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.
In this case there’s nothing unknown about the illness however, it was definitely COVID. We had an email on Monday saying that several people staying in north housing (where I was) had tested positive to COVID. I was tried and had a headache, but I put that down to the long hours at IC, not COVID symptoms. Tuesday, I had the full shebang. Headache, Fever, Cough etc. So with some trepidation I took a RAT test, but it was negative. So I though, maybe it’s just the flu. But after a horrible Tuesday night trying to sleep and still having definite COVID symptoms on Wednesday I wanted to ignore it, but I decided to do the right thing and take a test. You can see the result on the left. So this catapulted me from one more night in Boston to five days of isolation and then another five til I can travel (from the date of the first symptoms, so Sunday). Not fun.
I’ll tell you about my revised trip plans, and all the cancellation and isolation fun in a later post, as I still have IC stories to catch up on, but wanted to give this update first. Stay tuned.
So it’s Sunday night as I’m typing this and IC 2022 is done. It was probably busier and more tiring that I thought it would be, but it was fantastic. I’m quite behind on my blog though so I’m going to try and whip through a day or two a post to bring you up to date.
TLDR; I didn’t crash, pretty pictures of UMass at bottom of post.
Tuesday So i got to have a bit of a sleep in on Tuesday and try and catch up on some sleep. Check out is 11 in the US, so that’s nice and leisurely. About 9.30 I went down to the Starbucks that was in the lobby to get my Cappuccino and muffin. I usually drink a latte in Australia, but Cappuccino seems to be the safest order in the US. I went back to my room got packed then went down and caught the airport shuttle. After a bit of sneaking around because I wasn’t actually flying, I managed to get to the AirTrain and another $8 later took the 5 minute trip to the hire car area. There was bit of a wait but I ended up with a black Ford AWD SUV that drives very nicely.
Driving on the right is an adjustment, but as long as you’re switched on it’s not too bad. Driving with other cars is actually quite helpful it’s when there’s nobody around that it can be a bit harder to remember what to do. I only had one hiccup on a quieter back road when I almost had an accident because I forgot to check left again. I was looking t wrong way for oncoming traffic but luckily we avoided the crash. Other than that I’ve gone to the wrong side of the car many times and had a few to many run ins with the right hand curb (mainly when parking). I think it’s partially a function of just not being used to having the space on the right and partially because I can’t see the front corner of the car I’m driving from the driver’s seat.
Nonetheless, with relatively few hiccups and a brief stop for lunch I made it to UMass Amherst without any major issues. The Campus is huge and very beautiful. I’ve included a few pictures below. Accommodations were standard dorm room accomodation bed, dresser, wardrobe – nothing fancy. Each room was in a group of 4 rooms, 2 shared bathrooms, a kitchen and a lounge room. As of Tuesday neither of my roommates had arrived.
I almost forgot. Before UMass I went to the nearby shopping centre and amazed myself again at the range and size of Walmart. I wanted to pick up a few supplies. So after going inside, going to my car then going inside again to the the things I forgot I headed to UMass.
I spent some time getting myself unpacked and organised and by then it was time to get organised for the welcome luau. I dressed in my newly purchased Hawaiian shirt from Walmart and headed downstairs. I met April (executive director of FPSPI) in person for the first time. A group of us walked to the old chapel and got to know each other as we went. It was a nice dinner, a good chance to meet some people either for the first time or the first time face-to-face.
When we got back to the dorm I went to Walmart again, finally found Rooibos tea and got some real milk. And a few other things though I still forgot some items. I came back, had tea, and went to bed pretty early, I was still tired.
Phew, that post was long sorry. Hopefully it wasn’t too boring.
