Friday, August 12, 2011

One man's trash, another's treasure

(This was written a week ago and I'm just now posting)

I wish I had pictures from today. Brian does, he takes about 200 pictures a day, and he said he'd send me his favorites. The reason is, we did our first service project at the Randolph Learning Center (RLC), the alternative school for kids with behavioral issues. Administration has decided to rename the school in favor of a new acronym after the students started calling themselves "Retarded Little Children".

Anyways, after a morning of presentations on all the job positions, we split into groups to do different projects around the school to spruce it up. A few others and myself removed a neglected terrarium from the cafeteria and cleaned weeds out the greenhouse. We found some treasure there: a massive tomato plant dripping with green bulbs and a copperhead. We relocated after meeting the snake, and I proudly rescued the tomato plant to the growing garden on Mt Buchanan. Another group that included my housemates Chrissy and Steven carried a bunch of furniture to a dumpster out front. Upon realizing that there were useable desks and chairs in the dumpster, about 5 of us climbed right in and used a power tool to remove the carpeted privacy walls from the desks (ya know... the kind you sit in in ISS...) and hauled them right back out of the dumpster. Now, all I need is a (real) bed!

It's been one hell of a great week. The team is like a family already, we're all on the same page and work harmoniously with one another. We went to karaoke night Wednesday, and Matt and his fiance Liz took the cake and made it to the finals; Matt came in 2nd. They are awesome, both hold theater degrees and are from Austin, TX! Last night, a group of about 6 of us went to a yoga class and left with super flexible hips from holding pigeon pose for wayyyyy too long. But here's what really brought us together: the Get Motivated! business conference, aka Get Scammed! We caravanned to Greenville, SC at 6 AM with high hopes of hearing Bill Cosby, Laura Bush, Steve Forbes, Rudy Giuliani, and a bunch of other big shot speakers. We arrived at an arena at capacity- 21,000 people- and promptly watched a circus spectacle complete with confetti, fire cannons, and spotlights. Some of the speakers had some good stuff to say, but mostly it was an infomercial for an investment management software aka scam. We left early.

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