The Good, The Bad, the NCCC

The Bad:

Last week I realized that I am completely out of touch with what’s going on outside of AmeriCorps. This realization occurred as I was sitting in a hospital lobby waiting for one of my corps members to have a sinus infection checked out. I decided to call my friend Lara after seeing I had a missed call from her. During this conversation I found out the incredible news that her husband and my friend Dave, who is a captain in the U.S. Army and was supposed to deploy to Afghanistan this month, just found out he’s not leaving after all. Wha?! I was totally shocked. Then she said she had been trying to reach me for days to no avail. I checked my phone, and realized that I had, in fact, missed multiple calls as well as a text message from her from 2 days earlier saying that she needed to talk to me right away. HOW DID I MISS THIS?! I was so upset I started to cry... right there in the hospital waiting room. If there is one thing that’s important to me, it’s keeping the connections I have with family and friends, and I definitely feel like I have been slacking off big time on that over the last 2 months. I think this will get easier to manage once I’m out of the NCCC training period and off doing projects, but it’s definitely scary. Things are happening back home and I’m not there to see them. My mom just got a part time job at a pharmacy in my hometown after looking for close to a year. Kate and Nick just found the Beacon Hill apartment of their dreams—and bought it! My friend Laina, who I have known since the first day of kindergarten had a birthday 3 weeks ago and I literally just got around to calling her. And I feel like that’s really not acceptable. So I apologize in advance to everyone who I inadvertently offend over the next 9 months with a lack of response to emails or phone calls. I’m still figuring out how to manage this new work life with my NJ/Boston life, and it’s definitely a challenge.

The Good/The NCCC:

As for the “good” things going on in life right now, my team had a mini-spike this week that was fantastic. We were sent to Cedar Rapids, where we worked for 3 days to rehabilitate homes damaged by the Iowa flooding that occurred in 2008. My team was able to do a number of projects that included assisting in the construction of a garage, interior and exterior painting, tuck pointing, dry-locking, mucking, paint scraping, and more. During the last few days I was shocked to learn about the extent of the devastation caused by the flooding. Cedar Rapids saw 19% of the community displaced after the Cedar River crested at 31.2 feet and surged across the city. Our site supervisor Bob, with our sponsor organization Block By Block explained to us the floods Iowa saw were comparable to Katrina and that the 2008 Iowa event was actually the fourth largest natural disaster in American History. So why didn’t it get as much press as other national emergencies??? Apparently Cedar Rapids had been bracing itself for some flooding, as they had a large snow melt that winter followed by a rainy spring. In effect, they were somewhat prepared, and had already taken steps to sandbag certain locations. They may not have expected such dramatic flooding, but they were quick to act, resilient and fought back without asking for a lot of outside help. Add to that the fact that Iowa doesn’t include any big glitzy cities and you can see why it flew under the radar. It was amazing to learn as much as we did and be able to give back to a community so close to Vinton. Thanks to Block by Block for training us and including us in their efforts to revitalize Cedar Rapids.