Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Well, a lot has happened since the last time I wrote...but I’m just going to start with about 3 weeks ago. We left for ASP on a Saturday morning. Matt came to see us off, which was nice. Matt, what’s with you and having car issues while we’re driving to/from ASP?! Anyway, I met my group...I knew who most of them were but didn’t know any of them very well, though Jessica was on my workteam last year too. We all got along pretty well, which was nice. We rode as teams for a while, then switched to ride with friends after lunch. We stayed at a hotel in Virginia. We went the WEIRDEST way to Kentucky ever...I think we went to Virginia, Tennesee, back to Virginia, and then to Kentucky. It was bizzare. Anyway, at the hotel, our first realization was that the freezers didn’t have ice cube trays! Ahh! We were so dissapointed! We all hung out for a while-amused ourselves by watching Steven, who was very drugged up, as he’d just had a wisdom tooth removed like the day before or something lol. Let’s just say he didn’t know how to whisper (I heard him “whisper” to Rachel while I was in the bathroom!!!) and it’s a good thing leaders weren’t near our room very often haha. Anyway, later we went out for dinner. Corey, Steven, Rachel and I chose to go to Ruby Tuesdays...and what did we find across the street? DOLLAR GENERAL!!! SCORE! So we walked over there and bought not one but THREE ice cube trays hahaha. However, by the time we got back to the hotel, it was pretty late. We put the ice cube stuff together-corey even brought koolaid powder with him so we could flavor them, and we added the traditional dried fruit and skittles. Then we put them in the freezer overnight since it was late. However...apparently flavoring them wasn’t such a good idea. Somehow it caused the skittles to dissolve...meaning there were random lumps of sugar...and that caused them to not freeze. Or something like that-woohoo not understanding chemistry haha. Anna, you figure it out. I mean, I know they’d take longer to freeze b/c the freezing point was lowered...but why did the skittles dissolve? It happened really fast-like within a few minutes of putting in the skittles, they were gone. They didn’t do that in regular water last year. Anyway, point being, we had some pretty strange ice cubes. Oddly enough, some of the ones that had a LOT of skittles froze. The dried fruit ones froze too. I tasted one though and it was kinda gross. Too much koolade haha. Chris had one though and he liked it. I dont think anyone else even tried one since they looked so weird. Oh, and we couldn’t see if the Ss came off or not since they were red. Bah. Haha oh well. We’ll know better for next year.
Wow I wrote a lot about ice cubes. Moving on...
The next day we finished our drive...which took a lot longer than expected because of that crazy route...which is really weird since we went litterally through the county we were in last year-I even recognized it, which is like a miracle considering my sense of direction and everything-and last year we didn’t go that way. It really baffled me lol. Oh well. So finally we got to the center...which was air conditioned :-D yay! It was actually pretty nice. The showers were definitly the best part though! After last year’s insanely cold mountain stream water, I was already dreading another week of cold showers...but then they announced that they were in a greenhouse! Not only did that mean the air was nice and warm, they also had a reservoir that was warmed by the sun so we could have at worst very slightly cold showers. We also had the option of turning on hot water, though we didn’t use it very often b/c the hot water was HOT and there was no temperature control. It was quite comfortable though. Especially if you got one of the first showers-I had to let it cool down a little bit when I got in really early, and it wasn’t even on the “hot” setting. Lol ok enough about my love of the showers. The only thing I didn’t really like about the center was the food. I guess we were spoiled last year. This year, they were on a federal fund thing so the food was very limited. It wasn’t that it was bad...there just didn’t seem to be very much. And no extras or anything. For example, for breakfast, a lot of days we had biscuits. But it was just...biscuits. No butter or anything. So that was weird, but not the worst thing in the world or anything.
Onto my groups projects. The first three days we spent finishing a porch. The group before us had torn the rotten one down and made most of the flat piece. We finished that, put in the railings, spindles, stairs, and pillar thingies. It was awesome. Definitly my favorite project so far. I love building stuff, and I got to use the circular saw a good bit again, which was my favorite job last year. We probabaly could’ve gotten finished in two days, but we had some setbacks. Just before lunchtime the first day, Josh sliced his finger on an exacto knife and had to go to the hospital and get it glued-which sounds reallyweird but I think it’s kinda like that new liquid bandaid stuff-only its like liquid stitches lol. Anyway, so we went back to the center while Mr. Tigner took Josh to the hospital, so that cut out about a half day of work. The next day, it was cloudy, which somehow messed up our lady’s electricity, so we had no power for about 2 hours, which meant we couldn’t do very much during that time. We didn’t have a cordless drill so we couldn’t even put screws in. Then we had to drive up to Toby’s site to ask her about something so that took a while. On Wednesday, though, we finished early. The porch looked awesome. I’m very proud of it.
