Normal Life?

As I transition back home from AmeriCorps I have reflected a lot on what I have learned from my experience. It has been very difficult to come back home and start a "normal" life again. Having so much free time to do whatever I want has been a challenge for me. Trying to keep busy is not an easy task when there seems like there is nothing to do. Sure wedding planning has consumed my life some days but is seems like it comes and goes in rushes of excitement and dullness. Don't get me wrong, I have LOVED planning my wedding but it just seems like I'm missing something...someone...my future life partner.

Being away from Lex has been so hard. I don't know how people would be away from their significant other 20 years ago. We have phones that we can be in constant contact with and even Skype where we can see each others face. Talking on the phone every day and Skype just doesn't do it for me. One of my love languages is physical touch and I miss snuggling up to my man every night and being with him constantly. Keeping myself busy has allowed me to get my mind off of the things I miss and look forward to the things to come. I know being away from Lex has its challenges, but in the end the reward will be the greatest. In the mean time, I will just have to rely on my body pillow to snuggle up with at night. At least that gives me something to wrap my arms around! :)

As the Christmas season arises, I look forward to spending time with my family as well as my family and husband to be.

Newspaper

I have been enjoying my time at home by a whirlwind of wedding planning. Being with my family and meeting up with everyone around home has been just the start of fun things to come! It felt good to be back in church and I can't wait to start singing with the Praise team again. 

I was contacted by my local newspaper on the way home from Iowa. Here is the link of an article about my term of service in AmeriCorps.

http://www.mlive.com/hudsonville/index.ssf/2013/11/hudsonville_woman_completes_te.html

Home.

I made it home safe and sound. It's definitely bittersweet. Grandma, grandpa, mom and dad as well as lex's parents all came out to Iowa to watch us graduate. The ten months have been and amazing, challenging, fun, difficult, and life changing experience. Would have never thought that I would have met my future husband. We both returned to our respective homes and are living with our parents until the wedding. The next time we will see each other will be for Christmas. And after that, sometime for wedding planning. 

I'm hoping to get a part time job until May and will be planning away as well. After we get married in June, I'm going to move down to bryson city, nc. 

Throughout my engagement and probably through marriage I will still update my blog so keep reading. :) 

It has already been a crazy ride and I'm sure more adventures are coming our way. 

We're almost done!

We are wrapping up our year in Vinton Iowa doing more trainings and goodbyes. We graduate on Wednesday and then we part ways. I can not believe how fast this year has gone by and everything that we have experienced. It's been a crazy ride but I'm so ready to move back into the real world and start my life with Lex. I can't wait to get home and start wedding planning and get into the holiday spirit! 3 more days and I will be back in Michigan! 

My good friend and michigan buddy Kelli!!

Iowa

So during the shutdown we were on campus doing community service in the local towns. We were sent out on our projects after it ended and have been here since Saturday. We are still Iowa but working at a YMCA camp in Coggon. We are basically doing projects that the Maintence guy has but doesn't have enough time in the world to get them done himself. This camp reminds me so much of the summer camp I worked at. A little bigger but still the same atmosphere. I just love being at camp. Yesterday I drove the tractor all day for work. I was hauling things to the burn pile and pulling roots out of the ground.

It's already snowing here today. First day. :/ gonna be a cold couple weeks working. 

Only a few more weeks and I will be back in Michigan for a while.  

My view of the day. 

One of the roots we pulled out and I put on the burn pile. 

 

At the YMCA camp 

Pouring concrete at a job site in Vinton Iowa. 

Omaha to Vinton

We finished up our time in omaha Nebraska by building more houses and moving more furniture. 

We have been on transition for a week now and were supposed to depart for our next project today, Friday but because of the government partial shutdown, they legally cannot send people out to start their service if they are already on campus. So for the time being, we are working here in Vinton, IA. The campus has a two week contingency plan for us and we will be staying in vinton for that amount of time. 

We were supposed to go to a YMCA camp in Iowa, only about 45 minutes from our base campus. We would be doing maintenance, painting their dining hall, and doing stump grinding. Hopefully we will be able to spend some time there and help the camp out. We will just have to wait and see. 

Oh, I was in the paper again in omaha. Just a little sentence but my pictures in their! :)

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130929/NEWS/130928680

Building houses

We have been working our butts off at habitat for humanity. We have been mainly working on one project site that includes 4 houses in a row and we have been working on all three of them. One is a demo house that is going to be redone and the other 3 are all being built from the ground up. It's so cool to be able to build something so intricate and do it well. 

I have really enjoyed working with our site supervisors. They like working with lex Kelli and I because we naturally get the work we are doing and can do it without supervision. Everyone else is getting the hang of things as we start to complete each house. 

The toughest part about the program now is we are so close to being done with the whole program. 2 more months until we graduate. I am so ready to go home and start planning our wedding as well as start my life with lex and have time to ourselves. 2 more months!!

