| We're here! |
| 04/13/02: We just finished Week 7 of our project. One more week and then no more kids. That's just starting to occur to us, that in a week our whole world will be turned upside down. We won't be at school seeing those great kids, we won't have our houses and the campus to ourselves, we'll get our new project and leave for it and then live together for two months. Crazy stuff, man. This was a pretty eventful week. On Monday, Channel 13 News finally aired our clip. They came to school two weeks ago and filmed us with some of the kids. Our blurb was just that, a blurb--ninety seconds. But it was a good ninety seconds. We were all excited that we got on TV and that the news got a lot of information in about us. On Tuesday we played ultimate frisbee for PT. Other folks kept joining in the game, until at one point we had 24 people on the field at once! It was complete madness, and it was great. The game went on (with smaller numbers) for nearly two hours. The game was even better because it was drizzly out but still warm, so most everyone was barefoot and shirtless. Good times. Wednesday morning we got to school amidst a small crisis. They had found a body on the playground. So the morning entrance routines were all thrown off, and of course everyone was pretty freaked. Turned out to be a white woman between 25 and 40, the murder was possibly drug-related. Being a team of mostly white people, we were even more worried about our safety in the all-black neighborhood of our school. Thursday was Shannon's birthday (and happy birthday Brandon, too), so the team went out for a dress-up dinner in Havre de Grace. There was much beer and merriment. We all stayed out way too late, and we all had a great time. On Friday morning, the team was exhausted, of course. Three of us took a "field trip" to the doctor. I sprained some tendons in my foot during that ultimate game, so I got some horse pills of ibuprofen and a note excusing me from PT for next week. It hurts to walk, which really sucks. |
| 04/16/02: Hey y'all! So it's Tuesday now and Friday is the last day at school. Boo hoo! So I hear that back home there was a record set for rainfall. Well, here in the Baltimore area, today a new record was set for high temperature. 90 degrees, plus! It was 80 already at 8AM. Blechh. It's lovely, don't get me wrong, but it's so stifling and icky sweaty. What's worse is that the AC at school doesn't work. That means that it was as hot and sticky inside as it was outside. Poor kids. And poor us, too. Yesterday we finally found out our new project. It's in New Jersey, way up in the northwest corner near the Appalachian Trail (the nearest town is Milford, look it up, it's the middle of nowhere). We'll be at a camp in the woods in the "mountains," getting it ready for summer. The camp is for inner city kids, and there's all kinds of activities, from what we hear. We're excited. It's going to be fun, if lonely. I'm looking forward to camping out under the stars on the weekends. Oh, and there's bears. Fun times! |
| 04/29/02: So by now, the entire project round is over, we got through transition week and just returned from our spring break weekend. A lot has happened! First, we had the last week at school. That was really sad. It didn't seem real that we were never going to see our kids again. On Thursday and Friday, most of us gave little gifts to our classes, and the classes gave us things like letters and cakes. Because of the extreme heat and lack of air conditioning, school was dismissed early on Friday, our last day. So that threw an already delicate and emotional day into complete chaos. We survived and did our best to say farewell to our little friends. It's only been a week and a half since we were there, but it feels like so much longer now. My memories from Harford Heights are already getting fuzzy. But I have some great pictures of my kids, do take a look. I miss them a lot. Next up was the infamous Transition Week. There was all kinds of stuff to do--the project portfolio (for the just-completed project), the project prep packet (for the new one), the official debrief of the old project, the official debrief of the new one, plus random trainings. Fortunately, our team, being local and having access to the computers, got a head start on the portfolio and so did not have to fight the hordes of other corps members here in the lab. As for me, I missed a lot of the stuff, because I taught one of the random training sessions. I did a Stress Management presentation for the entire Fire Unit (that's nine teams and over ninety people), over a three-day period of time. It was a lot of fun, and it was most definitely a learning experience. All the teams seemed to enjoy the class, and thanked me profusely. Because I did the class so many times, I kept tweaking with it, and that seemed to pay off. I added a guided relaxation at the end, which was a great thing. I wish I had the script and music that I used for my U-HELP presentations, but I did fairly well for off the cuff. Then it was time for spring break! Woo! I headed to New York City, I was excited; I'd never been there before and had wanted to go for a long time. I was lucky enough to be able to stay with a friend, so I had a personal tour guide. Mostly we just walked around and saw stuff. Went to the Museum of Modern Art, rather quickly. Looked at the van Gogh and other famous names, and a great exhibit of New York City photographs. Got to see the campuses of NYU and Columbia. Met up with some other NCCC folks on Saturday night in Little Italy, that was really fun. I meant to get some gelato, but didn't have time. Supreme bummer. However, I did discover the joy of Italian ice, and had those for a meal-substitute a couple times. In all, I had a really good weekend. It was mellow, not terribly eventful, but pleasant and enjoyable. I love traveling to new places and figuring my way around. I can't wait to travel again. Tomorrow is the day we have to get all our s*** together, literally. We have to be packed, have a meeting, clean the van and get it ready for the trip. Then first thing Wednesday morning, we head out to New Jersey. I'm getting excited. I'm really looking forward to being in a new place, as well as doing the work. We'll be doing lots of different things to get the camp ready, mostly repairs of facilities and building lean-tos. It will be nice to do physical labor, and to not have to the same monotonous thing day after day. And of course, I can't wait to explore the surroundings and just drink in the natural sights. Because the camp is so "rustic," I won't be in touch very often with you folks in the Real World. I'll do my best with updates, but I'll probably concentrate on the team website. So check that out, too. I'm going to start writing more letters to all of you, so write to me too, and we'll all be pen pals. |
| 05/089/02: For a more complete description of what I and the rest of my team have been doing, look at our team website journal. In short, we have been here in New Jersey for a week now. The camp is great, but definitely rustic. It's a short hike just to get to the shower house. We are literally in the middle of the woods, so it's very pretty. It's also very tick-infested. One day four of us found ticks feeding on us in the shower. Gross! There is a bat and a family of flying squirrels living in our cabin (it's called Chimney Corner, who wants to guess why?), not to mention all the little bugs we don't see. So it makes for interesting evenings. It gets really cold here at night, we all have sleeping bags and piles of wool army blankets. Recently we had some nicer weather, it was quite warm. We are indeed out in the middle of nowhere. My cell phone doesn't get service anywhere except the Wal-Mart and the Shop Rite, so far. Milford, the nearest town, is small but very cute. We've explored it a teeny bit. I got my hair cut there this weekend. There is a movie "theatre" that shows one movie at a time. Even a pizza place. I like it here, it's definitely an adjustment: Hard work (raking leaves til my brain explodes) and not showering every day, no hot water or heat in the cabin (brr!), a communal food supply that dwindles amazingly fast, daily tick checks. Adventures aplenty, I love it! |