Reflections and Catching Up

I remember when I was a DA, maybe the first week that we arrived at IICD and Jenny, who is in Belize right now, told me "really enjoy your time as a DA because once you start your team you will be SO busy". I didn't think much about that comment, I think because I was already so busy and I honestly couldn't imagine being much busier. Now that we have started our team and are a third of the way through the training period, I really understand what she meant.
This past month has flown by so incredibly fast. We have had intense and enlightening investigations in Benton Harbor, gone to an inspiring MLK day march/rally in Detroit, studied the various countries that make up Central America, read about and studied poverty in the US, had a building weekend where I learned how to re-tile bathroom floors, and have now spent a week in Atlanta are half way through our first fundraising trip- just to name a few of things we have done so far.
Fundraising has been quite the adventure so far. Brian and I had a really hard time finding a place to fundraise at first and while the Hyun Jung and Sunny J were at there Korean mart I was stressed about not being able to do my part. We finally found a great little store Aldis that Brian mentioned, and I was so happy to finally be doing it! For the first couple of days however, we weren't meeting our team goals and I was really stressing out about it but we just kept pushing through doing the best we could. Finally Friday came and we got to go to new stores- H Mart and Gwinett International Farmer's Market. This past three days at these stores we not only made our team goal each day and made up for earlier in the week, we even exceed our goal for the first week. Now, going into our second week we are AHEAD! I honestly can't believe it. Everyone kept telling us,'anything can happen in fundraising' but until you really experience it you have no idea.
Today is our rest day, and boy did I need it. It is both energizing and completely exhausting to stand for 10 hours talking to people, describing what you are doing, putting yourself out there- we really worked our butts off. This time to rest, sleep in, lounge around, read-is really needed.
I am glad to have this time to reflect as today not only marks the half way point of our first fundraising trip but is also the end of our first month of the training period. I have so enjoyed all of the challenges and experiences we have the honor and pleasure of taking part in so far and I look forward to all that has yet to come.