bonded over the little joys of laughter, silly people, and ridiculousness.
5) I bought my tickets to and from California for Chelsea and Patrick's wedding!


Other than that I have been serving with a population of young men here on campus providing math and literacy tutoring. Some days they can be very difficult but those days are bearable when one of the boys asks to be tutored or they finally grasp a concept that they have been struggling with for a long time. Those are the days that make my time here worth while.

Before I began this post today I was contemplating the past years of working with youth. No matter where they are located, what cognitive level they function at, or their attitude towards learning things, I have discovered that I love working with these kids. There is no denying that they drive me crazy some days, but seeing students grow is worth all of the time and effort.

Tonight my team is going to be serving at a huge event with the Hawn Foundation. It is going to be fancy with many well-to-do people attending. It's going to be interesting to see what it will be like, but hey, all I can say it is just one more adventure to add to my life.

I am thinking of you and I hope that you are well.

As always, love and hugs

-Kylie  

Turtles, Racoons, and AmeriCorps. . .Oh My!

Hello there friends!

It has been a very long time since I last wrote. I apologize for that but I have been so busy that my free time is usually spent reading or sleeping! A lot has happened in the last few weeks so let me catch you up!

I have been going through YV training, which due to unforeseen circumstances went longer than normal. (Snow and ice being the biggest culprit obviously) We made it through, I am fully trained and on top of that I have been assigned my group of students! I am really excited to be working with them. I will be a math and literacy tutor which is what I am good at, I am sitting in at a comfortable optimism (with lots of realist ideals behind it) that I will be helping  them out a little bit in the long run.

I know for a fact that I will be gaining more from them though. I sit and think about all of the students in the past that I have worked with, difficult and pleasantly easy and these students are nothing like any of them. I will  hopefully be better equipped in the long run to help students of all levels succeed in a classroom setting and I am already excited at seeing progress from students that my fellow AmeriCorps tutor in the short time that I have been here.

Which brings me to AmeriCorps. Service has always been apart of my life, at Jessup it was a requirement that some people grumbled about, but I actually appreciated the importance of it. Now, I am allowed to live a season of my life dedicated to service, no matter what it is.
A few weeks ago GEMA mobilized us to help in parts of Georgia that got hit by the ice storm and going out to a small community and helping out a few families removed the debris in their yards was amazing. The thankfulness of the group we joined with that we came and helped them was immeasurable and as a team we laughed and worked hard. It's a wonderful thing.
This last week my team went down to Jekyll Island where we partnered with another AmeriCorps team and we did a huge service project with them. We split into 4 teams of 10 and busted out a bunch of projects that needed to get done on their end.
My team camped at the camp ground, and despite the colder weather we survived and I think that the people who had never camped enjoyed their time.

Yesterday was just filled with lots of good things for me. Since we had the retreat this past week we were given yesterday off. I figured it would just be a pleasant day, mostly reading but it became much more than that. I got a package from Katie. Zach got my package that I sent him. I joined a rock climbing gym that my new friend Erin from AmeriCorps is apart of (YAY ROCK CLIMBING!) I made falafel I made plans to catch up with my friend Safi, Haley and I got a text from Kyle about catching up next week on the phone. So many good things. I love touching base with those I do not get to see very often because it shows that despite the distance we have taken the time to say that we are thinking about them. 

Monday starts my first full week doing the service that I signed up for, Wish me luck!

I hope that you dear friend who is reading this know that I think about you often. I wish you the best of luck and lots of joy between now and the next time I write.

As always,
Love and Hugs

-Kylie

How I survived Snowpocalypse 2014, a crash course into Americorps

Hello there dear friend!

My goodness it has been a couple weeks since I last posted and so much as happened!
I moved to Georgia, met my roommate, and got introduced to the rest of Americorps staff here at Youth Villages. It's crazy because, seriously, I was supposed to be doing training when the snow hit. Then I became support staff because the entire state of Georgia went crazy. Snow is not a regular occurrence here in Georgia so the kids were having a ball when we took them out for small time blocks so that they could enjoy it. I loved their faces because I think that it was the first time they had seen 3 inches of snow at one time.

