After staying up late last night because of New York City, we all had a harder time getting up this morning for our work. However, the bittersweet feeling of it being our last day of service here got us up and moving. We met with Travis and Jim again at 9am at the house that we did yardwork at on Wednesday. This time, fortunately, we were working in the interior of the house. Thank goodness, because it was especially cold today! Our job was to sweep and Swiffer all of the floors in the house, wipe down the windows and the windowsills, and clean the kitchen countertops, appliances, and cabinets. We quickly fell into our respective roles, and after our lunch break we finished our work around 2pm. The interior of the house looked nearly spotless especially compared to when we first saw it. We left the house with pride and bright spirits knowing that the family will be able to move in on Monday, just in time for Christmas. Over lunch, we talked about leaving Atlantic City before tomorrow morning, which was our original departure time. The weather here and in Ohio doesn't look ideal for driving, so we made the decision to leave right after dinner. The workers at Lacey United Methodist Church that provided us with a place to stay are making us dinner tonight, as a farewell gesture. I look forward to one last meal together in Altantic City! If we leave when we plan to leave, we should arrive in Cincinnati around 5am. We are hoping for safe travels. Finally, thank you for reading my daily reflections and joining me on this journey. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait to participate in more service trips like this one. Check back in a few days to see my completed Honors experience showcase!
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Currently on the car ride from the Statin Island Ferry back to the church we are staying at... we've definitely had an adventerous day. Early this morning, we met Jim at the work site. We loaded boxes of strip light bulbs into the back of his truck for around an hour, then we left for New York City! We drove to the Statin Island Ferry stop and took the ferry to Manhattan. In spite of the below freezing temperatures and the brutal wind, we survived and thrived in the Big Apple! Here are photos of some of the highlights... Another satisfyingly exhausting day. Since we finished the interior of the house yesterday, we moved onto a different house today. This property was owned by an older couple who had been a victim of fraud and could no longer afford to have their house finished. The house was mostly complete and ready to be moved into, but the lawn needed some work. When we got to the site at 9am, Jim introduced us to Travis, who gave us our task for the day: spread around a huge pile of dirt. We had to cover specific areas of the property with top soil and finish it off with grass seed and hay. Tomorrow, other workers will finish off the landscaping and on Friday, we will help to clean the interior so it will be completely ready to be moved in to. I'm looking forward to see the final product at the end of the week! For me, the work today was tough. Painting involved focus and planning, but this type of yardwork involves brute, muscular force. Fortunately, we were blessed with sunny weather, so I was never too cold. In fact, I had to shed some layers because shoveling dirt for hours and hours warmed me up quite a bit. I'll definitely be sore tomorrow, but it'll be satisfying to know it's because of all of my hard work. I'm positive that our group is getting increasingly close and efficient every day, because we worked together very well today. As we get more and more comfortable with each other, our communication improves and we work more effectively. Again, I'm so happy to have such a small group- we've still been able to accomplish so much! Tomorrow will definitely be easier and very enjoyable. Although we start our work earlier, we should be done around 9am, leaving the rest of the day for free time... ...which we are planning to spend in New York City! Wish us luck and safety in our travels, I can't wait to share our adventures with all of you. Short post today! We started our work at the house at 9am again. We didn't see Jim at all today, so we were pretty much on our own. Regardless, we cranked out the work that needed to get done: organizing the finished trim, continuing to clean up the site, and painting the entire interior of the house. Together, with our rollers and brushes, we painted each room of the house top to bottom. The weather was sunny and calm, so fortunately it never got too cold. The day went by relatively fast, and we went to the local mall to eat our packed lunches. After lunch, the homeowner Frank stopped by! It was so nice to see his gratefulness for our work and learn more about Frank himself. After he left, we finished up most of the work and left the site once it got dark (which is way earlier than in Cincinnati, because we are in the very eastern edge of the time zone). Today, we definitely got along better as a group and are getting more comfortable with one another. I'm so happy our group is small, so I'm able to build a relationship with each person. Currently, I'm writing on the car ride from the work site to the church we are staying at, so those are all of my updates as of now. Tomorrow, we are completing the finishing touches on the paintwork in the house and then we'll move to work on another house. We'll be doing yardwork and moving top soil around the entire yard, which will definitely be more intense physical labor than painting. I'm excited to work outside though, it's supposed to be sunny! Until next time . . . We've had a pretty big day, so I apologize in advance for future spelling errors, grammar mistakes, rambling sentences, etc. Today, we got to the work site at 9am and met Jim, one of the workers at A Future with Hope. He debriefed