Coach!?

So as I discover more and more everyday that I am not very good at consistently blogging, I am going to try to cover a week and a half in LA in a single post....

Last week was another busy, yet exciting week at Verb. My boss Christina put me in charge of collecting all of the liability insurance documents from all of our corporate partners. While this job doesn't sound too bad on the outside, it turns out to be very time consuming! Let me attempt to break down some of the numbers (I still don't get all of them): Currently Verbum Dei has partnerships formed with 66 separate corporations. Almost all of these are for profit companies with the exception of 5 or 6, which are ideally funded by separate companies that cannot current use students but still want to help the school. Some companies have one student working while others have up to 12, it really just depends on what they can use/afford. One job consists of a team of 4 students who are paid $27,500 (split 4 ways). This is the basis of the Cristo Rey model that allows for a reduced tuition.

Verbum Dei is required by law (and the contract we sign) to issue liability insurance to every one of these corporate partners for around $2,000,000 in case anything happens to a student while on the job. This essentially covers us. Also in the contract it states that the company is required to issue liability insurance to us for a similar amount of money as a secondary coverage just in case something severe happens so that the company is covered. In the past we have been keeping records pretty well of the certificates that we have issued to the companies, but have done a pretty awful job of making sure that we are issued insurance in return.

I spent most of last Monday sending out reminder emails to the companies that had not yet issued us insurance (around 55 of the 66 companies!). Responses ranged from "absolutely, here it is" to "What is this? We have never had to do this in the past and have been working with Verb for 7 years". So for the past two weeks I have constantly been sending out certificates, scanning copies of the signed contract, and processing the ones that I have received. Right now I have received around 2/3 of them, I will be having a party in my cubicle once the last one comes in.

I lead our spirituality night last week and used some paper plates I found at our house to do an activity involving the certain masks that we wear as individuals. It was stolen straight from the Encounter retreat, but I still loved it.

I have been wanting to get involved with activities all year at school, and last Wednesday I got the chance to actually participate in my first cross country practice. I ran like 5 miles with the guys and it was awesome. The current coach is good, but I think that they appreciated a coach actually doing the workouts with them as opposed to simply telling them to run. I now have 30 guys referring to me as coach whenever they see me at school, I can't honestly say that I was expecting to have that title given to me anytime soon!

One of Carolyn's friends from BC came to town last weekend, so we got the chance to show him around LA a little bit. Julie and I got free tickets to the Dodgers game from work, and it was fun to see such a beautiful stadium. The game was a blowout, and I must say the the Rockies looked good! One of the girls in another JV house got 10 free tickets to see Chivas USA and the Kansas City Wizards play that Sunday night (an MLS game for those who don't follow soccer). Chivas lost 2-0, but the stadium they play in was beautiful. I would definitely go back soon.

There was no school on Monday this week because of a teachers in-service, but the students still had to work. Since all the teachers were gone (including Christina and Mashanda) and there were no students on campus, it was essentially dead. I actually managed to be fairly productive with LSAT studying and doing a few other things, but overall it was a pretty laid back day. That night John led spirituality night, and he had us be silent for 2 hours using no electricity. It was crazy! It is hard to really appreciate how nice it is to read a book with a lamp until you have to read one with a candle. Overall, I really enjoyed the night.

On Wednesday we had our first league cross country meet! I was pretty impressed with the guys. We finished third out of five teams with definite room for improvement. I am confident that Varsity should be able to place second in league, which would be good enough to send the team to CIF finals. There were over 22 guys, and everyone of them finished the race.

Yesterday we had a hill workout for cross country. Because of work I am never really sure what days I can coach for sure, and luckily I forgot my clothes for yesterday so I didn't have to run (I may have died). The guys worked hard and I was really happy with how hard some of them pushed it. I told them I wouldn't forget my clothes next time......

After practice it took almost an hour to get back to Verb from the park because of traffic. This city is seriously crazy when it comes to rush hour traffic!

Last night Julie, Carolyn, and I crashed the USC Newman center start of the year dinner. We got lots of free food and cake, it was great. Also we had some really good conversations with the people there. The priest was awesome and so was almost every student that we talked to. We ended up staying for almost two hours and they seemed really happy to have us there even though we essentially have no affiliation to USC! I am starting to like that school more and more, even though the priest did pray for the USC sports teams in the grace before the meal.....

Today marks the third day in a row that I have woken up before 6, so I am a little tired. BUT it is college Friday here so I am getting to rep the Creighton polo my mom bought for me, how can a day be bad when that is happening!?

I love and miss all of you! Update me on your lives, I know you are all doing amazing things.