how do you measure, measure a year?

Ending my volunteer year is probably one of the hardest things that I've had to do. I can honestly say that coming into it all, I thought I knew all of what I was "getting myself into"...false. I knew nothing. I didn't know how challenging it was going to be. I didn't know how difficult it was going to be to say goodbye. I didn't know that I would have an enormous amount of struggles. I can tell you know that I couldn't predict almost anything that occured throughout my volunteer year. And I am happy about that.

One of the hardest things was saying goodbye and having it all just suddenly end. I no longer have people asking me how my day was constantly (both community members and other av related people) and I don't have people that are sourronding me constantly. It drove me crazy a lot of times throughout my year, but I truly missing having others around now.

I can't include an entire year in one post. But the one thing I can tell you is that I truly miss it. End of year retreat was a great way to end things. We each told our story of our year (in the best way that we could) to the office and the other vols, spent some time reflecting on how the year was, and finding ways to move on in a good way, but still being able to take the volunteer year and what we learned with us. We were also able to have a lot of fun and really celebrate the end of a great year.

So here I am...no longer an Augustinian Volunteer, but I am happy to say that I am proud of everything I learned and accomplished through my year both good and bad. And although it may be difficult, I am ready to move on.

So here concludes (with pictures of course) End of Year Retreat...which basically sums everything up.


Here is us...San Diego, arriving in Philadelphia. We don't really have much stuff, right? hahaha...nope. We have too much stuff. This is all of our baggage...post all of what we already sent home.


Although it was sad to leave San Diego, I was so excited to finally be reunited with my best friend again. All Teresa Lua was the one person who could truly understand everything that was going on throughout my year (that didn't live with me of course). It was great to have her at End of Year to begin that transition from AV year to home life because we could have each other throughout it all.


One of the most meaningful times during end of year for me was when we read our end of year stories. Of course, our community had a bond as we did this in front of everyone. Our stories were so much more a like than I though they would be. As soon as we finished we came together and had on of our usual "hands in" moments. This truly meant something to us.


and of course, to put an end to the year, we needed to go out and celebrate everything. and that we definitely did! This is San Diego at the beginning of the night before it all began.


one of the traditions the AV's have at end of year, it making t-shirts for each other. Here is us and all of our shirts! I think it really describes each of us and our year in the shirt.


all the domestic av's 09-10. Although we did not all live together, we really all did become close throughout our year.


and of course...the way we REALLY like to celebrate in San Diego is by taking tequila shots...the mexican way of course! (yes, we did have a crazy res of the night (and even difficult next morning) because of this lovely picture!)


our final day at end of year and together we celebrated mass. many of us, including myself, were reunited with families and said goodbye to each other. Here is San Diego with our lovely prayer candle.


And finally...after all of the million pictures we (actually...mainly allison) took throughout our volunteer year, this was our final picture of the year before we all headed separate ways. Although it may be difficult to get 6 people who live in 6 different parts of the country together again, I truly believe that we will do it again sometime, even if it is at the first person to get marrieds wedding.

And although I never really thought about this until end of year...this song is will now always make me think of my volunteer year.

Rent- Seasons of Love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes,

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Moments so dear.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights

In cups of coffee

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes

How do you measure

A year in the life?

How about love?

How about love?

How about love? Measure in love

Seasons of love. Seasons of love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes!

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Journeys to plan.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes

How do you measure the life

Of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned,

Or in times that he cried.

In bridges he burned,

Or the way that she died.

It's time now to sing out,

Tho' the story never ends

Let's celebrate

Remember a year in the life of friends

Remember the love!

Remember the love!

Seasons of love!

Oh you got to got to

Remember the love!

You know that love is a gift from up above

Share love, give love spread love

Measure measure your life in love.

Love Forever and Always,

Katie Kupski

AV San Diego 2009-2010

A year in review...well, the 2nd half at least

Since I wasn't as good at blogging this year as I had hoped to be, I decided to recap the past six months, like I did the first four, in pictures. Here I have some of my favorite moments from the year. Obviously there are the many more memories throughout the year, but this is what Allison caputured on camera. (I relied upon her for all pictures this year!) This year was incredible and putting it into words is way too difficult, but I will try.


In January the 2nd half started with my friends Sarah and Meghan visiting. It was great to show them everything I did in San Diego and it was mainly just amazing to see them.


We celebrated Mardi Gras with the Augustinian priests. They had lots of fun treats, beads and hats/masks for us to wear and even Fr. Bob's famous mojito's!


We had a big alumni night at our house. There were a couple alums that were in the area for the week, coming back to visit, so we decided to have them and the alums that were living in SD over to our house. It was a ton of fun to hang out with them and hear some great stories! This is a picture of the people that have worked at St. Pat's for the past 3 years, minus Stephen. On the right is me and annie, 2009-2010. The middle is Dan and Elizabeth, 2007-2008. And on the right is Jeanette and what would be Stephen, 2008-2009.


