IC Stories

A lot of things from IC won’t mean a lot to many people, moreso if you don’t know what FPS is. So I’ll run through events pretty quickly and just pull out the highlights – you can always ask me if you want to know more 🙂

Wednesday
This was slated to be all day training and that’s pretty much what it was. I woke, showered and grabbed breakfast from the campus centre and headed upstair to the (affiliate director) training. Some of it I had already covered so not all the content was new. However, it was great to be able to do it in person with a group of other people, being able to chat, share ideas and see how other affiliates do things was quite valuable. One of the main takeaways was that there are some quite significant differences between Australia and the US affiliates. I won’t go into it here but I will note them down somewhere because they’re worthwhile discussions to have with the australian CoM. During lunch I saw Dylan who came over to say hi and we agreed to catch up later.

Training finished about 4 and I went back to my room to have a brief nap before the appreciation dinner that night. At 6.30 we went back to the campus centre for the appreciation dinner. All the ADs, evaluators, volunteers and IC staff who were on site were there and others who could be with us joined us virtually. We had a yummy Italian dinner, watched some awards for service and participated in a silent and live auction. We raised over $2000 for the FPSPI scholarship fund which was great. I sat with Dylan so got to catch up with him more. We also sat with Anna and her co-chaperone from Kambala. Suz joined in on the livestream and we waved to her. Dylan and I headed back to where we were staying and made plans to go and have breakfast where all the students are eating at Berkshire Dining Commons in the morning.

That’s the end of Wednesday but another random note about where we were staying and I guess this is true for college dorms in general. Suz had warned that there was absolutely nothing there so I had to take my own cup etc with was true. It’s slightly odd but. I know the US college experience is different and the movies / TV shows seem pretty accurate. But it’s still strange to think of the mammoth undertaking to move to college for a year or more like nine months for every year you’re at college. You literally have take everything. I suppose it’s just like your living somewhere for an extended stay, but there’s less amenities that a hotel! Normal for them I guess, bur foreign to our way of culture.