I had a couple of fairly busy days last week, and this week, and probably next week. Things have picked up quite a bit lately since this round is coming to an end. We’ve been busy wrapping up our project with the Red Cross, taking care of special events, and getting ready to roll out. This past month seems to have rocketed by, especially after the long slow crawl of febuary, and now I really have to start worry about getting packed up and taking care of all of the excess crap that I’ve accumulated up here in New Hampshire. It wont be easy, bbut onto the events of last week.
Last thursday started off like a lot of our mornings have recently, piling into the van for a quick trip into Boston to meet with our FEMA POC. While we were in the office I took the chance to talk with an employee who had gone to one of the schools Im interested in going to in the fall. We talked about her experience at the school and our shared interest in stories and writing. I seem to remember grabbing a pretty awesome bagel on the way out of the city as we headed back to Nashua to finish up our work day. I hadn’t had coffee yet that morning and trips into Boston usually require getting up at the ass crack of dawn, so when i got my chance i chugged it down like a junkie (my addiction s in full force, but I can quit whenever I want I swear!). Work went on at the office as usual. I sent out some emails and updated documents and watched a ton of Achievement Hunter (shout out), but later in the afternoon there was some drama outside. The cops shut off the street outside and stopped the flow of traffic. Why? Because a couple of idiots were walking down the street with shotguns! This sounds worse than it is. Don’t get me wrong, we were concerned and we went into a bit of a lockdown, but a. nothing happened and b. nothing was going to happen. You see its not really illegal to carry guns around in New Hampshire, they have open carry laws, but these dumbasses were walking by a school! Which of course is goinng to cause some concern! So that was really all that came of that drama.
Once things died down a bit we had to get out of the office. The Red Cross was hosting a blood drive and our supervisor had invited us to come and participate, so we did. Only two of us ended up donating though, and I was one of them. I had never donated blood before so I was a little apprehensive. Im not the biggest fan of needles, but I’m getting over that because I get myself worked up about it for no reason and it always turns out to be nothing. In the end my dumb apprehension gave way to excitement. I’ve had blood taken before and I’m not grossed out by my own blood at all, so it was a fun experience. I rewarded myself when we got back by making a big pot of chili and watching Rock N’ Rolla with some teammates.
We never got to finish the movie though, because halfway through the fire alarm went off and everyone had to evacuate the hotel. No one knew what was going on, but I threw on my boots and a jacket and anything I didn’t want burned up and started out. When we got in the stairwell we heard this woman screaming for help on the floor above us. My teammate and I ran up to help. It turns out that tis woman’s son had locked himself in their room and she was hysterical, thinking he was unconscious or dead (in the end officials thought he had pulled the alarm). I never saw any fire, but there was a good amount of smoke on that top floor. It was scary listening to this woman panic as my teammate called 911. She kept trying to kick down the door (which wasn’t going to happpen) and kept asking me to check the windows to see if her son got out on a ledge (I couldn’t see anything). Eventually hotel workers showed up and fire fighters were on the way, so there was nothing left for us to do and we went outside. It wasn’t long before things cleared up and we were allowed back in. Nobody was hurtt, the boy got out, and things went back to normal. It amounted to one long, strange day.
Over the next weekend I got a unique and exciting opportunity for something that I probably would not have gotten if I weren’t in this program; to be in Boston for the St. Patricks Day parade. Boston has a huge Irish population and lot of unique culture surrounding it. St. Patricks Day is always a big deal. I’ve always wanted to be there to experience the celebration, and now I have. We didn’t go to get drunk out of our minds like everyone else. We went to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club of South Boston and help host a 5k race. My team leader was running the race. The rest of us helped sign people in and hand out numbers, and then we went to man what I like to call The Motivation Station. A few of us went out onto a street corner and cheered people on as they ran by. We were louud, obnoxious, and totally into it. I yelled so much my voice started to go, but I didn’t care, I was having too much fun. Anytime I got someone to smile as they ran by II knew I did my job. At one point while we were yelling a couple of young punks yelled at us to shut up, so I just turned and kept yelling even louder, right at them. I guess after that they felt the need to 1-up us at our own game, so they started giving runners high fives as they ran by. I didn’t stop theem, as long as they were cheering people up. When the last runner made their way past us we headed back to the start and helped take things down. Then it was off to the parade!