Bower, one of my old bosses from American Eagle, came out to visit in the middle of March. We did the ENTIRE tour of San Diego in about 3-4 days. I enjoyed finally being able to see everything and getting the chance to see her.


If you can't tell from the picture, St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays! I love it because I like to celebrate the fact that i'm Irish and as you can see from my outfit I wore a lot of green to celebrate. When we got home the festivities commenced.


eventually we got dressed up and made it out! We went to a place called Kate Sessions Park for the evening to hang out.


We ventured out to Nevada and headed to Las Vegas! It was so much fun to get away from SD and see another great part of the west coast, and a weekend we all really needed. Emily, Ali, Mike Roderick and one of Ali's friends from home went. Emily and I spent a lot of time together. We saw a show, cirque du soeil's "love" all to beatles music, and fell in love with the bellagio...we saw many light/water shows and sat at an amazing piano bar.


on our way home though we were in TONS of traffic! It was supposed to take 5 hours but ended up taking 11. We saw lots of signs along the way for Peggy Sue's diner and decided to stop to take a break from traffic. Good marketing if I don't say so myself...they got us there!


In April I headed home for Easter, but took a stop to the Bronx first to visit my best friend, Alli Lua! She has been volunteering there this year and it was great to see where she lives and work and take a lovely tour of NYC. I loved being home as well and just being able to relax with my family.


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we had a variety of nights where we decided to just stay in and enjoy the evening to ourselves rather then going out. Whether it was 1. drinking unexpectedly 2. playing a game of catholic kings with alumni visiting 3. just having a relaxing evening smoking cigars outside or on the deck, the 6 of us. or 4. just enjoying ourselves with our "manos al aire!"


In May, Lisa from Chicago came to visit us! We loved having her with us!


frozen yogurt was a big part of our year...we went a good amount of times to go get fro-yo and it's probably where I spent a good portion of my stipend. There was always somebody to go with and it made us all feel better after some long days!




the above two pictures are us at seal beach, was one of my favorite touristy places in San Diego. I sometimes wish that I could have a pet seal. No matter how many times I went there (a lot), I could stare at them forever.


something else we did throughout the 2nd half of the year was take more beach trips at night. I loved just laying there looking at the ocean and the stars.


I celebrated my 23rd birthday! I had an awesome day at school. I think through a few kids and a couple teachers knowing everybody ended up finding out. My 6th graders decorated the computer room, the 1st graders mad me a crown that I had to wear during the day, kindergartners got me a piece of cake with flowers and cards made by them, and everybody said happy birthday to me all day long. After work we went out to dinner at my favorite place...the cheesecake factory! It was the first birthday not being at home, but I really enjoyed it!




these two pictures are from the Wild Animal Park! We had the tickets for so long and we finally went at the end of May. It was fun because we took a safari and saw lots of different animals they have there! It was fun to get out of the house and go there.


With our community budget we bought tickets to see the San Diego Padres. It was fun to see a game and I had my first ball park hot dog!


the six of us in front of cinderella's castle


On June 1st we all took a day off of work and headed to DisneyLand! Annie, Mike and I had already been once with 8th grade and Emily had already gone with the seniors at SAINTS, but it was good to go with the community+mike roderick! In the morning we went to California Adventure (awesome park!) and then in the afternoon/evening we went to Disney. So much fun to have a day off for Disney!


we headed to a big fundraiser/thank you for the orphanage. We were able to get all dressed up and see a lot of the big people who help the orfa out with their donations. They had a house on Point Loma over looking the water and the city. Beautiful!


we had the San Diego AV's annual "end of the year party." It's a big thing the AV's do every year and we had been hearing about this party from co workers for 10 months. We really enjoyed our party and having all of our co workers over to celebrate a great year. Stephen and Allie from last year were in town visiting as well as Dan, Jesse and Jeanette who live there so we took the annual picture of all AV's past and present that were there in front of 1621 (our house).


One big thing we did this year was giant pinata's for birthdays. After my birthday, the last one, we were finally able to take the picture of all of us with them. We bought Mike one for his bday and then the tradition just continued and we were able to get them custom made! Mike's is a cervaza bottle, chris had a prego can because he hate canned sauce and he can smash the prego, ali has a polar bear(what she calls herself) wearing a pink villanova V shirt. Emily's is alphaba from wicked, annies is a starbucks cup and mine is a St. Pat's student so i could kick it when I got home from work instead of yell on a bad day. We all loved them so much and it as a sad to say adios to them!


of course we concluded our year in san diego with...cleaning. It seemed like it was going to be horrible, especially since we decided not to clean our house for the last two weeks. It turned out not to be too bad, we had all of our favorite foods in san diego for lunches and dinner and Allison and I may have had too much fun while doing it!

