USA Service Program Blog: Our Final Day

Friday, October 12, 2012

A Farewell Concert - Our Final Day

We arose in the morning to a crisp, sunny day, ate our breakfast, had our usual morning meeting, and then were off to our work site by 8:45AM. We started working on semi-individual projects, because we were preparing the Historic Oak Hill School for its “coming out “party to the community on Saturday evening. After lunch, we were informed that the Solid Rock Church would be having services this evening. Projects worked on were: stairwell painting, “mudslinging,” vacuuming carpet on second floor and stairwells. We quickly discovered that cleaning the stairwells was meaningless, unless done at the end of the day, because the sanding dust walked right on in on the shoes. We also cleaned all the windows and then de-taped the ones already painted.

For our lunch break, we had some homemade potato soup, whipped up by the staff; Artie supplied BBQ and fried chicken, baked beans and mac salad and sodas. A lot of the young men (the work crew of SALS) joined us at the tables and talked with us. Of the 3 who sat with us, none had a stable father in their lives. One of them entertained us with his guitar, self-taught, and his is able to play 7 instruments.

Artie picked us up at 3:45, after we said our final goodbyes to the staff and young men of SALS. We dropped off two of them on our way back to our “home”, up a definite one lane stone road named Easy Street!! Once home, we relaxed for a while. We will be going out to eat with Artie, at Pies and Pints, a pizza place. When we return, we will have our surprise/goodbye party.

Written by Mariana