Oh, I'm also famous...in Vinton. :)

http://www.vintoniowa.org/articles/Et+cetera/article1010428.html

A couple of the houses during the process. 

Nebraska Nebraska.

We have been plugging away working with habitat. Working in the warehouses on Tuesday and Wednesdays, sing yard work for another supervisor and working at the houses the rest of the week. We are getting really close to finishing our part with these two houses and will soon be working on more houses building for the framing frenzy coming up. 

We had some excitement at one of the warehouses one day. We started working moving things around and our supervisor went upstairs with a couple teammates. They come down and he tells us I evacuate immediately because he think there are squatters there because they found some homemade booby traps.  The cops come and search the whole building. One cop even brought in his assault rifle... After several hours, they didn't find anyone and let us back in to work again. 

This weekend we get a long weekend so lex and I are enjoying ourselves by relaxing. But unfortunately I got poison ivy all over my face and it has spread all over my body so relaxing is kinda difficult. We spent yesterday morning in the ER getting some steroids. :/ Hopefully it will clear up soon and I can enjoy the rest of our weekend. 

Some fun at an art studio. 

Omaha Nebraska

So we have been in Omaha Nebraska for a week now and I am loving working for habitat for humanity. Our first work day consisted of a scavenger hunt all around omaha for us to get familiar with the city but in reality it just got me really confused. :) Habitat is such a great organization and I love seeing the work that we are completing. We are working on two houses right next to each other. We started with just the basement foundation/walls and in just a couple days have put up all the floor trusses and are working on the walls in the basement.  This takes a little longer because we have to make the walls ourselves. For the main level, habitat has this awesome program where they get pre made walls shipped there so by the time we are all ready to put up the walls, all we have to do is follow the chart and nail the walls into the right spot. I helped with this on another house and we got all the walls up within a couple hours. It was pretty awesome! 

Some other work we have done since we got here is demolished 120 desks with only our feet and hammers. It's a pretty awesome feeling when you can kick a desk apart with your feet. Also made me wonder how sturdy things really are if I can demolish it. :/ We have also unloaded several dump trailers and organized the whole warehouse. Pretty amazing. 

I am loving being engaged. It's amazing how fast news travels and how fast people find out the news but it just gets me more and more exciting! I'm just ready to go home and start planning official things for the wedding. It's really hard to plan something so big when I am so far away... Couple more months! 

We have been busy doing ISPs every day off we have. It's really exhausting how much we work and I look forward to just a chill day with nothing to do. 

It's off to bed for me, working with a bunch of volunteers tomorrow. Hopefully the whole house walls will be put up!!

Lex in Nebraska and me in Iowa!

On our scavenger hunt. 

Long time due.

Ok so I first apologize for not updating this in forever. Time just gets away from me here and it's crazy busy sometimes. 

This project has been a short one consisting of only 3 weeks at Taltree arboretum and gardens in valparaiso, IN. Our work has consisted if trail maintence, building of a stage, working with a kids camp, spreading a lot of wood chips, and removing invasive species/weeding. A lot of their idea of removing invasive species is, in my opinion just weeding. One of the many fun parts of this project is getting to drive around the golf carts and gators they have for us to drive to our work sites. We have been sleeping in tents the past 3 weeks and I have been loving it every minute! This place is beautiful and is the best project we have had so far. We don't want to leave. 

On our next round we will be heading to Omaha, Nebraska to be working with Habitat for Humanity. This will be the biggest city we will have worked in so hopefully we will be able to find a lot to do. We will be living in a 4 bedroom house and will be able to cook for ourselves. 

This round we have been really close to Chicago and Lex and I took a personal day on Tuesday to tour Chicago. We went and saw the bean, the Shedd Aquarium, and a Cubs game. During the 5th inning of the game, I was told by Lex to watch the score board. On the board were the words, Alyse, will you marry me! :) Sooooo now I'm engaged!!!! :) And now the planning begins! 

Vacation!!

This past week when we came back from Iowa we made a couple pit stops.  We stopped to see the worlds largest buffalo. Americorps people must love seeing the worlds largest things because it seems I be a popular thing in most groups. There was a little town where the biggest buffalo was so we spent some time there exploring. We also stopped to seethe wood chipper from the movie Fargo in Fargo, North Dakota. We stopped in Minneapolis for the night and then headed back to Iowa. 

After we got back to Iowa, we had a couple days of trainings and then it was vacation time!! Lex and I went to his parents house in NorthCarolina for the week. We spent out time hanging out with his whole entire family. Extended and all. It was such a good break from the day to day working and living with the same people. In North Carolina, we went white water rafting, camping for one night in the rain, walked around his town quite a bit and hung out with his family the rest of the time. 

