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.

Well, most of the flooding has gone down by now. Most of the roads are open and the trails around here are no longer mud pits. So far we've mostly been doing normal orientation and training stuff, slowly feeling less lost and confused. We did some ice breaker and team building games, wrote letters to ourselves, got TB tests, went over our handbooks, and did a whole bunch of paperwork.

Today, however was awesome. Let's just say that I fell in love with drumming this morning, and I plan to be a professional by the end of my stay here. There is a therapeutic drumming program here, and we spent 3 hours in the yurt playing West African drums this morning. I enjoyed it immensely, and I can definitely see how it can be therapeutic. We get to do drumming once a week with our Americorps team, and also with our kids when we start working with them. The drumming instructor is also teaching a workshop to get certified to facilitate therapeutic drumming, which is offered to us for free.

Immediately after our drumming session, we got to watch a graduation ceremony, which was also one of the most incredible things to experience here. I can't really say much about things that go on here for privacy reasons, but this individual seemed to have come a very long way during his time here, and it was good to hear such encouraging stories.

That is the best word I can use to describe my first 24 hours in Georgia. It was expected to rain a lot this week here, but I had no idea just how much. Last night about 8 it started raining, and continued to rain until, well, actually I think it might still be raining now. We had a pretty intense first night in our cabins with an intense thunderstorm going all night, the thunder kept us up a lot and we are pretty sure that lightening struck our cabin at one point. A couple of the other cabins said they had sparks shooting out of their outlets.

Everything was flooded today. Trees near the lake had fallen down because the ground around them had washed out. Our path to our cabins now has a nice little stream running through it. We ended up not doing much of anything today because our leader people couldn't make it here with all the flooding.

So since we had a free day, a bunch of people decided to head into town to get stuff and just look around. I wasn't going to go, but for fear of being left at the campsite alone, I ended up going with the three guys on a trip to get one of the guys' breaks fixed and tour Douglasville. We didn't have any trouble getting there, and it didn't really rain while we were there. However, as soon as we left to come back to camp, it started pouring. And thus began the real adventure. Following our GPS guide, we kept running into roads that had been closed due to flooding. The way we came was closed, and after about 45 minutes of driving in the downpour we ended up at a gas station that I'm fairly certain was now an island. We started contemplating our options of waiting it out at the gas station (it had benches we could sleep on, and food) or driving a long way around to get back, which we weren't sure would even work. We ended up finding a way back that took us a good half hour, and actually had to drive down a road a little ways that was supposed to be closed, but we made it.

Oh, and did I mention that we didn't have any water in our bath house today? Because of this, and the electrical problems in the cabins, we are all spending the night tonight at the school's library. So, I guess you could say that its been an exciting first day. But more importantly, its been really cool to meet the other people I'll be living and working with. It seems like a great group of people and I think it will be great. This place is beautiful (probably more so when it isn't flooded and raining, but I haven't seen that yet) and I am feeling very blessed to be here.

I forgot to put it on my last list of highlights, but one of the coolest things I've done in the past few weeks was spending the day with Taylor. For anyone who doesn't know, Taylor is my niece. She 2 years and 3 months old. I love her a lot. I had no idea I could get so attached to someone who still struggles with making full sentences. She is the cutest little girl that has ever existed. I know there are a lot of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles reading this who probably think their children and grandchildren are the cutest kids, but I am sorry to tell you that you are wrong.

I'm going to take this opportunity to shamelessly brag about Taylor. Her parents are both super smart, very athletic, and just overall awesome people (and good-looking, I might add). So naturally, Taylor is a cute little genius who will probably be the next Mia Hamm. Or astrophysicist. She loves to "play soccer outside" with "Aunt Dawnie", as she calls me. "Soccer" really means bouncing a rubber basketball back and forth, but I'm sure the skills will carry over. And did I mention that I taught her to catch? I also tried to teach her to juggle, but her parents were less than thrilled about her throwing objects over her head.

Probably her favorite thing to do is "read a book". She'll find anyone who's willing (although she prefers her Aunt Dawnie, of course) and bring them over to sit on the couch and read some of her many books with her. And when Taylor reads books, she is not satisfied with just reading a single book one time through. Oh no. She will read as many books as she can as many times as she can until you cut her off. I was hoping to teach Taylor how to read before I left for Georgia, and I think I've succeeded. Well, maybe not, but she does know all the words to most of her books, so she can fake it really well. Which is also a good life skill.

My AmeriCorps service officially starts one week from today! I put that exclamation point there so you just how excited I am about this. I have been thinking about what I need/want to pack, and I'm pretty sure its not all going to fit in my car. I found out today that I need to be there by 4pm next Sunday, and since its about a 12 hour drive, I will be getting up very early that morning. I'm hoping to find out who my roommate is sometime in the next couple days so I can start facebook stalking them, er, I mean, talking to them about stuff we're bringing.

The past few weeks at home with my family has been really nice. I don't have much to do during the week, which gets a little boring, but its been really good overall. Some highlights:

• In the last 3 weeks, I have played at least 20 games of euchre
• I went to the zoo with my niece (and the rest of my family)
• My cousin caught 3 huge bass in my grandpa's pond
• I won Phase 10 Dice playing bingo at a family reunion
  
• I saw a whole bunch of my cousins at said reunion, which was great, and I hope they are reading this (ahem, Erik)
• My dad and I remodeled a table that my grandparents gave me
  
• I went to Bethel and Chicago, saw a lot of awesome people there, ate banana pancakes, and won a game of Settlers.
  

Since returning home, I've been really surprised at how many people have been reading my blog. Which kind of scares me. I guess I really need to watch what I say. But really, I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my blog. Now that I'm not off in foreign lands having adventures, I'm guessing that most people have lost interest and won't ever get this message. Oh well. And for everyone who didn't read my blog at all . . . well, thanks for being a terrible friend (don't have to watch what I say about you, you're not reading it!). Just kidding (just in case you happened to read it today).

I'm getting very excited about my new job in Georgia which starts in about three weeks. From what I know of it, its going to be the hardest but most awesome job in the world. Don't believe me? This is where I'll be living:It has heat and air conditioning (whoa, fancy), beds, and a desk. That's about it. I'm really excited.

Greetings from outer space. I have been safely home for about 40 hours or something like that. I'm not really sure, I slept for a long time, and then I didn't sleep for a long time, and now I'm tired. The long flight actually went really well; we got to sit together and I watched the new Star Trek movie which was awesome. I also read letters that Tommy and Cherry had sent with me to read on the plane and those made me real happy.

In true academic form, I feel I should exercise my summarizing skills in regards to this trip. So here is the list I made on the plane of my favorite things about Korea (or at least my experience in Korea).

1) The people. We met a lot of really friendly people and they were really cool (except that one guy on the bus that yelled at us).
2) Korean Barbecue - the food and the sitting on the floor aspect
3) Mountains
4) Lotte Mart on Saturday when they give free samples of everything
5) Public transportation
6) Ice cream - they have it everywhere for cheap
7) Their Eco-friendliness. They have a lot of motion-sensing lights and good public transportation, among other things . . .
8) Like really nice parks dotted throughout the city.
9) Going shoeless. I really like taking my shoes off the moment I walk in the door.
10) Hanging out in mountain streams, aka "kego"
11) T-shirts with "English" on them. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't.
12) Smoothies made to order from fresh fruit
13)Eating with chopsticks - I've actually gotten pretty good at it.