Where to begin...where to begin??? Oh yeah...I remember now...I left off from last post with my mini Spike experience in Delaware, Fall Break, applying to become a Team Leader, and the craziness with my 4th round project. Now bare with me...this yet again will be another long blog because so much has happened within the last month and a half.
First off, when Summer of Service program ended at the tail end of July this summer, we were allowed a 9-day summer break. I chose to head back home in Crystal Lake to visit the family and friends. While being home I got to sleep in my bed, work at my Dad's warehouse for some extra cash, mowed the yard, hung out with my next door neighbors (including seeing the new 2 month-old baby Charlie), and finally earning some ISP hours with my local park district. All in all, home was the same...nothing had changed other than it was nice to be home after an absence of 7 months. Good to catch up with high school friends and visit the neighbors.
I flew back after my 9-days were up and arrived in Perry Point ready to see what needed to be done before all the 3rd round teams came back. I knew that I wasn't going to be heading back to my Raven 3 team so it was an adventure to find out what actually the campus had in store for the CL's. We were told when we came back to our houses that 17 of us crew leaders were going to drive down to Delaware and work with the Delaware State Parks for about 8 days. That was such a wonderful experience. Since we were all close as crew leaders it made the work easier and more fun. They had placed us in 3 work groups that did various of tasks in those 6 work days. Not only was the work rewarding, but we also lived 5 minute walking distance to the beach. Work days consisted of beginning at 8:30 AM and ending at 3 PM...which gave us enough sunlight to walk down to the beach and soak up some rays. The different jobs they gave us to peform were: painting stables, working and cutting down shrubs, getting rid of invasive species, and did some clear trailing. Overall, it was a great time performing those tasks in Delaware. Our living conditions were in a camp house where guys slept in a room full of bunk beds and the girls slept in a seperate room on the other side of the building with bunk beds. We went shopping for groceries and cooked our own meals UNLESS it was lunch in which our sweet sponsor, Rob, bought all of us some sub sandwiches and sandwich wraps with chips. Very amazing person he was...Rob worked with Americorps before and is the program coordinator and volunteer coordinator in the Delaware that sets up people like Americorps NCCC and others that are wanting to help out in the immediate area. Some other cool things I did while I was there were: putting up a twine fence with PVC pipes along a selected area of the Delaware beach that protected any predators from attacking the endangered species, also I assisted with clearing high grasses in order to create a railroad track for a cannon at Camp Henlopen. In conclusion, the Delaware mini spike project was rewarding and basically like another vacation just in the fact we had easy work hours and a beach waiting for us after.
Next came, the decision to become a team leader for the up and coming 2009 Americorps NCCC campaign. I was convinced to sign up and apply to be one thanks to several outside sources. One being Summer of Service, working with those kids changed my mind from being on the fence 50/50 to being more like 70 percent YES and 30 percent NO. My experience with the 5 week program was wonderful and something I really enjoyed. My next encounter came from talking to other friends and Americorps peers that were applying for next year's excursion and they really told me how awesome it will be to be on "team green" and have a group of ten 18-24 year olds. So what I ended up doing on my 8 day fall break was spend time filling out the application for Team Leader Perry Point next session. I am kind of excited to see if I actually get the position because I think it will be a challenging, yet an amazing leadership chance to really booster up the resume. And it doesn't hurt to serve your country for another 10 months, I figure that I am young and capable to do so, so why not give back now...right?
Along with filling out the TL application, I got to hang out with some friends I really didn't hang out with during our CTI training which was different and awesome at the same time. I lived with one of my house mates and we tried to make the time spent productively. I teamed up with 4 other friends and traveled down to Baltimore, MD and worked at an ISP at a place called Moveable Feast. Basically what we did was clean the kitchens and storage rooms that made it more accessible for the cooks/chefs to prepare meals for clients that are suffering from illnesses/cancer and even females with breast cancer. We worked there for 8 hours and then later that night walked to where the Baltimore Orioles played and caught a baseball game there. We got 20 dollar seats and ended up sitting about 18 rows from the 1st base dugout...super fun even though the Orioles are super bad!! On thursday night of fall break I ended up going out with some friends still in Perry Point to celebrate our friend Katie's 21st birthday. It was very informal with a cake and one large gift in a bag which I picked up and bought from the Dollar General store. She loved all the little nick-nack gifts because all pertained to the type of personality she possesses. Later that weekend, I volunteered to drive a shuttle van to pick up fellow Americorps members at the Baltimore airport. I did that on Sunday.
