Today was our very first day on our worksite, so we had a lot of people to meet and an overwhelming amount of work given to us! This week we are working at an old and abandoned school that is going to be used to house volunteers that will be working on flood relief.  There is a myriad of different tasks that we will be doing this week, all the way from painting to weed whacking.  When we first arrived at 9am we met Dee, the volunteer coordinator.  This was her third week on the job so she’s pretty much as new to this as we are.  Then, we met Lee.  He is the sweetest most loving old man we all have ever met.  He is the site manager, so he’s the one giving us all the work to do.  We all congregated in the school’s cafeteria and asked Dee to give us some background on the flooding that occurred last October.  Basically, South Carolina, specifically Charleston, Georgetown and other surrounding areas got more rain then they have ever seen before and the main river surrounding these towns, the Black River, flooded and demolished roads, homes and lives.  Many different groups are beginning to come in and help with relief and we are coming in to help fix up a place for the volunteers to stay.  Lee then took over and started telling us about his experiences with the school and his calling to working here.  If I could have everyone in the world meet one person just to make them happier, I would have them meet Lee.  He is so passionate about what he does, it really makes the work so worth it.

Today we decided to start painting the outside poles that hold up the overhang.  There are about 145 poles that we have to individually sand, wipe down and paint with 2 coats.  Although it’s a long process, by the end of the workday we had an extremely effective system for painting and got 75 poles done.  Tomorrow’s plan is to finish the poles and start fixing and painting the white picket fence.  All in all, for a first day I’d say we were extremely successful, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us tomorrow!!

-Nicole