Orientation, Round 2!

Hello! It's only been a little over a week since I last updated the blog but it feels like a lifetime. Lots has happened, both on a global scale and on a personal level. After officially starting work on the 30th, I worked a few hours over the next several days and continued to meet Yorkians and settle in.

On September 4th, I left York and hopped on a train to make my way to Leeds. Once in Leeds, I met up with some fellow YAGMs and we took a short metro ride into Headingly, which is a neighborhood outside of Leeds. Once in Headingly, we got ourselves hopelessly lost and then finally found our way to the  Leeds Beckett University.

Why did I get to spend four days on this idyllic campus? This was Orientation, Round 2! UK YAGMs are unique in our country structure. Most other country programs (i.e. Rwanda, Senegal, Jerusalem/West Bank, etc) have a country connection with the Lutheran church of that nation. Therefore they spend the first 3-4 weeks in-country with their fellow YAGMs learning the language and adjusting the culture.

In the UK, however, which was the first country program of YAGM, we are connected with a Christian volunteering program called Time for God. This program places volunteers from all over the world into the UK to volunteer, and places UK volunteers in other countries. Most placements are churches or faith-based nonprofits, but any organization can apply for a volunteer. Us YAGMs start at our sites right away, and then meet later on for a 3-4 day orientation with Time for God and the other volunteers in the program.

A note on Time for God: 

When I initially learned of the connection to Time for God, I was nervous because the name sounds more evangelical and Christian-focused than I knew YAGM to be. I'm a Christian, that's not what makes me nervous. But if you know me at all, you know I hate the idea of telling anyone what to believe in terms of religion (although I'm very happy to get on my soapbox if you don't agree with me politically or on social justice matters). I was worried that Time for God, by virtue of its name, emphasized "spreading the good news" and all that... stuff.

It doesn't. Time for God is a pretty charismatic Christian group, meaning they worship in a more contemporary style (whereas many of my fellow YAGM and I are more familiar/comfortable with the traditional style of the ELCA), but they are not in the business of telling others what to believe. They just believe in their volunteers serving in a faith-based context and using their volunteer time to explore their faith and grow their relationship with God.

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So anyway, the Orientation was a lot of fun and very refreshing. I felt nervous about leaving York as I was just settling in, but getting away was actually really good for me to remind myself of the big picture of volunteering this year. TFG Orientation started with an intro session on Monday night and then had dinner together. Our seats were assigned, which ruined The Plan. The Plan was that the YAGM volunteers would all hang out with  each other as much as humanly possible over the four days in Leeds (we like each other a lot, ok?). We didn't think we'd care about being friends with the other volunteers, who hail from Germany, Austria, Hungary, Uganda, and South Korea.

In fact, having seats assigned for dinner was a great ice-breaker. We surprised ourselves by ending up making great friends with the other volunteers from all over the world almost immediately. There were only 28 volunteers total. Thus The Plan changed and grew to include the entire group, and this made Orientation a fantastic and rich experience. I chatted with my new German friends about public transportation in Germany, a new Hungarian friend about British history, and a friend from Uganda about his job as a radio announcer at home. It was so cool!

We had several informational sessions on Tuesday. During our break, I walked with Alison, Annie, and Jasmine, three fellow YAGMs, to Kirkstall Abbey. This is an amazing old ruined abbey in a beautiful park. It was a long walk but so worth it!

Luckily, this picture is blurry so you can't see the "No Climbing on the Ruins" sign to the right.

Wednesday was the most fun day. On this day, in our small groups, we went out into the city of Leeds and had a treasure hunt! My small group was pretty multi-national - two Germans, a Ugandan, two Hungarians, and me. I LOVED small group, we had a lot of fun together and had a really successful hunt.

We had to take pictures at various structures around Leeds.

A giant chess board where we posed as chess pieces (outside the visitor information center!)

The first Marks and Spencer stall, located in Kirkgate Market! It opened in 1884. 

We were requested to take a photo with any willing strangers in the Leeds Corn Exchange... we did indeed make friends!

The Leeds Corn Exchange building! So beautiful. 

Wednesday we did skits in our small groups on a facet of British culture. Ours was food. We served tea and had a quiz show asking the others to guess what dish we were cluing them into. Can you guess my quiz?:

1. It's a dairy product
2. It's often used with jam and scones
3. It's made with a process of heating and cooling

(Shantonu, I hope you're getting this!)

For the answer, see the end of this post :)

On Thursday, we all said goodbye to our new friends and headed home. Although we definitely hadn't succeeded in The Plan, I think we were all quite happy with the new relationships we had formed and were excited to get to know such great people from all over the world. We also did get to spend more time together as a YAGM group (and can't wait for October when we'll ALL get to be together!). One of my favorite parts of Orientation was learning more about the other volunteers' home countries and talking about current events while hearing their perspectives'.

Shoutouts: 

To the Dreamers. There's a lot of heavy stuff I could say about that, but instead I'll leave you with something light...



BTW, if you've signed up for my newsletter, it's still in progress... I'm having some very frustrating technical difficulties with Mailchimp. Even though I finished it over a week ago, Mailchimp won't let me send it because of some compliance issue. I'm giving them three more days to get back to me and then I'll send it out another way (that is TBD...).

Quiz answer: Clotted cream (This is mine and Shantonu's favorite British food!)