Farewell Atlanta, Round 2

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first blog post of the new year (halfway through January)! December was an incredibly busy month, what with us wrapping up our FEMA work, leaving Atlanta, and then going on our holiday vacation. I’m not going to go into detail about my break. All I will say is that it felt incredible to be home for almost two weeks and getting to see everyone again.

I was planning to write this post the week I got back from home, but in between rounds we have a period of transition where we do more training and get things out of the way that we need to before the end of our service. Long story short last week was hectic. Once the weekend came around it already felt as if I had been away from home for another lifetime, but now transition is over and we have our brand new assignment.

I’m headed to New Hampshire! Nashua New Hampshire to be exact. Not the the place I would have chosen to be stationed during the winter round (especially since California was on the table), but I’m actually pretty excited to go. We’re going to be working with the Red Cross, an organization that I have always looked up to. The work we’ll be doing is something very different than what we’ve been doing, so I’m interested to see how it works out.

But before I get far ahead of myself daydreaming about my future adventures living above the wall, I need to acknowledge the place I have just come from.

Atlanta was an incredible experience all around, good bad. Being from a small town in the heart of New York and going to live in one of the biggest cities in the South was a huge change for me, and while I’ll admit that city life might not be for me, I will be forever grateful for the chance to find out for myself. The city was my home for nearly 3 months, so I think it is only fitting that I talk about the things I loved, the things I hated, the things I’ll miss, and the things I won’t.

Things I loved:

-The Atlanta Gay Pride parade was just an awesome spectacle to witness. It was so great to see a city come together just to celebrate people being themselves and have a good time while they were at it.

-Habitat for Humanity. We did Habitat twice while we were in atlanta. Both times were so fun and even more rewarding. I would recommend that everyone do it at least once in their lives.

-The MLK Jr. center. Seeing the tomb of Martin Luther King jr. was one of the most powerful experiences I had in Atlanta.

-The Georgia Aquarium. Seeing a massive tank filled with whale sharks and spending a day with my dad was certainly one of my favorite moments from last year. (Plus that dolphin show).

-THE ZOO! They had a nice zoo.

-Netherworld haunted house. Around Halloween we went to check out one of the biggest haunted houses in the nation. It took 2 hours of waiting in line, but every second was worth it (not to mention that being the best line I’ve ever stood in. IT
HAD A DJ!).

Things I hated:

-Chambers of Horror haunted house. Netherworld wasn’t our first try at a fun Halloween night. This haunted house was so awful that I won’t even talk about it further (that is a story for another day).

-My room flooding.

Things I’ll miss:

-My FEMA supervisors Phil and Nancy. We really lucked out when it came to our bosses at the FEMA office. Phil and Nancy were two of the best people I have ever worked for. They were both funny and charming, they guided us when we needed and let us be inn charge of our projects (they didn’t hover over our shoulders).They were a pleasure to work with and they constantly gave us food! Plus they liked us, so that’s always a step in the right direction.

-Chipotle. So many late night runs to Chipotle, so many.

-My magnificent twin sized matress. There were a lot of things right about the church we stayed at, but that bed was my pride and joy.

-Bottle Rocket, the sushi place that played The Walking Dead every sunday night.

-Grant Park. A beautiful green only a few blocks away from where we were staying. It had playgrounds, a zoo, and on weekends it hosted an awesome organic farmers market.

-Little 5 Points. A great section of the city filled with hipsters, coffee shops, pizza places, and a fantastic comic book store where I spent a lot of my time.

-The Village Theater. This great little venue that always had great improv comedy on thursday nights.

Things I won’t miss:

-The Traffic.

-The Rain.

-The bathrooms (cramped, dirty, and forsaken by God).

That about wraps it up. We ended on a bit of a negative note, but overall there were a lot more things that I liked about Atlanta than things that I didn’t. It was a fun place to live (at least when you don’t need to pay rent). I have friends headed back there again for their next round, and while I’m glad that my team is moving on, I am going to miss living with them and I hope they do great. Thank you all for reading! Next time I write I will be in Nashua, typing from inside of a taun taun. Until next time.

My Final Week

So this past week has been pretty intense for me personally. It’s my last week in New York state, and at home. It’s been pretty tough saying goodbye to everybody, even though I’ll be seeing them all again not too far from now. It’s just a little different this time because I’m the one leaving, not them. That being said, all of my ‘final activities’ with everybody have been pretty great.

• My dad took us all out white water rafting with his girlfriend’s family out on Jim Thorpe river in Pennsylvania. My sisters, Claire and Jocelyn, as well as Jocelyn’s fairly awesome boyfriend Mark, and I all manned our own raft. We conquered the river that day. Our goal was just to beat our Dad to the bottom. It got really close at the end, but we totally won.
• We all went out to dinner a few nights. I helped my sister Claire pack up to go back down to the city. She just got herself an apartment in Brooklyn with a bunch of her friends. Their landlord sounds like he’s straight out of a sitcom, and I approve of that!
• I spent an entire night with my best friend Nate playing Dead Rising 2, as it has just come out for free on Xbox Live. That was a great way to get in a ton of gaming before I have to quit cold turkey. You know that we have achieved success as a society when you can turn on a console and slay zombies with a flaming bat while wearing only some heart covered boxers and a burlesque crown. I am not making that up. We did that, several times. I plan on making a whole post oding to my love for gaming. While I’m gone Pokemon is going to have to sustain me. 
• Lastly I went out to beautiful Ithaca several times with friends and family. My friends and I all devoured some amazing burritos before going to see the new masterpiece from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright, The World’s End. I plan on putting out a review on that, so look for it in the future! 
• Lastly I went out to the movies one more time with my sister Jocelyn to enjoy Matt Damon’s newest adventure, Elysium. I thought it was a ton of gory fun! 

Other than all that, my week has been made up of preparing, and nervous worrying. I spend my nights watching Lord of the Rings with my mom before I go, and I spend my days making sure I have everything right. I leave tomorrow at 3 in the God-forsaken morning! Next time I post I will be in Mississippi, hopefully with something interesting to say!