Dawn's Blog

Friday
We spent the morning doing some cleanup work to help out maintenance. A bunch of stuff (two-by-fours, tires, and smaller objects) had gotten swept away in the flooding and carried out into the woods, so we carried it back to the dumpsters. We also saved some awesome stuff that they were going to throw away that we claimed for ourselves, like a table and chairs for our community cabin. I am now the proud owner of a "Smoke-Free Facility" sign, which I plan to post in my future residence.

In the afternoon we got to do some work in the community gardens alongside some of the kids, so that was really cool. It was really the first time we have gotten to interact with them, and it went very well.

That evening the drumming instructor's drumming group was performing at a restaurant/bar, so we all went to watch that. They were really good and it was really cool.

Here's some pictures of our campsite/views along the trail that I have walked approximately 18 times so far.

Saturday
I got up and went for an exploratory run around the campus. I found a disc golf course and two abandoned camp sites. I think that in the earlier years of the program more of the kids lived in cabins, but they now have a dorm-like building that most of them live in, so there are little groups of cabins out on the trails that are no longer in use.

In the afternoon a few of us came out to the office to use the internet, and then got stranded here by the pouring rain. The campsite is about a quarter mile hike from the office, so none of us were really excited to do this in the rain. We finally went back around 5:30 when the rain let up a little.

We spent last night playing board games and card games. Most importantly, I dominated a game of Scrabble, using the word "azul" (apparently you can use foreign words) on a double word score.

Sunday
This morning a few of us went to a church that we found in the area. Afterward we went on a quest to Target (we've tried to go before, but the road to get there was flooded) and Walmart. And that's about it. I know I wrote a whole bunch, but I guess maybe this gives a good idea of what things are like here.