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