Life as a Jesuit Volunteer: Making Our House a Home.

So last Tuesday morning, the six of us and all our luggage piled into two cars to make the six hour trek from Baltimore to Bridgeport. It was so exciting for me to actually get to see more of the east coast by car. We drove from the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland through New Jersey, New York and finally to Connecticut. We were even able to stop for lunch about halfway through at a Cracker Barrel restaurant and meet up with the Hartford community who were driving the same route as us since Hartford is only about an hour Northeast of Bridgeport.

Our house!

Once we finally made it to our house, the exhaustion of the day started to settle in, but we couldn’t start moving our stuff inside, because our JVC support (Sara & John, Father Mark, and Lindsey an FJV) were coming over for a welcome dinner at our house. Even before they arrived however, our doorbell began ringing almost immediately as soon as we arrived from a few of the neighborhood kids who had been friends with last year’s JVs. Three very energetic and hide-and-go-seek enthusiasts, these kids will definitely keep us on our toes all year with the laughter and games.

As I mentioned, we had a welcome dinner with our support and it was so nice to finally meet all of them! Much of my anxiousness started to disappear talking with them, their jobs, families, and simply feeling an unspoken connection to the city already because of how welcoming they were and seeing their own excitement for us to be here. Somehow, this really showed me how unique JVC is by providing us JVs with people who are here to support us through our year with difficulties and challenges ahead.

Afterwards, we tackled our first challenge of deciding rooms and roommates since there are three rooms for the six of us. And I must say, it went pretty well! We’re now finally all moved in, although there are a few things many of us already realized we’ve forgotten, but other than that, it’s starting to feel like a real home here :)