Seriously though to emphasize, snow in Georgia. Who would have guessed? I was pretty convinced that it would be too cold or too warm for it to actually snow. Then poof, snow fall, making the hike up the hill to my campsite pretty treacherous (especially after it melted and froze during the night, I am lucky that I didn't slip and break a leg)  Despite the inability for some people to go home because of bad roads, everyone was on top of their game, and kept the kiddos fairly occupied. I joked with a friend from Georgia that he lied to me about the weather here, and he came back with the retort of I brought it with me from Nevada. Touche, Thomas, touche.

Now it is just a matter of getting through the rest of training. Everyone says to enjoy the training time because it is not as crazy, which is true from what I can tell, but I am ready to get to serving these students, doing my best to be an tutor and bringing them information about the cool things that I know. Maybe radio astronomy, maybe Arabic, who knows, the possibilities are endless!

But really, life is pretty good. I am getting used to this new schedule and when more interesting things happen I will be posting periodically. I have cell service but not immediate internet in my cabin. (Yes I live in a cabin, but no, it is not like science camp, it is cozy and I only have 1 roommate, not 35, despite loving Cabin 6 at NYSC)

Well, I have to get off soon. Know that I love you where ever you are.

As always hugs and love,

-Kylie

P.S
I love post, so if you feel inclined to write my address is
Kylie Stevens
c/o Americorps (Youth Villages-Inner Harbour Campus)
4685 Dorsett Shoals Dr
Douglasville, GA
30134

Meanwhile in Sunny Florida. . .

Hello there dear friend!

I have made it to the next phase of my adventure! Two -ish weeks in Florida visiting my aunt and uncle before driving up to Georgia. Let me tell you, getting here was a crazy adventure in itself. Sitting in the Las Vegas airport for 4 hours is not my choice for a fun filled day, but after a day of travel I got to their home safe and sound if not tired.

I have been contemplating how I would recount the last few days in this blog, and yesterday a bog post helped me find a way to tie it together.

I liked a post, was given a poet and expected to post a poem. I received Walt Whitman  and I chose O me! O life! as my poem. One that I heard many many years ago in a movie that I enjoy greatly and have only recently taken the time to think about what Whitman meant and, by extension why is this the poem that I picked to share with the people on facebook?

John Green said that the quotes that we like say more about us and about where we are in life than really what the quote means in the bigger context of the book.

The first part of this poem calls out to life, asking what is the point of living when the world is falling to pieces. Where the citizenry of the world (including himself) have no faith, are foolish, people are starving, the cities are corrupt and the future looks bleak. The answer is (as it always is) that life is existent despite it all. That each person who takes a breathe will have an impact, it may be small but that is all that matters.

How does this tie in to my traveling adventures? Well, people flying get upset easily and I heard a lot of people grumbling about how [insert a event here] is making [insert topic here] terrible. This sort of negativity is firmly stuck in the first part of that poem. Enough with the bad attitudes, you won't change anything by complaining about it.  

-The question, O me! so sad, recurring --What good amid these , O me O life?

Answer

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. -

The first four words to the answer are what strike me the most. "That you are here" I think of you, my dear friend, that the reason I write in the blog is to contribute a verse in your life, to let you know that despite distances, I think of you. Know that you contribute a wonderful chorus in mine on a daily basis.

As always,
Love and Hugs

Kylie   

Holy Fiddlesticks Batman!

Hello there dear friend!

I hope that your New Year was safe and pleasant and the first days of this new year have been grand! In my last post I exclaimed that I was done packing! This is true and I am exuberant to this fact. I now only have 6 days until I fly off to Florida to visit my family (related and non-related) and it really truly is an odd feeling.

6 days until I leave Nevada, 20 days until begin my position in Georgia, and then 8 months until I begin grad school (hopefully at UNL but any place will be fantastic!)