We got out of uniforms in the cramped van and changed into our normal clothes, donning new shirts given to us at the race (designed by the Dropkick Murpheys no less). Once we all piled out we made our way to the parade. The crowds were huge and mostly made up stumbling frat boys and girls that “Woooo!” at everything. We found a nice spot next to some particularly annoying drunk people (that way if we got lost we would be able to find our spot again) and we waited for it all to start. An interesting thing about Boston on St. Pattys is that, of course, everyone is drinking but there are open container laws, so it is illegal to carry booze out in thee open. Naturally this forces everyone to get “creative” with their drinking. I saw so many plastic water bottles filled with vodka and Dunkin Donuts cups filled with Godknowswhat. There are cops everywhere at the parade and nobody is fooling anybody, especially as they get more drunk. The police are completely aware, but they will let it slide as long as you’re not causing any chaos. The people next to us, or at least one woman in particular, seemed to think they we’re so clever and badass and that the cops had no clue. Of course they knew lady. You were stumbling around speaking nonsense and shoving vodka in your boyfriend’s face so hard he had to step back. I have no problem with St. Patty’s Day drinking, but have some respect for the unspoken rules, put in place by Saint Patrick himself.
The parade itself was pretty cool, not spectacular, but pretty cool. I mean its a parade. Ive never gone to a parade and walked away with my mind blown. Several high school bands played some decent tunes. Men in kilts blasted on bagpipes in a fairly awesome manner. We saw a nice float for the survivors off the marathon bombing. Not to mention all sorts of police and fire fighters. My favorite part by far though was when a big group of people dressed as Ghostbusters walked by having the time of their lives. Never thought I’d see that. Now that I think about it, though, I can’t imagine going on having not seen that!
We left the parade after a little more than and hour, mostly due to tiredness but slightly due to our neighbors increasing in obnoxiousness. We went on the hunt for food and then a way out of the city. I’m pretty sure the rest of the day was filled with napping and Netflix.
On actual St. Patricks day we visited a FEMA response center in Wayland. I drove us there and had a good time weaving through the entire town because we could not, for the life of us, find where we were supposed to be! We finally got it. The center was located in an old bunker and had some cool corridors that reminded me of Aliens and The Thing (both quality films if you’re interested). We only went there for a tour, but some high school kids were there too, so we ended up having to give them a presentation on FEMA Corps. I was tired and entirely unprepared to present, so I’m sure our pitch came off as more of a cautionary tale and less of a recruitment speech. After the tour we were taken out to some lunch. It was St. Patty’s so made sure to get as much Irish food as I could. Afterwards we headed back to Nashua and finished working.
Since then we have done a lot of traveling around New England. We went to Providence again to man a booth at a career fair. I hadn’t showered in a while and I looked absolutely haggard compared to all the clean college students, but I made it work. I also checked out the rest of the fair, grabbing as much free stuff as I couuld. Other than that we’ve made a trip to New Hampshire University for presentations and we took part in an emergency exercise at a school in Massachusetts. We mostly just manned another booth, but there was free pizza, so I didn’t mind.
That about sums up the adventures of the past week. We did pop into Portsmouth New Hampshire for a little bit and were blown away at how beautiful it was. I wanted to go back yesterday but I overslept and missed the ride. Oh well.
Its time to get into wrap-up mode. I need to start packing up all my crap and ship some things home that I don’t have space for. I always get stressed out around these times. It’s going to take another three day drive to get back to Mississippi, and transition is going to hectic as all hell. It will be great to see some of my other friends though. I’ve been stuck all alone with my team for too long. Death threats between my roommate and I are much too common. I probably wont post again until transition is over because its going to be too busy and I plan on just having some fun. A lot of us are taking a trip into New Orleans and I’m very excited!
When I get back I’ll do another overview of my round like I did for Atlanta and I’ll probably have some news as to where I’m going next. Thank you all for reading. Until next tiime…
I'm straight out of High School... 