Painting and Curtian Making- West Virginia

After breakfast and the morning meeting, most of the group went to the Oak Hill worksite, though my Mom stayed to help out with energy express, which is a program that brings local grade-schoolers to SALS for reading and writing lessons, to ensure that they don’t fall behind in school. At the Oak Hill site, the majority of the group continued to lay tiles in the two rooms from yesterday, while Tricia, Kevin, and I worked to repaint a room in the kitchen that will become a Pantry (I believe, that will help local food needs).

Things went much smoother today for the most part, as we all had assigned tasks, and there were really no delays, except for waiting for the one and only stepladder that could be used to paint the upper parts of the wall, and for a quick Lowe’s run to get spacers for the tiles, a new mop, and also a food and  run undertaken by my Mom and Michael. By the end of the day, we had finished painting the room, and the teams that were working on putting tile  in two rooms were—while proscribing to two different theories on tile placement-- ready to move on to “next level tile maneuver”, I’ll let the journalist for tomorrow describe this, as this “next level” will be taking place tomorrow.  Also, our curtain team (Kathy and Claudia) finished the first set of curtains that will cover the windows in the coffee shop and internet café that is being planned for the site, and have three more left to complete. All in all, it was a successful and satisfying day at Oak Hill.

Upon returning to the SALS dorm, some of us, along with Alex and Jiaujoun, the OVEC interns, were given a ride by Artie to the “old number nine” a swimming hole in the brook that had a rail bridge running over it that the braver of us jumped (a fall of around 10-15 ft) from into the pool. Those of us who had gone swimming came to back to a great dinner made by Michael and Gabby of chicken burritos. We also came back to find that we had no hot water in the dorm due to some electrical issues, which was solved by Artie after about an hour or two.

As I finish this entry at the near halfway point of our trip, I find that while I may be a little tired, dealing with a little bit of culture shock, I am looking forwards to the next few days and continuing to work with this group.

- Chris