Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we just did a week long project for our tribute to MLK.

The project that we did was this. We went to Lock Haven Pensylvania to do some work for an organization called PennServe. They had us do different work every day that we were there, except for the strange twist that during the whole week we were there, we only did 3 days of actual work, which, was strange to me.... But anyways, here's what we did:

First day of work - We worked at the towns only Homeless shelter by painting various parts of the interior of the building itself, mainly the dining area, living area, the stair hallway and 2 rooms in the upstairs portion of the building. I thought this was the most relaxing work that we've done so far, i enjoyed myself and found out that i'm actually pretty good at using the roller "Although painting itself really isnt too hard, especially when you're painting a house, its still fun".

Second day of work - Our team went to a youth center to prepare a lesson plan for approxamately 10 kids, ranging from ages 5-14. The lesson plan we developed involved us teaching the kids about martin luther kings life and the work he was involved in during the civil rights movement. Of course instead of it being purely educaitonal, and due to the kids' age range, we toned it down to their level and made it fun. I mean comeon, who can resist the call of MLK history bingo :P.

Last day of work - The last day of work was pretty fun as well. We worked at some sort of art center in the middle of town, working to convert some of the old unused rooms into useful rooms to store supplies, or to house new pieces of art. The part I helped to work on was to take a completley empty room, and add 3 shelves to the room and a computer desk area. We cut wood and drilled the pieces of wood into the wall to create all the shelves and the computer desk. By the time we were done with that, it was time to go back to get our stuff and head home.

And by going back, where did we go to stay the whole time we were there?

A quaint little school called Lock Haven University :D

The university itself is a nice campus. It has a great rec center that had a bad ass rock climbing wall, weight room, indoor track, tennis football and raquetball courts and various tredmills and cycling machines. The cafeteria also was pretty sweet as well, awesome food every day which made it even better, BUT the thing that made it even better? We got to eat there for free!!!!!!!!! w00t AmeriCorps.

As for our living quarters, we stayed in one of the Dorm buildings. The dorms were alright, the rooms we stayed in were the study rooms, which had bunkbeds and desks in them, so they were made to accomodate multiple people obviously. As for the general college populaton, there was a fare share of the usual partiers, jocks, and whatever you would normaly find in the college gene pool.

As for recreational wise, on our off time, we took a trip down to Penn State to check out their world renound Creamery, and partook in some tastey delicious ice cream and milkshakes, then wandered around state college, which is actually a town, and checked out the bookstore there and bought a few things. Late evening, the 21+ over crowd went and got plastered at a nearby Saloon in downtown Lock Haven, while the under 21 crowd went and saw 2 movies, Hostel and Fun with Dick and Jane. I saw dick and Jane and meh, it was an alright movie, but what can you expect with Jim Carrey? I would have rather gotten plastered if possible due to the unfortunate accident that happened to my Niece.........

Oh yeah, about that......

I posted about this on my myspace, but anyways, yeah. My niece Jocelyn was hit by a truck on January 6th 2006. The accident caused critical damage to her, and she later died from her Injuries. I found out about this the day before the Funeral was supposed to happen, which was the day we left for Lock Haven. I talked with both my sisters at great length to find out what happened, and from what I was told, the driver was not under the influence, but he was at fault. Im not sure if my sister Ann is going to press charges or not, but as I said I don't know the full details. So you can expect that last saturday was a really shitty day for me.

But now, our team is back in DC, preparing for our next project, which is working at Phillips Charter School. 6 weeks we will be staying in the village, all by ourselves and with some other teams that are going in and out from their Disaster Relief Phase. Most likely this entry wont be posted for a few weeks due to this strange policy about not being able to hook up your laptop to the network because people are retards and dont know how to use Anti Virus software. But you know what...

I do what I want, I work for the government