Eagles and Fries and Prep, Oh My!

This week kicked off our prep work for cyServes, which meant we started at the office everyday at 9AM. Hallelujah! We spent almost every afternoon at the service site prepping various projects. Each day we had a variety of Philadelphia Service Ambassadors (PSAs), Corps members who serve on various teams, assisting us with prep. Here's what happened this week:

Monday:  We started our day at 9AM in the office with a prep meeting, discussing what was happening this week. The team was going to be doing a variety of things throughout the day so we wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page for the rest of the week.
At 10AM, a few of us headed over to the school in South Philly that we helped finish up in August and September, McDaniel, for a press conference. Wells Fargo made a bunch of backpacks to be distributed to the students and City Year was ready to help. This wasn't just a standard backpack handout, though. No, this time there was a special guest: Mychal Kendricks, linebacker on the Philadelphia Eagles. We kept the students entertained while they waited for the special guest by doing PT in front of them. It really got the students pumped for their backpacks.
After about 15 minutes of PT, the children started screaming. Mychal Kendricks had arrived. The children were ecstatic to see him there and many of them received autographs. He handed out the backpacks and the students were able to say hi to him. It was so great to see their faces. As he handed out the backpacks, we moved them forward on the stage so M. Kendricks could easily access them.

CE Team with Wells Fargo and M. Kendricks

Once we finished passing out the backpacks, we headed upstairs to the Eagles room (where we had assembled a bunch of the furniture a few weeks ago) for M. Kendricks to cut the ribbon. The students who were in the room had the biggest smiles on their faces when they saw the two 65" flat screen TVs, the Wii Mini, the PS3, and the ping pong table (which was a pain to put together, but it was great to see the reactions). City Year and Wells Fargo took a group picture in the room with M. Kendricks, who I got to stand next to. (Woohoo!)
After the pictures, part of the team headed to the McDaniel Annex to pass out more backpacks to the primary grades. It was right down the road so it wasn't a difficult task.
These students were so thankful for the backpacks and were absolutely adorable. It made me a little sad that I am not serving in a school, but then again, I wouldn't be working with K-3 students...

Free Crab Fries!

Once the backpacks were distributed, we returned to the office for lunch and to get some work done before the team would be split again.
Three people on our team headed to the service site at 2:45PM to begin prep. The rest of us hung out in the office, finishing up some work, until about 3:15PM when we headed to a Chickie's and Pete's press conference.
The conference was pretty cool. We stood there and smiled while a few people talked about the new partnership between CYPhilly and Chickie and Pete's. Everyone who spoke had the greatest things to say about City Year and how much the organization does for the city. It was definitely an awesome thing to witness and be a part of.


After we stood smiling for about a half hour, we were given tons of crab fries (my favorite!). We were so excited because we were originally told we wouldn't be getting any food. It was quite the pleasant surprise.
Around 5PM, we headed to the service site, fries for the rest of the team in hand. They had made a good amount of progress for prep with the PSAs. I walked around the school with my service partner, checking up on the projects that were being prepped. After that, I helped prime a section of the wall for an evolution of the American Flag mural. While we were prepping, one of the guys who works in the office dropped by with his adorable pitbull, Lucy. Obviously we took a break and visited with the puppy, but then headed back to work soon after. By the time we finished priming the flag mural, it was time to clean up.
It was a long day, ending at 6:45PM, but it went by fairly quickly.

Tuesday: I kicked off my day with modifying a few projects for the service event. It didn't take very long, but I tried to stretch it out to keep myself busy. Around 10:15AM, my PM emailed me with more SEPTA feedback. They love the designs, but they had more things to be "fixed". Oh joy. It wasn't a lot, but it was still frustrating. I wish people would just tell you what they want from the get-go to avoid so many issues later when you don't give them what they want.... Womp.
I worked on revising the designs yet again until about 11AM. Fingers crossed these are the last revisions!

Some of the snacks

After lunch, I worked on a few images for different murals at the service site. Around 1:30PM, DEVO and the CE team had a giant snack potluck where we just hung out, got to know each other better, and ate a lot of food. Around 3PM, myself and a project leader headed to storage to grab a few more things for prep. There was a lot of traffic so we didn't get to the service site until about 4:15PM, where we met up with the PSAs and the rest of our team.

There were a few issues with prep including "tiny text" on a mural I had designed. Instead of chatting with myself and my service partner, a few people griped and groaned about the size of text and almost made an executive decision without our input. Needless to say, we were not happy.
At the end of prep, not much progress was made. There was a lot of backtracking on the third floor because the PSAs had primed a small hallway, as they had been told, and then were told to scrape it all off and make the wall smooth. I felt really bad for them, but at least it kept them busy.
Prep seemed to fly by, mostly because I had to pick up extension cords from the storage unit, which took about an hour due to traffic and a slight jam at storage.
When all was said and done, the PSAs parted, I got changed for the Bastille concert (which was AMAZING by the way!), and headed back to center city to drop off one of the PLs.

Wednesday: I got into the city at 8:30AM, hopped off the train the stop before mine, grabbed hot chocolate from Starbucks, and then walked about a mile to work. It was a nice walk, giving me time to wake up and clear my head before arriving at the office at 8:55AM.

