Day 1-NYC-Saturday

Tiffany, Little Beth and I were driven to the airport by Pat. He dropped us off and we did a curbside check in, which I have never done before. It was exceptionally fast so that might be my new form of airport check in!! We met Alayna at the gate and took off on time. Tiffany and Alayna had their own row, but Elizabeth and I sat next to a guy who was on his two week furlough from Iraq. It was nice talking to him, but kind of hard listening to how much his time there has affected his mental state. I dont even know him, but I could tell by the way he was talking that he was not himself.

When we got to LaGuardia, we got our luggage and found our driver. It was raining, so we got wet waiting on the curb for him to get there. It was about a 30 minute car ride to our convent. Most of the nuns were out for the weekend, so we haven't really met any of them yet. Apparently they are silent most of every day so I don't think we will be having much interaction with them. Our rooms are very small but nice. We have the whole fourth floor to ourselves. There is a chapel on the third floor that is beautiful. We are sharing two bathrooms between the six of us, so that should be interesting. :)

David met us at the convent after his cabbie hit another car and he got out and walked a few blocks. We walked over to the train station to get our metro passes and then we rode all the way down to Penn Station just so Alayna could mail a letter. I thought it was really fun.

On the way back, we headed to Manhattanville to meet up with the young adult interns at St. Mary's. I surprised everyone with this outing as my Compline for my night of Compline and debrief. The Rev. Earl Kooperkamp and two interns, Brian and Alyssa, we there. Father Kooperkamp told us all about the history of the church. It dates back to the early 1800's and has had black members since around that time which I thought was really cool considering what was going on in that period of time. He talked for about an hour about the church, and then we heard from the young adults about the work they do. We did Compline and Father Kooperkamp tried to teach us a round as part of the service. It did NOT go well. :) Apparently we are not good singers at the spur of the moment.

After Compline, we helped him pack 36 lunches to take to his homeless ministry church the next morning. His wife was going to make us pesto pasta, but we were tired, so we just went home. We were told that we were going to really be missing out, so that was kind of sad.

When we got home, Bill was waiting on us. We did a really fun debrief that had everyone laughing and really getting in to the fun. It was really cool. I will try to post some pictures later.