A Tumultuous Beginning

So, I am officially living in New York!!! FINALLY. I can’t believe that this is actually happening, and that I am actually here. I've been wanting to live in New York for years upon years, so to think that I'm here now...it's just crazy. I’m going to reminisce back to what happened just in my last day in California and my first day on my own. It wasn’t pretty.

So, I left home on Wednesday, August the 8^th. I had been playing phone tag with my Program Coordinator since the night of Tuesday, but we couldn’t seem to get a hold of each other. The last message she left me said that there were some changes happening, but that they’d send out an informative email that would explain everything. My last day at home was very nice. I got to eat breakfast with my parents and brothers and enjoy some Ampuero 5 family time which was something that I had been craving, but hadn’t been able to do for quite some time. Josh helped me mail all of my boxes to my house in Brooklyn (thanks, Jodgers!), and we met Nick at a Peruvian restaurant in LA for a “Last Supper” all together. We got to LAX to get my boarding pass when my phone binged with an email. I read it to find out that after a couple of people dropped the program at the last minute, myself and a few other volunteers had been moved around, and I was now going to be living in the house in Harlem with seven (yes, seven) other girls (so, yes, eight girls). That was a huuuge shock for me to deal with because I had already fallen in love with the Brooklyn house, and I was looking forward to a co-ed living situation of four girls and two guys. Nope. Trying to adjust to that new concept while saying goodbye to my family was definitely rough. I had no idea that saying bye was going to be so difficult!! I was feeling very melodramatic as I walked away from them, but then was of course stopped by security for one of my carry-ons, and I then had to go through an inspection with my whole family watching me, so that kind of lightened the mood a little.

My flight was delayed. OF COURSE. By about an hour. Which was incredibly stressful because my second flight (from Boston to Baltimore) was scheduled to leave just half an hour after my initial flight was scheduled to land. I was hoping against hope that the second flight would be delayed too, but, as luck would have it, I rushed into the Boston airport to find that the flight had already left. I needed to get to BWI by 12:30 to catch the bus that JVC was providing to take us to the retreat center. I dealt with three incredibly unhelpful humans at Jet Blue that were so annoyingly resistant to helping me out. I was emotional from leaving my home, exhausted from a lack of sleep, and hungry and thirsty after eating nothing since my Peruvian dinner. After lots of tears and lots of standing around, I finally decided to just to buy a completely new flight to get me to BWI on time (yayyy spending unnecessary money), and went through the whole security ordeal again. Whatever. I ended up getting there safely and on time, and that’s all that matters, right?

Retreat was amazing, and I met so many incredible people, and really started to feel the JV love that will be surrounding me this year, and for the rest of my life. Although getting here has been such an emotional and physical trek (my arms were sore for days after lugging all of my luggage around), I feel so blessed to have this opportunity, and I can’t wait for my year of service to truly come to fruition.