I officially have paint pants now

I spent most of the morning arguing with my PLs about the mural with small text. It was nice to finally speak up about something instead of being passive and letting the "experts" make the decisions. It was finally decided that I will be leading the prep on this mural so I can make the decisions on it.
Aside from re-saving the mural, I spent my time listening to Watsky's new album, All You Can Do, which was pretty good. I did this while researching new ideas for MLK day in January, our next service event. I alternated between this and a CPR/First Aid training course online. This took up all of my morning.
After lunch, I made changes to the one pagers that my PL was looking over.
We headed to the service site at 3PM. The first bus we were going to hop on was so crowded that the bus didn't even stop for us. We had to wait another 15 minutes before the next bus arrived.
When we got to the site, we started setting up for prep so we would be ready to start as soon as the PSAs arrived. I was in charge of the mural we had been arguing about in the morning. I set up the projector and still had to make changes.
When the PSAs arrived, a very detailed oriented Corps member worked beside me to make the mural look great. We spent the entire time working on the mural and only had one thing left to complete on Thursday.
The entire team and PSAs made a lot of progress, making our jobs easier for Thursday.

Thursday: Since it was the Flyers home opener, I drove to work so I could make it to the game on time. I left my house around 7:15AM and got into the office by 8:30AM. Yay for not being late!
I spent my morning working on the one pagers and finally completed them. I decided to take a break from it around 10AM and headed to Dunkin' with my service partner for a bagel and a hot chocolate. It was such a nice day that we just wanted to get out of the office for a little bit.
When I returned to the office, I had to complete a survey about my goals for the year. My PM had come up with the goals, but I had to come up with how I would complete them. It wasn't very hard to do, but it took a good amount of thought and time to complete this task.
After I finished this, I decided to input all of the Flyers games for the season into my calendar. This took forever, but I discovered that there is a home game on my birthday against the Sharks. Maybe I will try to go to it....
Once this tedious, voluntary task was completed, my service partner and I headed to the little deli we always go to for lunch. I grabbed a delicious BBQ chicken sandwich and the biggest pickle I've ever seen. It was a great lunch to say the least.
After lunch, I searched for murals and quotes for MLK day. I found a lot of stuff. I'm glad we decided to start looking early because this event is ENORMOUS and I would be ridiculously overwhelmed if we waited too long to get started.
When I was tired of searching, I started working on the PC and AC guides for cyServes. These guides will help the head honcho volunteers (PSAs and City Year employees) understand the projects they are overseeing and how to better explain them to their team of volunteers. While doing this, I celebrated what would have been John Lennon's 74th birthday by listening to the Beatles. It was a lovely afternoon in the office.
At 3PM, we headed to the service site for prep. I drove since I was leaving from there to go to the Flyers game and got there relatively quickly. One of the PLs was already there so we stood outside, talked about life, and waited for the rest of the team to get there since the weather was so nice.
When everyone arrived, we started setting up prep for the PSAs. I had to try to set up a projector, but we forgot to put one of the projects on the jump drive so we had to choose a different project to sketch. We chose to set up a projector to sketch a Dr. Seuss quote on the first floor. It took a while to get it just right, but it gave us something to do.

View from the service site

After this projector was set up, I had to set up another projector to finish the mural we started on Wednesday. There wasn't much left to do, but the set up was a bit tedious. Luckily the PSAs were patient and excited about the project. Their positive attitudes and willingness to help really made my afternoon enjoyable.
Around 5:40PM, I helped my teammate readjust the Dr. Seuss quote, just in time for me to get ready for the Flyers game. I knew he needed help adjusting it so I pushed back my end time for the day to ensure completion (or close to it) of the project.
Around 6PM, I was on my way to one of the greatest Flyers games I ever attended. It might've been the best if we would've won, but seeing as that didn't happen, it will remain the second best game.

Supported a teammate's sister

Friday: I was extremely tired when I woke up after the Flyers game. I decided to get off at the Suburban Station, the stop before my usual 30th Street Station, and walk to the office. It was a bit chilly so it was a nice way to wake up, get my blood pumping, and start my day. I even got to the office about fifteen minutes early so I was able to finish the chapter of Les Mis I started reading on the train. (I just finished Marius' book, so hopefully the story line will pick up again!)
I started my day by creating a prep plan for the day with my service partner. This didn't take very long to do, but it has been helping us stay on track everyday at prep.
At 10AM, the CE team had donuts with the new head honcho of Development. She just started with CYPhilly on Monday and our PM thought it was important for us to get to know her. It was a nice little meeting and I even ate a donut, but I definitely did not like it, which is not unusual since I don't really like donuts anyway....

End of a long week

Hard at work!

I sat at my desk trying to find something to do until lunch, but I pretty much just wound up blogging and listening to music. It's so hard to concentrate on a Friday when you're in a fantastic mood (especially if you have no idea why you're in a fantastic mood).
After lunch, I edited a few more things on the project list and got ready to head to the service site at 3PM.
Prep went extremely well. My group prepped a map of the USA, which we realized did not have Alaska and Hawaii on it. I had an outline of Alaska and Hawaii for another project so we projected them on the wall and fit them in a box. It looked pretty darn good. We cleaned up our prep area around 5:45PM and grabbed pizza with the rest of the PSAs before heading out for the weekend.
Since Monday is Columbus Day, the schools will be closed. I took home a few parachute cloths so we could prep them on Monday in the office. We will be starting at our regular time on Monday which means I will get home before 8:30PM. I can't wait!

Here's to hoping prep runs as smoothly next week as it did this week!

Cheers,
Allee