Oh, I almost forgot, one of those nights was culture night. Most of us didn’t really want to go, but since a few people did, we all had to go. A man sang songs and talked to us about living up in Appalachia and his life and such. He’s a cancer survivor and has seen a lot happen, so you’d think he’d tell some great stories, but to be honest, I had a little bit of trouble following him. He’d be like “now I’m going to sing a song about ___” and then tell an unrelated story and then sing the song. And he’d talk during his songs. One time he was like “this next line is my favorite one; you’re all gonna laugh” and he sang it and it wasn’t funny at all. Not like it was bad humor or anything, but none of us could see how there was any sort of joke in there or anything at all. So that was kinda weird. But we went out for ice cream afterwards and i got a banana split and it was really good so Andrew and I kept passing it back and forth in the car. By the time we got back, there was still like 2/3 of it left, so Corey and I split the rest lol. Another night, we drove far away to go to this special ice cream-well, kinda-place that stayed open an extra hour just for us to be able to come. They had shaved ices and these things they called “fruit and creams.” It was like shaved ice with sweet cream on it topped with really good fresh fruit.
Thursday, it rained. Yuck. We were assigned a new project. There was a 74 year old lady living at the bottom of a hill, and the road was at the top. The only way she could get up there was to walk a while to a less steep area and climb up. There was a very old set of stairs near her house but they were very steep, made of rocks that were slippery when wet, and not very stable. We removed the old rocks and waited for a while for the railroad ties to be delivered. However, we needed to cut them in half and didn’t have a chain saw, and couldn’t do anything else until we did. So we mostly sat around and talked with the lady. She was soooooooo nice. The first lady was nice too, but she was quiet and on a heart moniter and didn’t talk much or anything. The second lady was awesome. She wasn’t afraid to talk about anything haha. We had a discussion about low rise jeans. It wasn’t like “Oh you young people are disgraceful” or anything either lol-it was more of her asking “How do they stay up? Do you feel like they’re gonna fall off of your bottom?” and such and she was hillarious using those types of expressions but we all loved it. She loves Pepsi and had never tried Ale8! We promised to bring her some the next day. She sat with us while we ate lunch, and even brought us out some cheese balls, which, for someone up there with financial trouble, that’s really a lot to offer. She was hillariously open about EVERYTHING lol. When someone asked if they could use her bathroom the first time, she went on about how she was surprised we’d been able to “hold our water” that long hahaha. She told us some great stories. Some were funny, but some were really sad. Two of her siblings died when they were 3 and 4 years old. She’s the last remaining one, because her sister was recently murdered. It was really interesting to learn about her life though. I’ve never had someone as open as her on any service project, so it was a nice change. Friday, we were able to get more done, but there wasn’t really much I could do. It involved a lot of heavy lifting...which isn’t exactly my thing lol. I got kinda frustrated because the few things I was able to do, I was slower than other people-like digging holes or even filling in gaps between the steps-so someone else always took over my job, whether I wanted them to or not. So eventually I just kinda gave up and talked with the lady. I felt bad for not working, but every time I tried I was kinda shooed away so...yeah. I wasn’t too happy about the work that day, but it made me appreciate the lady being so social even more.
Wow it’s 1:30 in the morning lol. So much for going to bed early. I’ll just finish talking about ASP and write about the beach and AOSP another time.
That night we had the traditional “love feast” (communion except no minister so they can’t call it that because it’s not technically blessed) and shared memories of the week. As usual, a lot of people were crying by the end...I was right on the verge...and I thought I’d be okay for once...and then...we got up to start the Tshirt auction and I started talking to Corey and then I started crying, which was kinda strange lol, but then I felt better anyway. The Tshirt auction was awesome. People bring shirts from home to donate, and every year it’s a really big deal to our church. They announced before the auction that we really needed to raise money to help a familiy that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. The estimate just to get pipes running to their house was $1,700 and that was with no complications. So that was our goal, though there was plenty of other stuff that more money could be used for.
We raised over $2,400 that night.
It was amazing to see kids using their own money to bid on shirts for over $50, sometimes even over $100. I didn’t buy any, though I almost bid on one, but Hannah ended up buying it for like $3 so that’s okay lol. The staffers looked shocked at how much we raised-apparently the last few groups have only raised about $250.
The room I was in was crazy that night. A few girls from the other room sneeked over to visit with us and we had a big “gossip circle” type thing haha and it was fun. We thought we heard someone coming once, so we all made a HUGE amount of noise diving for sleeping bags and onto cots and stuff, especially since we were all on one side of the room so we ended up falling all over eachother, and then, of course, cracking up. Luckily no one was coming anyway, but we had a great time laughing at how stupid we were to react that way. By like 2:30 AM, I was exausted, and it was starting to make me dizzy, so I was the first to go to bed. The others were up til around 4 I think. I must’ve really been out though lol because I don’t remember much after I got into bed, and I’m usually a really light sleeper.
