Spot of Tea

Greetings Everyone!
One more week down!
The week started with a visit from my Unit Leader (my direct boss). The visit went spectacularly- all my supervisors gave my team amazing reviews. I needed that feedback because I am really hard on myself here- I often lose sight of the good things I do and focus on all the little downfalls and mistakes. I am learning, though, to forgive myself the little things because it is impossible to be perfect- especially in a job like this. I am going to continue to work on that this week, because I am driving myself down with my own negative reviews.
So Neal visited and met with my housing supervisor, project supervisor, and site supervisor and found out that Sally and my teams are on top of their game. We also got a chance to vent to Neal about all the issues we have been having with our project. It was nice to have MY team leader around for a little bit. He also brought us out to lunch which was lovely!
The rest of the week went pretty well. My team has been striving to work better as a team. Now that we are more than half of the way through SPIKE, I have been trying to get them to focus on achievements as a group rather than personal achievements. I have a few very agressive workers, and a few people who are very timid. This leads to certain people always learning the new skills and getting the "good" jobs and others constantly searching for work. For a few weeks I concentrated my time on looking for work for everyone, and always asking site supervisors for more work, more work more work... but I am now concentrating more effort on getting the team to work together on this issue. It is going to take a while, but we are coming along. Team dynamic is fasinating.
We were back on Brad's team's site this week, so that helped me out greatly. His team is very helpful and I feel that we all work pretty well together.

This weekend, Alec (an STL on campus) drove down and picked up MaryMolly, Jordan, Sally and me and we all headed to Mobile, Al. We were planning on going to Bayfest a big music festival that takes over the city, but we ended up opting out of that because we were all so exhausted. It was still sooo nice to let my guard down and just be a person responsible for only myself for a night. We spent the day Sunday just slowly touring the city.

Today is Monday and I am avoiding work, though I probably should get started on some. I am not ready to give up my weekend relaxation yet. We got the new slate of projects for our next round and rated them. I will let you all know as soon as we har which one we get. I am very excited! Tomorrow is going to be hectic- we are observing World Habitat Awareness Day on the site, so that means 150 volunteers. There are also 15 new volunteers living here at Camp Victor starting tonight. It's going to be stressful! Hopefully it will drive my team closer together (with all the outsiders around).

If the rain stops, my team is going to go canoeing tonight so I am looking forward to that.
Also, my parents are trying to come visit this coming weekend which will be WONDERFUL!