Fourth Round Surprise.

We are headed to Springfield, Massachusetts for fourth round! Working with Rebuild Together doing longterm disaster recovery. It sounds like a great project so I'm pumped for it for our last round. Here are some pictures!

The team on the Science Barge

At karaoke

painting a mural

New WTC

Round 3 wrap up

Today started the last week of Round 3, which means our last week in New York. We head back to the Point on Friday and I have to say I'm quite ready to do so and equally ready to find out what are team will be doing during Round 4. Needless to say I'm not to sad to see this round end, there has beens some good work and some benefits to New York but much of what I enjoyed about being here had absolutely nothing to do with the project. Our housing for the first half at Mount St. Mary's was perfect, it was such a nice place to relax and for once having internet was just great. The work at the Armory was probably some of the best work we've done since first round, we really did a lot for the organization as a whole. The location of Hastings-on-Hudson has been perfect, we are walking distance from a nice downtown area that has food and bars and we are alos 25 minutes from NYC which was definitely the highlight here. Being able to go into the city was fantastic, especially since it was so inexpensive. I've always wanted to go and being in this location made it possible.

Now for the project  I really have little to say, I've been generally disappointed. I went in understanding this would be an environmental project but I never realized environmental had to so literally mean pulling weeds and invasive vine (that will come back in about 3 months). I'm really hoping that for once the projects department really listens to our team and how much we actually want to do a build project or even work with people, instead of spend our days digging up weeds. I'll update when I find out next round, pray we get a great project. I'll also have to wait to add pictures until I have better internet. Until then!

Oh New York

New York is well New York, this project so far in Yonkers hasn't been to bad. We've had a decent variety of work this first week, although it has included lots of weeding which let me tell you I will never do again after this program. We also got to touch up this really cool game/mural at a housing project in the city of Yonkers, lots of painting but really enjoyable. I also had a chance to go to the Science Barge which is a greenhouse that only uses sustainable energy on a barge off a dock in Yonkers. A few people on the team were able to participate in harvesting vegetables from the barge to give to a food shelter. The housing isn't horrible but I don't really think the nursing home is using us effectively at all, it also unfortunately seems that they don't really want us there. I'll try to do a longer update later, I'm going back to NYC tomorrow to see Ellis Island, WTC site, China Town, and more. And I'm staying the night thanks to Josh's mom who had hotel points and was able to get us a free hotel room, so I'm incredibly pumped to spend more time in the city. Until next time!

New York City

New York City Pictures, it was lovely. I'm going back Saturday. I adore it.

With Bumblebee at Ripley's Believe it or Not

Grand Central

Cheesy tourism

Bryant Park Library

Library

Times Square!

Times Square

The Naked Cowboy

Pictures with the Senators and Mr. Kaplan

Talking with Senator Skelos

Mr. Kaplan

The team with Senator Larkin

The Last days in Newburgh

Tomorrow is our last day in Newburgh, NY, we move to Yonkers on Friday to go work with that division of Groundwork Hudson Valley. We had a taste of their office on Tuesday when we went down to National Night Out in Yonkers to help them set up and run their tables. I haven't updated much on Newburgh but this is what we have done; worked at the Armory which has been by far the best aspect of this project. The Armory is exactly that, an old military armory that closed about 3 years ago that the city bought for $1 and is now working to convert into a recreation center. We have been working on demo-ing a few different aspects so that they are able to get architects in to finally start the process of putting in an indoor turf field. Tomorrow we'll be going back to actually meet with two New York State Senators, which should be interesting. We've also worked at Downing Park and Safe Harbors while we've been here, both have been maintenance work: weeding, painting, washing windows, getting poison ivy. The fun stuff. That's pretty much it, I'll be sad to leave the housing here it's been nice having my own room and wifi but hopefully it'll be nice in Hastings-on-Hudson.

Here's some pictures.

The team at the ISP

Face Paint!

My future cat Sylvester

Working at the Armory

After the walls were taken down

Future indoor soccer field

Hanging out at National Night Out

Finished Product.