us on who will live in the house that we're renovating (a retired couple: Frank and his wife, who has MS), the extent of Hurricane Sandy, and the work that A Future with Hope has done (including rebuilding 250 homes since the storm). We also met Lisa Park, the volunteer coordinator at A Future with Hope, who gave us T-shirts (woo!). From the house itself, we could see Barnegat Bay which suprised all of us, we didn't realize we were so close to the water! In the early evening, we took a break and walked to the shore to admire the beautiful sunset... ...which brings me to the work that we were taking a break from. Jim had us fix ceiling paint, paint over floor and wall trims, and begin to paint the interior walls of the house. A member of our group had experience with fixing cracks, so he went ahead and did that. As a group, we figured out who should do what and what people's skills were. This task got easier to do as the day went on, and by the end of the day we got into a nice groove. I had never painted trim or walls before, but I picked up some helpful tips from others and felt much better about my abilities at the end of the day. Overall, I'd say we worked well as a group and I think having a smaller group made it easier to work together. Tomorrow, we have to finish painting the entire interior of the house. Surprisingly, I'm really looking forward to it. It's very satisfying looking back at all of our hard work we've put in over many hours. With work like this, I can visually see the results of my labor. This differs from my usual volunteering experiences. For me, I normally volunteer for a couple of hours once a week for several weeks. The type of volunteering is usually directly helping others and providing a service to them (instead of a "good" i.e. the painted house). I almost always interact with the people I'm helping and immediately see their reactions to my help (instead of seeing a finished "good"). In contrast, this week, we are working around 8 hours at one time and we won't meet the people who will benefit from our volunteer work, unfortunately. However, the work remains rewarding because we can still visually see our progress. Outside of work, we went to this cozy and ecclectic cafe called Revolutionary Lounge. Almost all of us ordered (much needed) warm drinks, which we sipped on while eating our packed lunches. After we ate, we drove to the shoreline of the bay and relaxed by the water. At the end of our work day, we showered and ate, then drove to the famous boardwalk of Atlantic City. The bright skyscrapers and flashy casinos were fun, but my favorite part by far was seeing the ocean. Night had fallen by the time we made to the shore, but the bright full moon lit up the beach. Even though the sun had set and it was too cold to swim, it was still extraordinary to hear the waves and smell the salt water. Ahhhh. Phew, what a day. Today was our day of travel from Cinci, OH to Atlantic City, NJ.
We started our trip bright and early at 7am. By we, I mean me and four other University of Cincinnati students. If you're thinking that five people is a small group for a service trip, you're not wrong! We did originally start with more, but people kept dropping out for various reasons. At first I was anxious about having such a small group, but now I look forward to the opportunity to know each person in a more intimate way than if we had a larger group. Since there are so few of us, we'll be interacting with each other more heavily than if there were more of us. Another unique aspect of our group is that none of us knew each other before this experience. Usually on Serve Beyond Cincinnati trips, people sign up in pairs or groups of three so they have someone they know on the trip with them. None of us did that, so we have to go out of our comfort zones and interact with strangers instead of sticking to the people we came with. One more interesting aspect to note is that three of the five volunteers are either fourth or fifth years who are at least one year older than me. The other person on the trip is my age. We are also all different majors. I'm excited to see how our small group size and diversity will affect our experience volunteering together, in addition to the fact that none of us knew each other prior. The five of us started driving at 7am and arrived in Atlantic City around 6pm, which includes a couple of stops along the way. We are staying with a United Methodist Church, and met the one of the workers and an older couple who also works at the church. After feeding us a lovely meal, we got to talk to them about the impact of Superstorm Sandy on the community, the extent of the recovery, and their personal stories and reasons for helping out this area. As someone whose only experience with Hurricane Sandy was hearing about it on the news, it was eye-opening to hear first hand stories of the damage it had on individuals and the community. Looking forward, I'm excited to see what kind of work we will be doing and how much progress five people can do! From what our trip leader said, it seems like we'll be cleaning out a house, and painting the interior and exterior of other houses. Hopefully this work will be challenging, yet feasable for me, as I have no prior construction experience. One challenge I'm anticipating is the weather. This week we will face cold temperatures, rain, heavy wind, and possibly snow! I'm not the best in the cold, but I'm sure I'll be able to persevere. I thank everyone who is reading this, I'm excited to share this journey with you! [Photo] I got lucky and could take up the entire back seat of the van. I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep after finals week! |
AboutIn order to get the most out of my experience working with A Future of Hope in Atlantic City, NJ through Serve Beyond Cincinnati, I wrote daily reflections at the end of each day. Thank you for reading! |