02/01/02: Woo, happy February, all!

So I've been here a week now, it's hard to believe. It's gone quickly but lots has happened. This week we had two days of seminar workshops at the nearby Cecil Community College (we are in Cecil County here in Perry Point. Interestingly, the local paper is called the Cecil Whig.), Monday it was Diversity Training, Wednesday we did Conflict Management. The first one was okay, parts were pretty boring, and I've been through all that kind of stuff several times before. I did enjoy some of the activities. But overall, it wasn't a very interesting day. Wednesday, though, was great. The speaker/facilitator guy was just fabulous, really funny and dynamic, but really smart and knew what to say and how to say it. So we all enjoyed that day, even though there weren't too many actual activities, it was an interesting and fun workshop.

The other day our whole team learned about our van, and we changed a tire. It took awhile, and we got dirty, but we did it. On Wednesday we had our first team PT (physical training) session. We don't run laps or do miles of situps or anything like in the army, we just play aerobic games for 45 minutes. Wednesday we played Ultimate, but with a nerf ball instead of a frisbee. It was really fun, and a lot easier than with frisbees (I'm not so good at the throwing, only a teeny bit better with the catching). Tonight we ran for a couple minutes, then played foursquare. I remembered why elementary school wasn't my favorite time period. :)

This morning we learned about all the tools that we have here and that we'll be using on our projects. After that parts of two teams drove in a van to Delaware for our first real project. I really wanted to call someone to say, Hi, We're in...Delaware. Anyway, we were in a town called Brandywine (isn't that a great name for a town?), on the Brandywine River, where there are a bunch of 19th century mills. There's a historical cannon that weighs 90 tons and needs to be transported to a park or museum or something, where it will be on display and that a million people a year will visit. So in order to transport it, they need a truck/trailer with some lumber stacked to support it. Our job was to finish getting the lumber stacked. There were big piles of long boards filled with nails and ties and all kinds of stuff. We had to get all that out, with fun tools like wrecking bars (a big crowbar), hammers, and sledgehammers. I had a lot of fun with the sledgehammer. Girl Power. :) Oh, and that part was indoors, in the mill itself, so after the boards were okay we had to bring them out to the truck and get them situated. It took four or five to do that, the boards were big, heavy, and dirty too. We all got pretty yucky. But I like getting dirty, because then you know you did something. I think we'll all be sore tomorrow, though.

I got some pictures back, and I have some of our house and my room and the view. I'll try to send some 'round...and hopefully I'll find a scanner to put a bunch of stuff up.

This week I also went to the local and nearest bar, the Rendez Vous. We're going back tonight, and I might go to Washington for the weekend. It's so cool how near we are to so many places, and almost all of them I've never seen. Exciting!

Well, that's all I'll do for now...keep writing, y'all! Take care!