In this time of perceived new beginnings (which, of course is a construct created in the last few hundred years, but that is beside the point) life for me is just carried over. The end of 2013 is the same as the beginning of 2014 and I will continue to move forward in this adventure. I am wiser than I was a year ago but that is mostly because I choose to learn everyday.

It's funny, things that I pack into my file cabinet. My friends will attest to the ridiculous information that I can spout off randomly. For the last few months my poor family has had to deal with my impossible deluge of information. Like this morning for example, my mom and I were watching Castle, and Nathan Fillion hit a bad guy over the head with a beer bottle. I can't help but express my knowledge of why that would have actually killed the guy rather than just stop him, and why historically cowboys in the west could have accomplished it without killing a person. (It comes down to molecular disbursement of the glass in a bottle, modern beer bottles are better made with the glass being equally spread out. In the wild west, the likelihood of a glass bottle being equally thick the entire length was slim due to glass smelting techniques. If they were to hit someone with a bottle, it would have be to about halfway up the bottle at the weakest point)

Other than my marathon watching of Castle, Criminal Minds, and Big Bang Theory, my life is fairly uneventful for now. I hope to hangout with a few Reno people before I leave (seriously, if you are in Reno let me know so that I can say hey before I leave!) the rest of the time is a time of "reflection" before I go off.

As always,

Love and hugs!

-Kylie

The Art of packing your life into boxes: Part 2

Hello there dear friend!

It's been some time since I wrote but I blame the delay on the holidays. The impending deadline of January 9th when I fly to Florida (which then I will be driving up to Georgia) has encouraged me to try and spend as much time with my family. Christmas Eve(with my mom's side of the family) Christmas day (at my house) and the subsequent days (with my dad's side of the family) were spent bonding and setting to memory the stories that I will miss hearing all of the time.

This is a sort of packing as well. I mean yes, I was able to fit the things that I will need for the next 8 months into 3 medium sized boxes, 2 suitcases, and my backpack. I am content with my decisions on what I settled on packing yet there is one thing that I cannot pack.

I cannot pack the people that make my life better. I don't mean to be sentimental with this post but for me there are certain people that mean very much to me. I know that in this day in age I have so much technology to keep me in touch with my family and friends but there is nothing like a hug from a person dear to you or a an adventure and coffee with a friend to make a day go from good to best. These are two examples that I would like to share since these events are what inspired this post tonight. I have left my friend's names out mostly because I have realized that privacy on the internet is sacred and thus keeping them anonymous is my prerogative.

Yesterday I was having coffee with a friend of mine, a tradition that was started at the beginning of the fall semester when I was visiting my grandparents. I had only met him in a class the last semester of college and knew right away that he was fantastic, a little on the quiet side (which makes me laugh because most of my friends tend to be a lot more mellow than I usually am which makes everything balanced, just as the world should be) but I enjoyed having conversations about literature and movies and just everyday life stuff from him. Now that we have both graduated, talking about applications to schools and finding a job (in their case a better job, in my case a job in general) have replaced talk about class work. Regardless of the topic his stance is always so even keeled and very thought out. As much as it makes me sad that it will probably be over a year before I see him, I know that letters and emails will be exchanged making the absence of these meetings less noticeable.

Today I met with two history majors and we tend to have the habit of meeting at In N Out. I love these two because they make me laugh so hard. We sat out side for 4 1/2 hours talking about anything and everything. Just like the person I met with yesterday both are more introverted than myself, but their friendships make me better. They have interesting and complex opinions, they are funny (and know how to make me laugh) over silly things. Being history majors we probably spent a solid two hours of that time talking about everything from Thomas Jefferson to modern Middle Eastern history all contributing to the points in a precise manner. We fan-girled over nerdy things like the Hobbit and Doctor Who (which one crocheted me a 10th Doctor to go along with my crocheted TARDIS, be jealous you know that is cool) and how if I decided to do a specific line of research in grad school I could potentially become best friends with Benedict Cumberbatch (it's a long story, if you want to know shoot me a message, it is a fairly long tangent). I told them about my Sherlock trick that I did to a group of Lutheran guys at UNL that had the guys slightly freaked out and impressed by simply looking at their ties. When we parted (because it was almost dark and dinner was approaching) I was sad. These two people had become some of my very best friends and just like my other friend every time I visit California I take the time to see them.


