No worries, just adventures.

This has become the Brooklyn community’s motto, and for good reason. For one, we are embarking on this incredible adventure with GSV (moving to The Big City, working for virtually no money, living with strangers, etc.). For another, our first few weeks in the city included an earthquake, a hurricane, and terror threats. Somewhere between the “planned” adventures of being a Good Shepherd Volunteer and the unexpected ones that Mother Nature and the like decided to throw our way, Lori coined this beautifully applicable phrase and it stuck as our community motto. Any time we’re unsure of something, one of us smiles, shrugs, and rattles off our slogan and we all feel better.

All in all, our first month and a half of GSV/NYC life has certainly been eventful. We were thrust into life in Brooklyn in the midst of Hurricane Irene panic, which meant stocking our apartment with essentials at the same time that everyone else on the East Coast was over-stocking for--seemingly--the apocalypse. Thankfully, being in a high-elevation neighborhood and Irene not hitting the City quite as hard as was forecasted, the fact that we weren’t able to stock our apartment well was the biggest war story we have from the storm.

However, as a consequence of the barrenness of our apartment, we ended up having some fairly interesting and underwhelming meals. “Soup party”, for instance. This involved taking two cans of Campbell’s soup--of different flavors--and mixing them together. We ate our combo soup with “salad”. I put salad in quotation marks because, as Mariella described it, it was “a head of iceberg lettuce and, like, two carrots”.

Slowly but surely, we all began to acquire our stipends and properly stock our shelves. The Brooklyn community has a weekly schedule that has us cooking for and eating with each other at least 4 nights a week. The amount of food on our shelves and in our bellies is the most tangible way to show our trials as we entered the program and is also a perfect way to show how far we’ve come since then. Our nightly meals is a time when our community can come together and make something delicious as a team, congratulate each other on a meal well-done, and share our thoughts with one another.

Life as a full-time volunteer in a city as big and unique as New York definitely has its ups and downs. We’re still getting used to the various (generally unpleasant) smells of our neighborhood, the fact that everything is more expensive than we’re used to, and long subway commutes. But when we take in the City’s beautiful sights, find a good bargain, or have a great conversation, somehow the amazingness of this experience outweighs whatever might be getting us down.

We’re already marveling at how quickly the time is passing; it’s hard to believe. Between work, home, GSV, and anything resembling a social life the days just seem to fly by--here’s to making every moment count.

With love, from Tewsdey and the Brooklyn community