My First 73 Hour Week

This was by far the longest week of my life, but also the fastest. Here's a recap!

Monday: The kick off. We started in the office at 9AM, as we had been doing everyday for prep. I started my day off with walking to the office, as usual, but this time it was much colder outside. Needless to say, the walk really woke me up.
We had a team meeting at 9:30AM to discuss the upcoming week and updates on SEPTA. We are going forth with prepping one mural this week and having some corps members paint them on Saturday. It's going to be tricky to get it all prepped and sketched by Saturday, but I think it might work out.
When the meeting was over, a few of us headed to Dunkin'. I grabbed a hot chocolate and enjoyed the walk with my service partner, discussing our weekends. It's always nice to not talk about work with her.
The morning pretty much flew by and before I knew it, it was time for lunch.
After lunch, I helped my service partner set up tracing stations for some of our teammates and then cut some parachute cloth for various projects. While setting up one of the projectors, I had a minor altercation with it, causing the projector to launch across the room. I am so clumsy!
After this minor setback, I had to measure out and cut cloth for the SEPTA project so the cloths could be primed at prep. Each section of the cloth was cut 5' x 6'. I was only able to cut four of the eight cloths because it hurt my knees too much to be crawling around on the floor (yes, I am actually an old lady).
At 3PM, we headed to the service site to set up prep. It went pretty smooth, but we had to end early since the school needed us out by 6:15PM at the latest. We almost finished everything we needed to and appeared to be in good shape for Saturday.

Tuesday: Apparently we were supposed to start the rest of the week at 8:15AM in the office. Myself  and two of my other teammates did not get the memo. I felt like such a moron when I realized I was going to be an hour late. My PM was fairly understanding, but I was not going to let that ever happen again.
We spent all day prepping. ALL DAY. I traced out a few murals during the day in the office, cut the rest of the cloth for the SEPTA mural, and then we headed to the service site to prep.
I finished tracing out the state abbreviations that I had started with a PSA on Monday. We had a great time tracing.
While tracing, we were informed that we were going back to the office to work after prep at the service site. I was furious. I was exhausted and hadn't prepared to stay late. AND we didn't have a plan for things to do in the office. It really put a damper on the rest of my evening.
After prep with the PSAs, we headed back to the office. We had Domino's pizza, which made things slightly better, but I was still upset about being in the office without a plan.

Night time tracing

It was about 7:20PM when we finally started doing something and it was only because I initiated it. I was tired of sitting around not doing anything so I figured I would trace another mural.
My service partner and I met with our PL to discuss what still needed to be done. Basically, we have a lot of printing to do, but everything needs to be looked over by her before we can do that. We also had about five projects left to trace, four of which are on the outside of the school. (This was going to make things very difficult, especially because it was going to rain for the next few days.)
After our meeting and final circle, we were finally free. It was after 8PM and I was just ecstatic to be leaving the office.

Fire drill selfie

Wednesday-Thursday: The days pretty much start to blend together after Tuesday. The days were long and crazy, but very productive. We spent the first half of our days working on paperwork in the office and tracing parachute cloths. In the afternoon, we either headed to the service site to get everything squared away or stayed in the office tracing with PSAs. One of the days we had a fire drill in the pouring rain, but I honestly can't remember which day it was. It took about a half hour away from us, but we still managed to get done what we needed to by the end of the day.
On Thursday, we stood outside of the service site until 7:30PM, tracing the murals on the outside of the school. It was cold and windy and most of us were miserable, but when we saw it come together,
it made us feel a bit better about it all.

Friday: We spent all day prepping and getting ready for Saturday. We headed to the school at 1PM to get ready for the volunteers who were coming to help with prep at 3PM. Everyone was rushing around, pouring paint, taping and tarping, and just pretty much moving a mile a minute. It was so hectic, but everything was pretty much set for Satruday morning by the time we left. Our day was not over yet, though. We headed back to the office to finish tracing a few things and to make sure all of the paper work was completed. I was exhausted at this point and just wanted to go home. We were dismissed at 10PM, six hours before I needed to wake up for the event. I was pissed. I missed my train by about five minutes and had to wait forty for the next one. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper going into our first event.

My brother and I

Entrance to cyServes!

Saturday: After about five hours of sleep, I headed to E.M. Stanton K-8 school with my little brother, who was coming to help out. It was 5:45AM when we arrived and was still pretty dark outside. Hot Chocolate in hand, I was ready as I would ever be for the day.
The morning was a lot of running around, checking in with corps members to make sure their projects were ready, setting up SEPTA cloths for corps members (and my brother) to paint, and problem solving the few little issues that were coming up. The morning flew by and before I knew it the volunteers were arriving.

Love these ladies!

The event kicked off with a few speakers, one of which was the C.O.O. of Chickie and Pete's (who I met!), and also some good ol' fashion PT to get the volunteers pumped for their day of service. My brother was intrigued by the City Year culture, but did not want to participate in the call and responses or the CY Stomp PT activity (which is one of my favorites). Maybe he will participate at the next service event, MLK Day.

Painting Edwin M. Stanton on the school

Painting kids in the schoolyard

My SEPTA design coming together!

After the opening event, everyone started their day of service. It went so well! I spent most of my day checking in with everyone, problem solving, and moving projects to dry. At 11:30AM, everyone was able to get Chickie and Pete's Crab Fries. I was so happy to eat something. (And they were free so they tasted even better!)
At 2PM, the volunteers left, but there was still a lot to finish. The corps members helped finish painting murals and adhering multiplication tables to the risers on the stairs. Those who were not doing this were cleaning up tarp and paint.

Around 5PM, the corps was dismissed, but a few people stayed behind to finish helping us. They were lifesavers!
When everyone was dismissed an hour later and we had the van packed to head to storage, the sun was going down. I couldn't believe that the day was over.
Half of the team headed to storage to unload and the other half headed to the office to unload a few things there. I was part of the half that went to storage. My brother helped us unload everything there and we were finished by 6:30PM. It was great.

Multiplication Risers

Overall, the event was a success. The volunteers were great and the corps members were amazing. I am so thankful for all of the help and support we received from everyone all week and on the day of. We couldn't have made it through the event without the PSAs and the other corps members who helped out. I'm looking forward to our next event and making it even more of a success than cyServes.

Cheers,
Allee