Tina in Texas

Okay okay, so I've been in Texas for a month now, which means it's a little belated to talk about my welcome to Texas, but it's better late than never, right?  Since I have a lot to tell about what's happened in the past four weeks, I'm going to break it down into smaller posts so as not to overwhelm.  To start off with, I'm going to cover the main of events of the first week.

On Saturday, August 16th, I began my solo road trip from Rose Creek, Minnesota to San Antonio, Texas.  The drive was pretty dull, 20+ hours behind the wheel stretched out over a three-day period.  The first day I drove for about 5.5 hours until arriving at my destination of Columbia, Missouri to visit my dear friend and former roommate, Sarah Vallandingham.  The two of us had a great time catching up on life, and enjoying the sites and sounds of Columbia.  

Day two was the worst, driving for 10 hours from Columbia to Dallas, Texas.  I survived off dried cherries and granola bars for the day, trying to eliminate any unnecessary food stops that would delay progress.  I arrived in Dallas around 8 o'clock on Sunday evening, and was graciously hosted for the night by my aunt Mindy, someone else I needed to do some definite catching up with.  Mindy and her daughter Cabby were great, and it was so nice to have some human interaction after 10 hours in car-enclosed solitude.  Hopefully I'll be able to visit the two of them more during this next year.  

Monday morning I finished the final 5 hours to San Antonio, which was a little slower progress than expected due to heavy rainfall.  I arrived on St. Mary's campus mid-afternoon, and then things got crazy!

Before I get too far into this, I should back up and explain why I am even in Texas.  For one year I will be serving as an AmeriCorps*VISTA, which simply put is the domestic PeaceCorps.  The mission of VISTA is too eliminate poverty through capacity building initiatives.  What this means is that direct service will only be a small portion of how I'll be attacking poverty.  Instead, my focus is on putting myself out of a job, so that communities can become self-sufficient in tackling poverty without the need of a VISTA.  VISTAs don't receive a lot of money, but I am provided a bi-weekly stipend, and thankfully my housing is covered by my site.  My position is through Texas Campus Compact (www.compact.org and www.texascampuscompact.org) at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.  I'm the Civic Engagement Coordinator, but I'll get into detail about what exactly I'm doing in a later post.

Anyway, I arrived on campus on August 18th, and had a few crazy hours of getting an ID, parking pass, room assignment, meeting colleagues and campus staff, and moving in!  Thankfully I had a lot of help moving in, as almost every time I started carrying something up the stairs, a guy would ask if I would like some help.  It was great!!!!  I had less than a day to get settled though, as I left for Pre-Service Orientation on Tuesday.  Coming soon.