I completely forgot to mention that my team leader, Andrea, appointed me as the team's ATL for 4th round AND when I went to the ATL meeting the next morning (before fall break) and found out that I was selected along with 45 other NCCC Perry Pointers to attend the White House south lawn and watch President Bush speak on volunteerism. When that day came along the ones that got selected were SUPER stoked and eager to potentially meet the President. Monday rolled around and all that were chosen to attend the White House gathered in the morning in the 15-passenger vans and headed to DC. We arrived to DC around noon and walked toward the mounds and mounds of people waiting in line to get into the south lawn. After waiting for about an hour in the hot, sweltering heat we realized this long line was not moving an inch, so we ended up walking in front of everyone and seeing if Americorps was on the list. After several Corps members attempted to check their name on the list, the national director of NCCC came by and attempted to get us all in. We later came to a conclusion that someone back in the Perry Point office completely messed up and didn't follow through with our trip and failed all of us. We all looked like fools not getting into the President's speech. Super bummed out. People were sympathetic when they walked out from the speech and said they had talked about Americorps...and that point we were irritated. BUT...instead of completely doing nothing, one of the White House representatives offered for all 50 of us to go and get the tour of the White House and take pictures. Now this wasn't the actual White House, it was more like a house that had different rooms dedicated to past-Presidents and where they hung out, ate, or dined in. I will be posting the pictures on facebook in the near future. When we got back from the busy day of basically nothing, it was funny to hear all the jeers and laughter from our buddies back in Perry Point after hearing about what had happened.
NOW...onto the important stuff...and that is 4th Round! WAH-WOOO!
We had our project brief before we left for fall break and we were orginally going to go to Baton Rouge, LA and work with Habitat for Humanity and build houses for 6 weeks. We heard all but good things about this Habitat chapter and were super stoked to help out. Even though it would have been my 3rd time in Louisiana, I knew this project was going to be radical! The day of the White House, we get informed by Andrea that instead of going to Baton Rouge, Raven 3 has been called on disaster down in Texas and needed to deploy the next morning. When Wednesday hit of that week, we packed up our belongings and shoveled items in the van and headed for a 3 day hike to Dallas, TX. First place we stopped in was Bristol, VA on Wednesday night, then on Thursday we slept on a gym floor in Jackson, MS. which then reminded me of Michelle's experience of sleeping in locker rooms during Hurricane Katrina 3 years ago (that was a riot because it was a correctional facility for the Mississippi St. campus), and then finally we arrived to Dallas on Friday and placed air mattresses on the gym floor of a housing place called Lovers Lane United Methodist Church. We were catered heavily with free food and drinks and even dessert. Now don't be confused about the name of the church, it happened to be that the Lovers Lane name came from the name of the street the Methodist Church was on! Silly how our minds think :)! Anyways, at this point we had 4 other Perry Point teams with us staying in the gym at one time. As we were waiting out for the Hurricane to touchdown in the Texas area, we stayed put in Dallas and waited for further word from headquarters and our Point of Contact. Saturday and Sunday of this past week was used to relax and rest up for the up and coming disaster weeks or constant working. On Monday of this week our Raven 3 team got appointed to work at a Volunteer Center of North Dallas where we answered phones and called volunteers that wanted to help out with Hurricane Ike in anyway they could. Our job was to re-call back the people that didn't have all their information filled out from the e-mail application they submitted a couple days ago. The organization was very gracious and thankful that we were able to assist them the best we could during these times of sorrow. All 7 of us Raven 3 team manned the phones for the whole day on Monday. We were prepared to work with them temporalily until this Wednesday. When we arrived to work this morning we were continuing with the phone answering and computing into their systems computers when all the sudden Andrea informs us that we have been called down for disaster in Galveston, TX where the storm hit the hardest. We were told we were the only Americorps team heading down there to help as of now. More would be called in the future, but for now our Raven 3 team's job is running a call center for evacuees that were affected by the hurricane.
What the people in Galveston, TX is having us do is be on shifts of 3 and 4 to answer phone calls and assist people with problems and guiding them the right direction during this tough time. Myself, Joni, and Stan volunteered to work the graveyard shift answering calls from 8 PM-8 AM. Then the next shift, Zac, Meredith, Bill, and Andrea takes 8 AM- 8 PM. So we will be on the move basically like firefighters until further notice. It might be that we could be here the whole round helping the best we can. I have slowly gotten comfortable with answering phones and being patient with these enraged citizens of Galveston. I am trying to help as best as I can. Some are snotty which is understandable, but as a whole people are very grateful we are attempting to help them with their situations.
More to come throughout the next week or so. I will try to inform you all more about the experience of working with phones (since this is my first time with this kind of job) and all the positives and negatives with the evacuees.
Hope you enjoyed another long version of my blog! Like mentioned before, a lot was covered and I did my best to inform the best I could (even though it was hard to think back 2 months ago), but I managed even when it is 3 AM on a Wednesday morning :) I am keeping the head up and leaving a smile on my face in times like this...
Chianakas OUT!
