NYC: The Perfect Place for a JK Experiment

When I say the word "vacation," what images pop into your head? The beach? Art museums? Airports? Well if you're like me, the word vacation involves traveling to a new place and learning some new things about yourself in the process. Let me share with you a few reflections from my week with The Brotherhood of Hope community in Warren, NJ. 

You may be wondering why I went on vacation at all? Am I not on a GAP year, doing a year of service in Ann Arbor? One of the reasons for doing a GAP year is to explore community life in a community other than your home community. Naturally, our vacation would give us the opportunity to visit with another Sword of the Spirit Community, the Brotherhood of Hope in NJ. 

I stayed in the Saint Paul's Outreach (SPO)'s women's house. SPO is the community's college outreach, similar to UCO except that they work to foster ecumenism in a Catholic setting. I found the women we stayed with to be very gracious and hospitable . All of us enjoyed watching season 1 of Downton Abbey on their big screen TV. On our last night there, we attended their final Spirit Night (prayer meeting) of the semester. It was really cool for me to see that though we have different calls, we can still praise the Lord together. 

Another reason we went to NJ for vacation is because it's about an hour drive from New York City, a perfect place for a JK experiment. JK are my bosses initials. Throughout the year, he's been sending us on unexpected missions that force us work together in interesting ways. Case in point. Back in November, he sent three Americans, two Germans, and a Mexican to the Pittsburgh retreat. In order to get there, we had to navigate the Ohio turnpike and backwoods Pennsylvanian roads. We arrived at the retreat in one piece. The ride back, however, grew from a 6 hour trip to an 12 hour trip as we made a sightseeing detour in Pittsburgh, almost ran out of gas in Lordstown, and stopped at every rest stop on the Ohio turnpike. Many of us consider that trip the highlight of our GAP years.

So why was NYC a JK experiment? The 13 of us could do whatever we wanted for two days. Now it is impossible for 13 people to make a decision about anything, so we had to split into smaller groups. After visiting the World Trade Center Memorial. the guys went to Central Park, and the girls headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral. When there, I slipped into a pew and knew I had a decision to make. 

At that point of the trip, I was feeling pretty cranky. See I'm an introvert, and it's pretty hard to get alone time when you are sharing a bedroom with seven girls. As I sat in the pew, I knew that I could either find another introvert in our group to wander around the city with, or I could stay with the big group and be miserable. Thankfully at that moment, one of my friends approached me and asked me if I wanted to go to New York Public Library with her. For some reason, no one else wanted to go with us, and off we went.

We spent the majority of our time in NYC together visiting New York Public Library, Little Italy, Time's Square, Grand Central Station, Central Park, The Museum of Natural History, Bloomindale's, and Fifth Avenue. Together we learned to navigate the subway, negotiate with street vendors, and the difference between African and Asian mammals. From our time together, I learned that I am not a fly by the seams of your pants kind of person, and that structure and solitude are good things. Overall I'd say that the JK experiment was a success, and definetly one of the highlights of my GAP year.