The next morning we cleaned up, took a big group picture, and said goodbye to the staffers. Then we left, and we got to ride with our friends again. I planned to sleep a lot but I didn’t for a while, mostly because Hannah and I were fighting eachother for space haha. Finally I moved up front since Ms. Kay was riding in the truck with her husband, since he was towing the trailer. Then I fell asleep lol. We got home around 4:30 I think...and then went home to get ready for the beach! But I’ll save that until at least later today...bedtime for me.
So that was ASP 2005! A year of fun, a great group for me, though not so great for some people, a year with probably a record number of hospital visits-Josh with his finger, Ms. Rosko, who slit her wrist on a piece of tin, and Kristin, who crashed while fourwheeling (ASP no-no lol) and sprained her wrist. I enjoyed it though! If you want to see pictures, check out my new picture website: http://hyperpoptart.dotphoto.com
gnight all!
Wow I wrote a lot about ice cubes. Moving on...
The next day we finished our drive...which took a lot longer than expected because of that crazy route...which is really weird since we went litterally through the county we were in last year-I even recognized it, which is like a miracle considering my sense of direction and everything-and last year we didn’t go that way. It really baffled me lol. Oh well. So finally we got to the center...which was air conditioned :-D yay! It was actually pretty nice. The showers were definitly the best part though! After last year’s insanely cold mountain stream water, I was already dreading another week of cold showers...but then they announced that they were in a greenhouse! Not only did that mean the air was nice and warm, they also had a reservoir that was warmed by the sun so we could have at worst very slightly cold showers. We also had the option of turning on hot water, though we didn’t use it very often b/c the hot water was HOT and there was no temperature control. It was quite comfortable though. Especially if you got one of the first showers-I had to let it cool down a little bit when I got in really early, and it wasn’t even on the “hot” setting. Lol ok enough about my love of the showers. The only thing I didn’t really like about the center was the food. I guess we were spoiled last year. This year, they were on a federal fund thing so the food was very limited. It wasn’t that it was bad...there just didn’t seem to be very much. And no extras or anything. For example, for breakfast, a lot of days we had biscuits. But it was just...biscuits. No butter or anything. So that was weird, but not the worst thing in the world or anything.
Onto my groups projects. The first three days we spent finishing a porch. The group before us had torn the rotten one down and made most of the flat piece. We finished that, put in the railings, spindles, stairs, and pillar thingies. It was awesome. Definitly my favorite project so far. I love building stuff, and I got to use the circular saw a good bit again, which was my favorite job last year. We probabaly could’ve gotten finished in two days, but we had some setbacks. Just before lunchtime the first day, Josh sliced his finger on an exacto knife and had to go to the hospital and get it glued-which sounds reallyweird but I think it’s kinda like that new liquid bandaid stuff-only its like liquid stitches lol. Anyway, so we went back to the center while Mr. Tigner took Josh to the hospital, so that cut out about a half day of work. The next day, it was cloudy, which somehow messed up our lady’s electricity, so we had no power for about 2 hours, which meant we couldn’t do very much during that time. We didn’t have a cordless drill so we couldn’t even put screws in. Then we had to drive up to Toby’s site to ask her about something so that took a while. On Wednesday, though, we finished early. The porch looked awesome. I’m very proud of it.
Oh, I almost forgot, one of those nights was culture night. Most of us didn’t really want to go, but since a few people did, we all had to go. A man sang songs and talked to us about living up in Appalachia and his life and such. He’s a cancer survivor and has seen a lot happen, so you’d think he’d tell some great stories, but to be honest, I had a little bit of trouble following him. He’d be like “now I’m going to sing a song about ___” and then tell an unrelated story and then sing the song. And he’d talk during his songs. One time he was like “this next line is my favorite one; you’re all gonna laugh” and he sang it and it wasn’t funny at all. Not like it was bad humor or anything, but none of us could see how there was any sort of joke in there or anything at all. So that was kinda weird. But we went out for ice cream afterwards and i got a banana split and it was really good so Andrew and I kept passing it back and forth in the car. By the time we got back, there was still like 2/3 of it left, so Corey and I split the rest lol. Another night, we drove far away to go to this special ice cream-well, kinda-place that stayed open an extra hour just for us to be able to come. They had shaved ices and these things they called “fruit and creams.” It was like shaved ice with sweet cream on it topped with really good fresh fruit.
