Sunday - Orientation
Around 3:00pm on March 17th, I walked into the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, just 45 minutes from my house, to sign in for my Alternative Spring Break: "Spring Fix," sponsored by MTV & United Way. After speaking with the team leaders for a little while, I followed somebody into the ballroom where there was already a group of about 20 people sitting, talking, and getting to know each other. I was confused, so I started to walk out, when somebody from the table called me over and asked if I had gotten my bag yet. I retrieved the bag with my name on it, and the label "wolf," and sat down to talk and play people bingo as we waited for everybody else to arrive.
After most people had gotten there, we played some icebreakers, ate dinner, and then got into our groups. There were 5 groups of 10 students each, with 2 team leaders: Wolf/Rockaway Beach, NY, Whale/Union Beach, NJ, Monkey/Staten Island, NY, Cow/Lavallette, NJ, and Raven/Long Beach, NY. My team was "Wolf," and little did I know how awesome of a label that would become over the week. The team members were Alex, David, David aka Utah, Lyssa aka Cali, Monica, Tom, Kia, Socrates, and Eric, and our team leaders were Jiles and Dara. After we did more icebreakers within our teams, we were free to do what we wanted for the rest of the night. A bunch of us hung out in Alex's room for awhile getting to know each other, and then we went our separate ways to recharge for our first day on the job.
Monday - Day One of Work
I woke up on time, for once in my life, and headed down to breakfast at 7:15am, which is the time the Wolfpack, as we had already started calling ourselves, had decided on the night before. I ended up eating with a mix of groups, and really started getting to know everybody. Around 8:00am, we piled into a 15-passenger van with our driver, Alex, and a cameraman, Patrick, and headed to Rockaway Beach.
Patrick interviewed the people in the front of the van as the rest of us joked around and really got to know each other on the way. By the time our hour-long commute was over, we were all basically great friends. On our way to the site, as we drove through Rockaway Beach, we saw how much damage was left from the storm. It was extremely jarring to know that almost 5 months had passed since Sandy hit, but there was still debris and proof of the storm everywhere. We drove past a boarded-up McDonald's, with phrases such as "Don't Bother, we don't have anything" spray-painted on the side of the building.
We arrived at the church we would be working in for the week, and it looked relatively okay from the outside, aside from a waterline. After a few camera takes outside of the church, we were ready to walk in and see the devastation. It was nothing like we had expected, to say the least. The water line inside of the basement of this church was 7 feet high and the basement was completely empty, save for two fish mobiles hanging from the ceiling in the large room.
After being told about what had exactly happened in the area, being told how Friends of Rockaway was formed, and meeting some of the AmeriCorps people we would be working with throughout the week, we were given a tour of the basement and shown where we would be working. First, we saw the kitchen, which still had pots and pan filled with water leftover from Sandy. The smell was absolutely disgusting, and the kitchen itself was in ruins. Then we were shown the two bathrooms, which would eventually become one as we tore down the wall between them. After that we were given tools and split into three groups: Kitchen, Bathroom 1, and Bathroom 2.
Dara, Lyssa, Socrates, and I made up the Bathroom 1 crew. We were tasked with taking down the walls, the toilets, the mirror, and the sinks, and breaking up the tile on the floor. We did this all day, making a serious dent in what we needed to accomplish over the week. In the middle of this back-breaking work, we were given a break for lunch, which our awesome driver Alex brought. I honestly can't remember what we ate, but the memories from lunch that do stick out are those of us getting to know each other and our AmeriCorps members better, and speaking with the Deacon.
Around 4pm, our dusty, dirty, grimy Wolfpack said goodbye to the site for the night and piled into our van to head back to Newark. We tried a shortcut to get back, but ended up sitting in traffic for 2 hours, so we arrived for dinner late and gross, but so happy for everything we accomplished during the day.
After dinner, each of the groups did a presentation, and that was when we learned that those of us in the Rockaways really had it hardest in the work we were doing, with the lack of power and heat. This is also when we presented the idea for a fundraiser that one of our team leaders had proposed, but I will talk more about that in the next entry. After the presentations, we played some games, and then we were left to our own devices for the evening.
Overall, day one of work was beyond amazing, and it only got better from there.
