ISP’s for Days

Yes I realize that it has been a while since I’ve posted anything. The past week wasn’t that great for me, but petty excuses aside I have a brand new post for you all. Are you excited? Yes? No? You better be!

*(If you’re not, just remember that google maps is a thing that exists, and I could find where you live easily if I was really dedicated…but I wouldn’t worry about that. I’d much rather get what we in Atlanta call a cake-shake. That’s a milkshake with an entire cupcake blended up in it. An entire cupcake. Sounds amazing right? Of course it is! Far more worth my time than hunting you down. It’s not all about you you know.)

But anyway, on to the post! Since FEMA work has been very meh lately, I will be talking about all my recent ISP’s. If you are new to this establishment or you just really don’t like paying attention to me, ISP stands for individual service project. Got it down? Gonna remember it this time? You better! (If not refer to the previous threat*)

We shall begin a long long time ago. Last Wednesday to be exact. We we’re “given the day off at the office” because someone’s retirement party was going on in our workspace, so really we were just kind of pushed out of the way. Still wanting something to do for the day, we volunteered at a local community garden. It was located down the street from the community center we volunteered for, wrapping around a soccer field so torn up it made me regret ever saying that the ones back home were shitty.

We worked for an incredibly nice woman named Mariam who instructed us in all our work and even stepped in to help from time to time. While we worked she shared with us bits of her life story, growing up in the city but spending time at her grandparents farm in New York caused her to get a degree in agriculture and work to educate inner city kids about clothe benefits of growing your own food. She had us working to build a special kind of compost garden that I forget the name of (something German). It involved a lot of piled logs, mulch, compost and soil. It was good hard work and not all too complicated, and besides a few ant bites it was pretty fun. While digging up some Georgia clay for the garden I joked with my roommate David that we were all digging his grave, and that it would be rude of him not to help (it was for him after all).

ISP #2 was, yet again, Habitat for Humanity! I was very excited for the chance to work with habitat once again. My first experience working with them was so fulfilling and fun that I would gladly do it 100 times. This time was a little different than the last.

For one it was a day one build as opposed to day two, so we had different work to do. This time our jobs consisted of building and putting up the frame of the house. Part of it was already constructed (it was like the organization’a 800,000th house…or something. It was already partly built for some event) so it resulted in a serious lack of work to do. So many people had shown up to volunteer that there just weren’t enough jobs for everyone. You would feel like you weren’t really helping if you did nothing, but you felt like you were in the way if you stepped in on a job. I ended up wandering around trying to snag any job I could before someone else took it. When I couldn’t do that I just had to look busy. Other than that the only thing I have to say is that the contractor in
charge was annoyingly good looking. The girls on my team wouldn’t stop talking about him. I didn’t see what the big deal was, I’ve seen way hotter guys. Overall my second habitat session wasn’t as good as my first, so as a result my after-habitat nap wasn’t nearly as blissful, but I was still ok.

My last ISP was on Veterans Day. My team took the day off from our FEMA work and joined up with that other team staying with us to honor the veterans the best way we knew how, cleaning soap. We volunteered at the Global Soap project for the day, it’s an organization that takes in nasty old soap from hotels, cleans it up, grinds it together to make new soap and then gives that new soap away to third world countries and government organizations (the cdc gets a lot of their soap from them). After touring the plant we set to work cleaning off the old nasty soap for the day. Mostly it was pretty disgusting. I can’t tell you how many big clumps of hair I had to get off that soap (don’t worry we wore gloves, didn’t keep me from gagging though). It was a pretty nice ISP though, we were helping out a seriously nice cause, and I got to throw soap at my roommate David. Afterward we took some pictures, said our goodbyes, and then got some Taco Bell (I still stand in my belief that Doritos Locos tacos are the greatest things on earth).

*a note from the dumbass writer:
This is pertaining as to why this blog post took weeks to write. I’m sitting in the FEMA office, my normal work all finished and my energy from the 12 cups of coffee from this morning dissipating. I’m reflecting on my horrid bout of procrastination and eager to put this phone down to watch some more Doctor Who (which I now just remember that I watch on my phone…). I believe I owe it to you all who have been asking for the next post to apologize. It seems that every time I manage to put out a new post it has to start with me giving excuse after excuse for being late.

I don’t exactly know why it’s been so hard for me to keep up with this blog. Originally the idea was to have a post almost every other day, and I think that’s part of the problem. I have this bad habit of piling on too many projects or trying to do too much work at once, and instead of doing it all I make myself flustered and I dont end up doing any of it, instead all I want to do at the end of my day is sink into my bed and shut out everything else. I think that’s been the problem here, so to give myself a bit of a deadline that I can better handle, I am going to aim for one post a week from now on (I know I have a bad track record, but just bare with me). If specific things happen that I want to write about then there may be more. I always did have back up things to write on so if I have a boring week I’ll try to fall back on that (this blog was originally going to involve more than just Americorps stuff, I’d like to bring in some of the other elements).

Things you all have missed in my long absence:
I have lost yet another teammate, though this time they didn’t leave the program, they just switched teams. I did gain two teammates recently however, and so far they’re fitting in just fine. I did go visit the CDC headquarters and toured the museum, that was cool. One team moved out of the church and one from our campus just moved in, so I have people around that I should remember but didn’t exactly know all their names (the key is to wait and listen carefully for someone else to say it (winky face)). Oh and I found out today that there’s a leak in my room, so that’s fun.

It was just Catherine’s birthday! (I know she’ll probably be reading this, and she is always so excited when she gets attention. Yes, hello Catherine). Happy birthday!

My dad was just visiting last week and we had a great time. I’ll make a nice Thanksgiving post about it since I missed the Halloween one.

That’s all folks. I hope you enjoyed this long awaited/long delayed/oh dear god why blog post! I’m glad to be mostly caught up and I hope that I can keep a better handle on it from now on, but hey, I’m slightly human. Until next time.