Thursday, it rained. Yuck. We were assigned a new project. There was a 74 year old lady living at the bottom of a hill, and the road was at the top. The only way she could get up there was to walk a while to a less steep area and climb up. There was a very old set of stairs near her house but they were very steep, made of rocks that were slippery when wet, and not very stable. We removed the old rocks and waited for a while for the railroad ties to be delivered. However, we needed to cut them in half and didn’t have a chain saw, and couldn’t do anything else until we did. So we mostly sat around and talked with the lady. She was soooooooo nice. The first lady was nice too, but she was quiet and on a heart moniter and didn’t talk much or anything. The second lady was awesome. She wasn’t afraid to talk about anything haha. We had a discussion about low rise jeans. It wasn’t like “Oh you young people are disgraceful” or anything either lol-it was more of her asking “How do they stay up? Do you feel like they’re gonna fall off of your bottom?” and such and she was hillarious using those types of expressions but we all loved it. She loves Pepsi and had never tried Ale8! We promised to bring her some the next day. She sat with us while we ate lunch, and even brought us out some cheese balls, which, for someone up there with financial trouble, that’s really a lot to offer. She was hillariously open about EVERYTHING lol. When someone asked if they could use her bathroom the first time, she went on about how she was surprised we’d been able to “hold our water” that long hahaha. She told us some great stories. Some were funny, but some were really sad. Two of her siblings died when they were 3 and 4 years old. She’s the last remaining one, because her sister was recently murdered. It was really interesting to learn about her life though. I’ve never had someone as open as her on any service project, so it was a nice change. Friday, we were able to get more done, but there wasn’t really much I could do. It involved a lot of heavy lifting...which isn’t exactly my thing lol. I got kinda frustrated because the few things I was able to do, I was slower than other people-like digging holes or even filling in gaps between the steps-so someone else always took over my job, whether I wanted them to or not. So eventually I just kinda gave up and talked with the lady. I felt bad for not working, but every time I tried I was kinda shooed away so...yeah. I wasn’t too happy about the work that day, but it made me appreciate the lady being so social even more.
Wow it’s 1:30 in the morning lol. So much for going to bed early. I’ll just finish talking about ASP and write about the beach and AOSP another time.
That night we had the traditional “love feast” (communion except no minister so they can’t call it that because it’s not technically blessed) and shared memories of the week. As usual, a lot of people were crying by the end...I was right on the verge...and I thought I’d be okay for once...and then...we got up to start the Tshirt auction and I started talking to Corey and then I started crying, which was kinda strange lol, but then I felt better anyway. The Tshirt auction was awesome. People bring shirts from home to donate, and every year it’s a really big deal to our church. They announced before the auction that we really needed to raise money to help a familiy that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. The estimate just to get pipes running to their house was $1,700 and that was with no complications. So that was our goal, though there was plenty of other stuff that more money could be used for.
We raised over $2,400 that night.
It was amazing to see kids using their own money to bid on shirts for over $50, sometimes even over $100. I didn’t buy any, though I almost bid on one, but Hannah ended up buying it for like $3 so that’s okay lol. The staffers looked shocked at how much we raised-apparently the last few groups have only raised about $250.
The room I was in was crazy that night. A few girls from the other room sneeked over to visit with us and we had a big “gossip circle” type thing haha and it was fun. We thought we heard someone coming once, so we all made a HUGE amount of noise diving for sleeping bags and onto cots and stuff, especially since we were all on one side of the room so we ended up falling all over eachother, and then, of course, cracking up. Luckily no one was coming anyway, but we had a great time laughing at how stupid we were to react that way. By like 2:30 AM, I was exausted, and it was starting to make me dizzy, so I was the first to go to bed. The others were up til around 4 I think. I must’ve really been out though lol because I don’t remember much after I got into bed, and I’m usually a really light sleeper.
The next morning we cleaned up, took a big group picture, and said goodbye to the staffers. Then we left, and we got to ride with our friends again. I planned to sleep a lot but I didn’t for a while, mostly because Hannah and I were fighting eachother for space haha. Finally I moved up front since Ms. Kay was riding in the truck with her husband, since he was towing the trailer. Then I fell asleep lol. We got home around 4:30 I think...and then went home to get ready for the beach! But I’ll save that until at least later today...bedtime for me.
So that was ASP 2005! A year of fun, a great group for me, though not so great for some people, a year with probably a record number of hospital visits-Josh with his finger, Ms. Rosko, who slit her wrist on a piece of tin, and Kristin, who crashed while fourwheeling (ASP no-no lol) and sprained her wrist. I enjoyed it though! If you want to see pictures, check out my new picture website: http://hyperpoptart.dotphoto.com
gnight all!
