So River 10 arried in Virginia last week on Sunday around 4. We drove 17 hours to get to Great Falls Virginia to work for Living Classrooms of the Nations Capitol Region. This sponsor is unbelievable. The classrooms are learning by doing based. There are three different sections of the classrooms, site based, school based, and shipboard. The last section has two ships that the organization uses to have classes go on field trips to learn about sea life. The other parts of the organization are used essentially for science field trips. The concept of the whole organization is awesome. Sunday when we arrived, we saw our lodge, which is perfect. We have 2 fire pits, a fire place, no internet and no TV. Perfect for me since I love everything it offers. We met Annie, who lives on site wtih us in her own home. We got aquainted in our rooms and made a nice fire, or what was supposed to be nice fire, outside.
Monday and Tuesday were orientation days for the classrooms. We met the entire staff and got oriented on the organization and what they offer. It was nice to meet the staff since we will primarily be working only with our housing and not in classrooms. We got to learn what each staff member does and how they run their respective parts of the LC-NCR. Monday was ended with our team climbing the rockwall that we have in our backyard so we could see what the kids have to go through. It was a lot of fun.
Tuesday we got to visit all 3 sites and we got the best lunch ever. I got an unreal sandwich which I ate in probably 3 seconds. It was fun to see a field trip take place at the site based program site. The kids were hilarious. Makes me miss subbing!
Wednesday and Thursday we got down to business. One of our major parts of this project is dealing with debris from the Drecho that hit Virginia in June. This is just basically, not just but thats the word I chose, it is basically a large wind storm that knocks trees down and creates a pleuthora of debris everywhere. And when I say pleuthora, I mean a lot. We collected 1,000+ pounds in these two days. We were dead Thursday night and we all have bruises to prove it.
Friday we got to participate in Debris Day that LC-NCR hosts for a local elementary school. Each of us were in charge of a group of kids to help collect trash and recycling from Kingman Island where site based work takes place. The day was fun and we got to interact with children who were energetic and loving picking up trash, go figure. You can convince kids to do anything!
This project sounded awesome to us UNTIL good ol Sandy started to climb up the coast. NOW we are currently in Albany, New York on disaster relief deployment! Yes, New York, not in our region and 3 hours from home. I can smell Massachusetts from here...anyway...we are working with Red Cross running shelters in the state of New York. Today was just our orientation day and we literally just got to the hotel an hour ago. We started our drive from Virginia at 4:30 this morning drove from Virginia, touched several states along the way and we are just finishing the day now. My team consists of Lannise, Terrell, and myself and we are placed in Fonda, New York. I googled it, 3 hours and 40something minutes from 10 Thomas...hint hint...
We will be running a disaster shelter for people of this part of NY and for the first at least 4 days of the storm it is a 24 hour a day operation for us. Lots of sleepless nights and lots of red bull slash coffee. I am ready. I am really excited to be doing this and to be in this part of the country, the best part of course.
Our team hasn't had a day off since Friday the 19th. We are working on about 4 hours of sleep right now and I am ready to take on the next 3 weeks of disaster deployment. Keep River 10 and River 8, the other team with us, in your thoughts! Actually, keep all my AmeriCorps friends in your thoughts, we are all doing a lot to get things done in whatever way shape or form that may be!
Thats all from the concrete jungle (or at least close to it). I am sure that the next few weeks will confirm for me that the smalles thing really can sure make all the difference.
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