Government Shutdown Shenanigans

What happens to NCCC in the event of a government shutdown, you ask? We pack up our things and head back to Iowa lickety-split. Then hang out there twiddling our thumbs without pay for as long as it takes Congress to figure out what the dealio is. We were pretty much bracing ourselves for the worst on Friday night. It was at this point that I realized I had locked the keys in the van. lol Talk about bad timing. Luckily my teammate Diana has AAA. Ohio wanted us to stay, I guess. And it seems the U.S. government wanted us to stay as well, at least for now. While we're on the subject, if you happen to casually bump into your senator, feel free to suggest he or she continue funding us, because if they yank AmeriCorps from the budget and I am sent back to New Jersey next week without a job, I may have a panic attack.

Since we were still around Saturday morning we were able to attend a volunteer appreciation pancake breakfast at Gorman Heritage Farm. Here we are with our sponsors, Mare and Sandra:

A few of us headed over to Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal where we learned about the history of the city, and watched an Omnimax film about tornadoes that terrified Hillary and Christina. They are already pretty freaked out, being from twister-free Oregon and New Hampshire respectively. And they don't like the fact that the tornado sirens go off in Ohio even when there is just a bad storm brewing. It doesn't help that our campus is in Tornado Alley! One of the star scientists of the film was is town and parked her storm chaser vehicle in front of the museum for us to check out.


Sunday I was given a lovely tour of the city with a nice gentleman named Brian who our team met at the Evendale Rec Center. He's a television guy himself, and is headed to Guatemala as a Peace Corps public health volunteer at the end of this month. We saw a ton of the city including the Purple People Bridge (a pedestrian-only walkway to Kentucky) and the Big Mac Bridge (nicknamed that for it's golden arches).

We also went to the top of the Carew Tower where you can see a 360 degree view of the city from their open-air observation deck. It was really nice to explore with a local, not to mention enjoying 6 hours of relatively AmeriCorps-free conversation. Way to go, Brian!