It has been exactly a week since my last update and BOY...has it zipped right by. More and more these days are getting faster and faster. Here we are on the eve of Easter 2008 and Raven 3 has been at beautiful Jekyll Island for nearly one week!! INSANE! So much work/tasks has been accomplished within that time frame. Like I did last post, I will break down day-by-day and detail what our team did during that time trying to recall as much information as I can and fill you people in on how amazing this AmeriCorps experience has been...
SUNDAY (Mom's 53rd Birthday)
- before we leave from Skidaway we have a team meeting and team building exercise set up by our "team trainers" (Stan and Joni)
- we count and compare how many gnat and mosquito bites we have on our legs and arms
- Raven 3 leaves for Jekyll Island and arrives in at around 3:00 PM
- find out that we are living in cabin type housing, which by the way are amazing and once I get around to it I will start posting pictures of our housing on here (if I can find out how to do it)
- I am living in the house with all 3 of the guys on the team, I get my own room AND have privacy!
- we quickly find out that most of our cell phones do NOT get service in our neighborhood area, so it might be difficult to call when only having 0 to 1 bars.
- All are eager to find out what orientation will be about and ready to get back out in the working field.
MONDAY
- we wake up at 8 AM and get ready for the day, arrive at Brunswick, GA for our orientation with sponsor Ashby.
- Ashby shows us around the G.E.O.R.G.I.A. center and where she works, get introduced to a couple office members
- she takes us out onto a shrimp boat where we ran into boat captain, Ashley, and got the tour of this gigantic boat
- after a good 2.5 hours of walking around and learning about the Brunswick oyster headquarters, Daniel (our other sponsor) took us to a shell recycling center where there was a big heep of dead shells sitting in a pile.
- for the next 2 plus hours, our solid-10 man squad bagged oyster shells...the total at the end was 515! We now have the record for most bagged shell in a 2 hour span...YEAH US!
- to celebrate our awesome and fast-pace working job, our Service Learning team members arranged a tour of a marine aquarium where then we got to see sea turtles, sharks, alligators, and other creatures
- Day 1 comes to an end...and we were all muddy, smelly, and cut up
TUESDAY
- today was a day of LOTS of driving in the van
- 1st we drove to Skidaway Island to load 2 more oyster shells into a trailer, went back into the muddy waters during low tide to collect all the PVC piping and rebars from the water to bring with us back to Jekyll. We had a pretty sweet assembly line process that seemed to work, I was in the water pulling the stakes out of the muddy waters and when Team Leader Andrea told me, I switched with her and heaved several of them onto the shore line where another teammate was waiting to hand to the trailer. My rotator surely felt that one on that day!
- we got cleaned up and power washed ourselves (that thing is super powerful, i got cut on the finger from touching it...oww!)
- then we headed to Savannah to the Bamboo Farm and collected all the stalks we sized down from the week before
- we then drove back to Brunswick and unloaded the trailer and bamboo
- i drove a leg of the trip and ended up passing out right when we got back to our houses...a good and long 10+ hour day!
- not much activity other than driving to and from the locations, it is roughly 2 hour drive from Jekyll Island to Savannah
- we find out at night we are getting a new teammate, a kid from the same Raven unit as us
WEDNESDAY
- woke up around 8 AM to begin the day and doing more oyster bagging/unloading to our Beach Creek site
- began making the cement for caking it on the PVC piping, rebar, and bamboo sticks (this means we are going to stick them in the mud so that the new oysters can cling to them and begin mating which in affect will get rid of the pollution in the water and have a more attractive eye to the public and help the economy with tourists
THURSDAY
- today we went back in the morning to the shell recycle area on Jekyll and cemented more PVC, rebar, and bamboo.
- myself and Zac teamed up and sawed down the bamboo to the correct size which then was later cemented to use for the oyster testing once we set them up in the next coming weeks
- we loaded a couple more trailer loads of oyster shells and took them to the Beach Creek site (I can surely feel that I am getting stronger in the upper shoulder region and lats from carrying these bad boys everyday!)
- in the afternoon our Raven 3 team went to work for a couple hours at another aquarium/critter location down the road, it is an organization that is sponsored by the University of Georgia.
- they put us to work by cleaning the tanks, re-making the beds of various turtles and snakes and other animals, defrost and clean up the freezer, and do some office/paper work
- I chose to do the office work because all the other jobs were taken...my main tasks were to make copies of a half-dozen paperwork items and type and put together a brochure. I was given the information of what to put in it, all they said was think of a creative way to make this...I have the final product that I kept for my portfolio.
- the group was nice enough and gave us free t-shirts and a nice ice cream treat, very nice people, we definately are thinking about going back during one of our off days or rainy days and getting some ISP hours for sure!
- we get the news that the new teammate will be arriving to our squad this coming Wednesday
FRIDAY
- today is the 1st day of our 4-day spring break, a third of us went out to work more and get direct service hours, another third went away for the break, and the final third went to relax on the beaches in our area
- I chose the last third and went to the beaches and kicked back and layed down...a tiring week deserved some alone time, the sun was shining brightly and I think I might have gotten burned
SATURDAY
- another day to relax and kick it...I went for a 1 hour plus bike ride with teammate Nicole to scope out the island better, found a mini golf place, discovered a place to rent Surrey's, and soaked in some more sunrays!
- came back and met up with the AmeriCorps team from Brunswick and they came to 2 more beaches with us and we played some frisbee and football (it is nice seeing people and groups every once in awhile...we don't want to feel too secluded)
SUNDAY
- HAPPY EASTER!
So...there you have it...a detailed outline of hos this past week went. I am going to try and sign onto the internet once every 3 days or so. We have this tourist campground place near our cabins that has WiFi that I have been taken advantage of...so when we get back at night from our worksite, I usually swing over to this location and check up on things...INCLUDING March Madness AND the beginning of the MLB season, Cubs opening day= 8 days away! It is too bad I will be away from baseball in the sense of watching games because there is no TV close to us, unless you drive to a restaurant or somewhere in town. Oh well! Definately a sacrifice!
Hope you enjoy this little brief update on how things are going. Starting next week (on tuesday since we have our spring break) we will be paddling canoes and kayaks and planting the dead oysters into the muddy waters and beginning the process! It is very exciting and loads of fun. Our team was thinking about investing in parachute pants to wear over our Ameri-pants to cause less of washing our clothes...make sense? I think so! We are allowed to only wear black pants...YIPPEE!
Anyways, Happy Easter to you all again. More updates will come throughout...so I will try and keep you posted! Remember and be happy and smile :)
