Well, it's been nearly 2 weeks now that the rest of the Radical Journey participants and myself have spent living in Chicago for orientation. It may be nearly 2 weeks but it definitely doesn't feel like it!
The first week was packed with lots of stuff to do. After all 16 of us became relatively aquainted with one another, we went right in to covenant building and learning how to find our way around Chicago using the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). After a series of days doing some sight seeing and location finding, we had a CTA proficiency test of sorts on Saturday morning. For the test, each country group (Brasil, Paraguay, England and Sweden) were blindfolded and taken by car to an undisclosed location around town. We then had to find our way home from wherever we were dropped off using only public transportation. My group was the first one back so we got to relax until the others found their way home. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and taking care of any unfinished business from the week before.
So far, the second week has gone by much faster than the first. Our days have consisted mainly of practicing some spiritual disciplines and learning more about our individual personality types through a series of tests. On wednesday of this week, Dani (a fellow Brasil teammate) and I took a trip downtown to the Brasilian consulate to see if our visas were ready to pick up yet. After all the trouble that we had had with the Chicago branch of the Brasilian consulate this summer, we didn't really know what to expect of our visit. Upon arriving, it seemed that our visas were in order and ready to go. But that wasn't the case.. After about an hour and a half of waiting, we were finally called to the front of the line again and recieved our visas!! Apparently the visas were only valid for 90 days so they had to make some adjustments and extended the validity of them to 300 days instead. So, after months of working on applications and procuring documents for the process, our visas are finally in hand and our whole group will be ready to fly out to Brasilia on October 6 as planned. As the month of orientation is nearing the halfway point, it'll be interesting to see what the next two weeks hold in store. I'm sure the next two weeks will go even faster than the last two, especially given some key visits from home that I have to look forward to both this coming weekend and the next!
