Back at Olive Tree

No easing back into things here! I arrived late Wednesday, helped Megan with some stuff Thursday, and by Friday afternoon I was the only staff person here. The new person gets here on the 19th, so for a little while I get to run the show myself (which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds...) I am juggling two jobs: village manager and worksite manager. Luckly I don't have to much to do for worksite manager because in New Orleans PDA partners with Project Homecoming (PSL). PSL lines up the jobs and has construction people that oversee the volunteers. So I have some paperwork stuff to do but PSL does all the rest. I will be very glad to hand over a phone when the new person gets here. (I currently have 3 - mine, the village manger's, and the worksite manager's - and they like to all ring at the same time.) The second new person isn't going to get here until end of April/beginning of May, so my replacement will also get to play the multi phone game for a little while. Leslie is trying to get Megan (the one who left this morning) to come back for a couple weeks (when I leave until the second person comes) so the new person will not have to do everything.
There was a staff meeting on Thursday. We talked about the new phones (no more giant blackberrys!) and their deficiencies (apparently they like to hang up of their own volition). Then today I went grocery shopping and filled the entire bed of the truck with groceries. the sad thing is that it will only last a couple days - if I'm lucky. So I put all the groceries away, then I had to call the people coming in this weekend to get estimated times of arrival and who needs dinner on Sunday, and how many men/women are in the group so I could do room assignments. (Olive Tree doesn't have pods. It used to be a church, then it was a daycare or something like that, then PDA bought it. Anyway, there are 15 beds to a room - most of them are bunk beds.) So after I got a hold of everyone (which took a long time) I did room assignments and chore lists. Then I snatched a 20 min. nap before heading back to the office to work on DRD stuff. A couple of the volunteers came back (most of the groups went out tonight) and we ate ice cream and played two games of Clue. Three of them didn't know how to play and the one that did plays by different rules than our family does, so it was a little funny sometimes, but we had a good time. And I will probably go to bed soon since I'll be getting up at 6...again (*sad face*).