| Our first project is at the halfway mark... |
| 03/23/02: Isn't that weird? We just finished our fourth week at Harford Heights, and now it's been two months in Perry Point. Crazy. It really doesn't feel like it's been that long, but at the same time it feels much longer. You know how it goes. This week, like most of them, flew by. Thank goodness, too, because I'm still always tired. But it was a fairly good week, nice and busy. On Wednesday, a group of us stayed in Baltimore to do an ISP with the Bea Gaddy Family Shelter. We've been working with them for at least a month now. Sandra (one of Bea's daughters and the one who runs the show now) is just the coolest lady. So kind and caring. Anyway, there was a whole bunch of donated sandwiches (most frozen) and milk and dessert, plus some blankets. We were in front of City Hall, in War Memorial Plaza, for about an hour and almost all the food was given out. It was great. Oh, and we always park our van in the Mayor's reserved parking space. I see a kind of poetic justice in that, you know? We all get a kick out of being the Mayor, if only vehicularly speaking. There was a reverend and some others from Sandra's church at the Plaza as well, they were so nice. At the end of the evening, we all held hands and there was a prayer and song. Y'all know I'm totally not into religious stuff, but I went along with it and I enjoyed it. I liked the atmosphere of acceptance and love. The circle happened to morph into a heart shape at the end of it. Oh, and you know what else is cool? Every time we're in the van on the way home from Bea Gaddy work, Phil Collins' version of True Colors plays on the radio. Love that. We all have such a great time on ISPs, and usually end up discussing volunteerism and service. How everyone needs to get involved. How incredibly easy it is. Rarely does it include actual labor, it's more like just being there for people. And the labor isn't difficult or anything. How very gratifying it is, and that we get much more out of it than the project sponsor. So I'm here to urge you to take up President Bush on his challenge for every citizen to pledge 4000 hours of service over their lifetime. It really is easy, it hardly takes any effort or even much time. Last night, Thursday, we had the second of our now-weekly Team Function nights. Mandi and I were in charge of the planning; we went bowling in the exciting township of Elkton. We also had construction paper, a sheet with each team member's name, on which we all wrote something we liked or appreciated about that person. Mine was mostly serious stuff, about dedication and passion and all that boring, responsible crap. :) It was a really fun night. We didn't have to time to do the reflection/service learning discussion, and it was great to just be together as people. I got a pretty decent score of 70. Yay me! And I wasn't even in last place, I was ahead of two or three other people. Anyway, we all had a good time. And now it's Friday!! Woo! I'm excited. Nothing too exciting is going on this weekend. There are two big ISPs going on. Another afternoon with Bea Gaddy tomorrow, I'll be going to that. Since I'm the ISP coordinator for the team, I've also been putting together plans for the Special Olympics Maryland on Sunday. It sounds like a lot of fun, and the lady I talked to was so great, I'd love to go, but I need a day off. There's a bunch of incredible projects in the coming weekends, through April. We're going to stay busy! I've got 30 hours already. We only need 80 for the entire ten months, but I'm all for getting it done early, especially with the cold weather. By the time it's hot, we'll be able to lounge around the beach or wherever on the weekends and not worry about ISPs. Oh, that reminds me. A whole bunch of disasters have struck, like five states' worth. You all probably know that, but we're amazingly isolated. I don't have a tv and never watch any. Some people do have one and get all of three fuzzy stations, and probably actually watch stuff. The only time I've been in front of a television lately is to watch movies. But even that is rare, just because there's so little time to do anything. But back to the point. There's 30 people from my campus getting pulled from projects to do Red Cross disaster relief. My neighbor is going, and a few others from local projects. But they pull people on spike, too. I guess we won't get called out this round, they don't like to pull people from educational projets. We were discussing it today, and how much it would suck to leave practically right away (they had less than 48 hours' notice) and not get to say goodbye to our kids. |
| 04/05/02: Two members of our team did get called to disaster relief for flooding in Kentucky. They have been gone for two weeks and will be returning to Perry Point this weekend, a week earlier than planned. It will be great to have a whole team again. Last week also went quickly, but I was in a terrible mood all week. The team function sucked. I felt all quiet and lonely and melancholy and other no-fun things. The weekend was a little better, though. Harford Heights was on spring break this week. Unfortunately, we don't get time off just because our kids do. So we got to do some different work, and it's been a great week. Last Friday and this Monday, we worked on the new tool sheds here on campus. We shingled both roofs. Woo! It was fun. The lines aren't quite even, but it looks pretty good considering we'd never done that before. Monday, the doors were constructed, and so was the trim work. I did half of the corner trim boards myself, with six-foot boards, a clamp, and a hammer. I was pretty damn proud of myself. Tuesday was the best day. We drove out to a school in Delaware (it's a charter school opening in the fall). We had been told that our project would be constructing a dam, but we ended up planting trees instead. The day could not have been more perfect for it. It was sunny and warm, blue sky, big green fields of winter wheat. It was beautiful. And the planting went great. We figured out a teamwork rhythm halfway into it and kicked some tree-planting ass. They had us plant four lines of trees, to be used as windbreak for the fields and property. The second half of the second row was when we really got it going. So the third row, we did about 1500 feet, one tree every ten feet and alternating sides of a five-foot swath of tilled earth. One hundred and fifty trees planted--and we did it in less than half an hour. It was so awesome. The fourth row was interrupted by the tractor getting stuck in the muddy ground. Thus the planting was halted briefly, and, getting antsy, we had a mud fight. Good fun. At the end of the day, we had planted nearly 700 trees. Seven hundred trees! We felt great (other than the sunburn). It was just the thing the team needed, to actually work together, and act like a unified team. Plus we did a great thing for the earth and a great favor (so to speak) for the school. In twenty years, there will be a bunch of pine trees standing tall because we planted them. Dad sent me an old Chinese proverb after hearing about our Tuesday: "You must write a book, have a child and plant a tree--then you will live forever." The book is in the making (in my head; it's one of my life goals to publish a book), the kids will wait a few more years, but all those trees! What a great start. The circle of life. To continue the week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were spent at the empty Harford Heights. We painted the computer lab and stamped and counted myriad books in the stock room. The painting required lots of preparation--we had to take everything off the walls, remove staples, spackle holes, sand the whole wall and dust it, then apply two coats of paint. Oh, and put tape along the floor and windows--that was surely the most fun part. (That was me being sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell.) Today was mostly a clean up day. In the book room, we did the last few boxes of stamping, and counted the books and boxes. My rough count (I can't rely on my mental math so much) was approximately 4,600 books stamped. Woohoo! That is awesome. Oh, yes. This week's team function was baseball--the Yankees played at Oriole Park at Camden Yards last night. It was a great night, we started off the evening with dinner at the Inner Harbor. The game went quickly, it was over before 10. The Yankees shut out the O's 4-0 until the bottom of the ninth, when the Orioles saved face by scoring a single run. We didn't get home until midnight, so it was a long day. But good. Altogether, it has been a productive, unifying, tiring week. It feels wonderful to have a change of scenery, to do something different every day, and to see the fruits of our labor. The team morale and dynamic has definitely improved for it as well, which is most important. |