I can't pack people into boxes. I can file away the conversations into my cabinet of knowledge (my brain if you had never heard me call it that before) and pull them out to remind myself of how wonderful these people are. I can text and facebook them and even talk to them on the phone but it is not the same and not as good as seeing them in person.

Hugs and arm punches are way better than smiley faces and sticking out your tongue emoticons. A letter is always better than a text. A phone call is better than a facebook message.
I cannot pack the things that really matter into boxes because, as I have known for a very long time, what really matters in the end are the people you love.

I pack my love for you into a special place in my heart so that I can carry it with me as I travel. I may not know where my life will go after Georgia but I have faith that it will be a great adventure and that you my dear friends will be tucked away in my heart, safe and sound as I experience the world.

As always,
Hugs and love

Kylie 

The art of packing your life into boxes: Part 1

Hello dear friends!

It is getting so close to the new year! It is a time for new semesters to start, a fresh new outlook on life, and it also means that the date of me moving to Georgia is approaching. Needless to say, I have started to pack now, to save me from a panicked packing later.

It's not that I have a lot of things that I need to bring with me for the next 8 months. It's the fact that I need to determine what I can live without for the next 8 months. Surprisingly I have already determined that 80% of the things from college (which, let's face it, is what I am talking about, I haven't even touched the corner of my parent's garage that is my stuff from when I was younger) is unnecessary for me to bring along to Americorps.

What remains is suggested things to bring on the packing list.
I will name a few and discuss why it has made my life more difficult that naught.

Books:
Do they know how many books I own? There is a box in my grandparents garage that contains most of them (and yes it is VERY heavy, thus the problem that I am having with decisions) Seriously though, I determined that I can bring maybe 10 books, but that is like asking a parent to pick their favorite child. What if I meet someone who would appreciate John Green but has never read any of his books? What if I meet someone who needs a little perspective? I have a solid 6 books that could do the trick depending on what it is they need perspective on. I also have the books that I need to peruse before I start grad school. I am sure that there is a nearby library that will become my best friend and I can buy digital books too, but there is nothing like holding a book that is yours on a summer afternoon drinking tea and reminiscing with familiar characters on an adventure. (If you disagree you are a heathen and I can no longer be friends with you.)

Movies:
This isn't nearly as hard as the books, but there is a lot to say about a movie that people can gather around, watch, and nerd out over (and let's face it, nerding out can mean singing along with Mary Poppins, relishing classic 80s movies with people who haven't seen them, or watching a cult favorites like Monty Python) I can actually bring more than 10 with me since they don't weigh as much as books but I don't want to bring all of them with me. (Big Bang Theory and Doctor Who are coming with me no matter what the decisions are I love them both too much to leave at home)

Craft supplies:
They said to bring supplies that you may need for seminars (I am sure that they can purchase things if I need them) but seriously, if you know me, what is the first thing that I do if I am bored? I craft stuff. I look into my three tired bin of magic and pull random things out and make beautiful things and give them to people. I make cards when people are sad/happy/done something/done nothing just to see a smile on their face. I am sure that I can throw out some stuff, but I don't want to. Once I use stuff up, it's gone. I don't buy more unless it is necessary (which typically it isn't)

Nostalgic things:
i.e Posters, camp stuff, my cork board, and the little things that sat on top of my wire shelving  unit. Some stuff I have already decided not to take (mostly posters but rest assure I am taking a couple that are important to me) and my cork board is something that I will not need per-sea so I can leave that. But camp things and the little things from the top of my wire shelf are important and need to be decided upon because I cannot and will not bring them all but each have something that helped me through the day while in college.
The camp things are incredibly important. I cannot be at camp this summer which makes me very sad and I need them. Thank goodness that camp things are mostly just manila envelopes which don't take up a lot of space.

As I pack away some memories I am excited to create more in the next 8 months.


As always,
Love and Hugs

-Kylie