New Hampshire Orientation

My year at Grassroot Soccer has finally begun! Orientation the past few days was so great and now we’re much more prepared and ready to take on the next year. I left Utah, friends, and family on Tuesday, flew to Boston and stayed the night there, then bused up to Hanover, New Hampshire to meet the rest of the interns and staff. There are 22 of us from all over the US.

On Wednesday we dropped off our big ass bags and backpacked to Harris Cabin, which was about a 20 min hike into the woods. It was a really cool place but had no electricity, drinkable water, toilets or showers. It pretty much was a giant room with two lofts for sleeping and a kitchen. Needless to say, we got to know each other very quickly in those circumstances. You never realize how noisy sleeping bags are until you’re in a room with 20 people rustling around. We spent two days at the cabin, which consisted of a lot of energizers, icebreakers, and plenty of kilos. A kilo is a little GRS chant that is usually used to give someone praise, but there are many versions and can be changed to fit into almost any situation. It's three claps, pause, three claps, whoo! I know I’m not explaining this well but I thought I would try because I’m guessing it’ll be a common term used over the next year.

Harris Cabin

After our two days at Harris Cabin, we transferred locations and moved to Pierce’s Inn, which is this great bed and breakfast that we rented out. We finally got to shower and had plenty of delicious food and drinks waiting for us at any time of the day. These next two days at the Inn were more education based and we learned a ton about who GRS is and what we do. I’m not going to go too much into in now, but I’m so excited to be working with this organization and I’m continually amazed at the excitement and passion everyone has for their job. It’s so contagious and I’m ready to jump into my role and do whatever is needed. I’ll have a whole post with all the basic GRS information once I get the PowerPoint’s on a flash drive. I think you all will be really impressed, I know I was.

Friday night, our first night back at Pierce’s, there was a BBQ for GRS staff, board members, and even 3 of the 4 founding members came out to meet us. I got to meet a lot of people involved and everyone is so genuine, humble, and passionate. You can’t ask for a better combination. It speaks so much to the organization by seeing how little turnover they have and also how many interns now are employees working there full-time. Our orientation leaders, (Austin, Sarah, Hooter, and Leah) were all former interns and are also some of the most fun and energetic people around. If I haven’t mentioned it enough… there’s a lot of energy in this group.

The 2013-2014 interns and orientation leaders

I’m trying not to go into too much detail because I know it gets boring, but overall it’s been a great way to kick off the year and I truly believe I couldn’t have picked a better organization to work with. My fellow interns are all great and it’s crazy to believe we only met 5 days ago. I’m excited to get to know my Cape Town interns even more as well as visit everyone else at all the other sites. I have a lot to accomplish in the next year.

I don’t know how great communication will be, but I’ll try to be good at updating this whenever I have something to report. I know these next few days will be crazy trying to settle into a new job, house, roommates, and city. I miss you all and can’t thank you enough for your amazing support and love. I have the best friends and family in the world.