Despida dos. Hogar Infantil La Gloria y los niños.

I am one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to have the opportunity to experience the orphanage and I still can't believe that the first time I went there wasn't until November. The first thing I always feel when I walk into the orphanage is chaos; chaos because everyone is alwasy screaming your name and coming at you looking for love. In the beginning giving up a Saturday to head down there was one of the most difficult things, but once I arrived I felt extremely comfortable. I felt like it was something I should be doing, but I didn't exactly know what to do. Once the second half of the year rolled around there wasn't another thought in my ehad other than spending my Saturday off at the orphanage. The Teachers at school were always so amazed that my roommates and I spent our weekends there, but for us it wasn't amazing, it was just a part of us. It became a place that we all fell in loev with. Yes the long border lines do not seem fun at all, but the six of us have made them fun by seeing how much of the amazing Mexican food we could get while we waited for hours.

The kids there are the most beautiful children I have ever met, both inside and out. They have so much love to give and really make anybody feel comfortable the moment they're there. One of the hardest parts of not being in San Diego is definitely going to be not seeing them. I struggled at first because I didn't speak Spanish and didn't think i was communicating well what I wanted. I tried to learn Spanish but I didn't have as much energy or patience for that as I thought I would, although i have picked up a lot in the past few months. I saw on my last day there that I could communicate with the kids just fine because it was the love that I showed them that really mattered. The work that Dan and Jesse, the directors, do there is incredible and I only hope that beyond my volunteer year I can continue to serve in a small way that they do. I am also pround of Chris and Annie for all of the things that they did there, especially the classes and programs that they created to help the kids grow.

I really feel like there is way to much going on in my head to even be able to describe the orphanage in it's fullest. I am so happy that I had the chance to spend so much time there and I already miss the kids so much. Luckily for us though, Chris is spending the summer working there still and he continuously gives us updates on all the kids. I loved the orhphange and the ninos so much and I can't wait till I go back to visit San Diego next year and I get to see how much the kids have grown.

Like my other posts, I will just post pictures beacuse from there you're more able to see everything there and I'm able to describe better everything there! Unfortunately I only have pictures from when Allison was there, which is still a lot!


This is my first trip there, reading a book with the toddler Fausto. He is absolutely adoreable. One of my favorites and loves it everytime anybody walks in, especially Annie!


I talked about it before, but winning something big for the orphanage, charity of the year, was something really enjoyable that we were able to do. We loved being able to represent an amazing place.


the weekend after thanksgiving we were able to take the kids horseback riding! The kids loved it. This is one of my favorite pictures, me with Bere.


on the day of their Our Lady of Guadalupe festival (a big religious day in mexico), they later had santa come visit. Naturally, the six of us took a picture with him!


Annie and I went down one Sunday to help Dan run a dart booth at a festival at the kids school, we also chapperoned a dance for the 5th graders later in the evening. I was in charge of putting the balloons back after kids hit them. Our booth was obviously the most popular/crazy so I learned a sentence in spanish that day...Daniel es globo loco!


Allison was calling out animal names and us and the kids were being those animals after she said it...it was quite fun actually!


One Saturday Dan and Jesse had to go to a big fundraiser so the AV's were left in charge! There was a group there and they made masks with kids which turned into glitter and paint craziness! This is us with our best helper, Alan. He's the craziest kids but he loved cleaning!


relaxing with Yareli grande and Lupita grande one day on the couch, watching movies. A typical day at the orphanage!


sometimes we took random trips down the streets of Tijuana to get a raspado or to go to the convience store (don't tell my mom!) we love our mexican food though!


I liked the baby room a lot. Just playing with the kids and watching a variety of different disney movies. This is me and Vikki!


as you can see, there are always kids jumping all over you when you're there!


we had a little fun jumping and taking pictures!


something we always did was help in the kitchen before lunch. Sometimes it was actually helping make lunch while other times is was helping put it together at the end and bring it out for the kids. On the last day I actually pulled apart pork! Gross, yes, but apparently it tasted good!


Ali's idea was to make a pyramid on the last day with the kids. It actually worked out pretty well...


...until it fell at least! We had so much fun though!


katherine became one of my good friends there, actually, probably everybody's. She is 11, and totally awesome. She speaks english very well so I was able to communicate with her throughout the year and really form a relationship with her.


our final picture...the six of us with Dan and Jesse plus the 5th graders (Bryan, Katherine, Jacqui and Yareli grande) and Yareli chica decided to get in too! I love this picture a lot.

My last day at the orphanage was by far my favorite day over all. I spent a lot of great time with the kids and got to know them so much better. It was a sad goodbye but I know that I will never forget those kids and I will be back to visit hopefully sooner then later.