Now it's back to Iowa. We have training for a week and then we will be heading to Valparasio Indiana doing more invasive species removal. We will be working at the Tall Tree Arboretum for about 3 weeks. I'm kinda bummed that its only going to be 3 weeks. We are really close to Chicago and really close to Lake Michigan as well. I'll see if the feeling is the same after I do all the work! :) 

At the worlds largest buffalo! 

Playing around. Lex was having some trouble. 

Last week in minot.

To wrap up our last week, we finished the OSB on the one house and wrapped the house as well. It was such an accomplishment for us. I really enjoy seeing our work progress! We also worked on a couple other houses cleaning up debris and prepping for other groups of volunteers to do some demo and prep for sanitizing. Im so happy we didn't have to sanitize for our last week. Yesterday we went out to the recovery warehouse where oak 3, another Americorps team has been working. We went for a cookout but got ropes into helping them work. We ending up wrapping up siding and the making 2 deliveries. We split the teams up to so the deliveries and I went with the drywall. We delivered probably 50 sheets of 12 foot drywall to one house. It was ridiculous! 

Our last weekend was spent by doing a community day with the organization stars of hope. We blew up i dot know how many balloons to be released as resemblance of when the flood occurred two years ago. We also painted 1500 stars that will be sent east for hurricane sandy relief. The stars just give the community some hope to move on. 

We are currently on the road to head back to Iowa. We are stopping in Minneapolis for the night. Friday we have our debrief of this project and then Saturday I am off to North Carolina for vacation!! Ahhhhhh! So excited for a break! I'll post pictures of my adventures! :)

The latest team photo. 

Some of my teammates holding some balloons to be passed out. 

We found work!

This week was a pretty slow one. We finally found work for us to be done and have been working on one house this entire week. We have been taking down the exterior board, buffalo board/builtrite, and have been replacing it with OSB/plywood. This has taken us the whole week and we are still not done. The weather has given us challenges again. We had to stop working for a half a day because it was thundering and lighting. Our site supervisor didn't think it was a good idea to be working on extension ladders in a storm. 

It sounds like this week, to wrap up our stay here, we will be finishing the OSB on the house and then back to preping and sanitizing a few other houses. Not sure how far we will get but at least we will have steady work for us to complete. 

Yesterday, Saturday, some of us from both teams took a trip to the international peace gardens. It borders the US and Canada so we were in Canada for a couple hours! :) the peace garden reminded me of Fredrick Meyer gardens but a little smaller. Unfortunately they just planted the flowers so there wasnt much color around. 

Today we are doing an ISP in preparation for our community day coming up. We will be working with stars of hope (there is a website for more info). For the ISP we will be pairing stars and putting them up around town. This organization was created for towns that have experienced natural disaster. They put the stars around to remind everyone that they are together and are all in need. 

The US/ Canada border. (Above)

A credit card pay phone. 

A piece of the World Trade Center. 

Cacti

These weren't at the peace gardens but we saw them on our way there. Above is a turtle made out of 2,000 tire rims and below is the very much debated geographic center of North America. 

Slowing down

This past week has definitely been a challenging one. Break is just around the corner and I think people are getting a little antsy and stir crazy. The village we are at can be extremely boring at times and the work we complete can be just as tiring. 

We finished up the sanitizing list last week with the worst houses. One was an extremely small home with insulation everywhere. Not the long yellow or pink strips but the fluffy little lint balls of insulation. Even though we cleaned the house before getting it wet, little lint balls would fly all over from the power washer and stick to our coats. And the basement of that house was full of a huge dirt mound in order to aborbs some of the water from the flood. By the end of the day we looked like we were tarred and feathered. 

The next house we worked on was a house that had been sprayed several times already but still needed to be sanitized. But we couldn't do our normal routine of using the power washer because it already had all the electrical wiring installed. So we had to spray the house with water using the pump sprayers, hand scrub all the walls and then sanitize with the pump sprayers. This was especially frustrating for me because I was usually one of the only people to be hand scrubbing. I guess not many people can say they have hand scrubbed the framing of a whole house. 

We have bee doing more fun activities around Minot which is such a nice change of pace and is fun to see the town. We went to the train museum, air museum, and the Scandinavian park to watch a movie. This weekend we are going to go to the International Peace Gardens up by Canada. 

We ended the week with a overnight ISP (volunteer opportunity). We went to the Minot University and worked for the Relay for Life event. We basically moved tables and chairs and walked around. Not much to do but it was a nice change of pace from our rough week. 

Currently, my team and I are waiting to be told what work we can do. We are wasting time doing paper work and waiting for people to get trailers for us to load up debris. We work too fast for our sponsor they are running out of work for us to do. Which in the long run is a blessing because that means we are getting people back into their homes and that Hope Village will soon I longer be needed.  Not sure what the rest of our time here will be spent doing but I'm sure it will be a slow last couple of weeks. 

At the air museum. (Above)

At the Scandinavian park. Above and below. 

The dump trailer I organized all by myself. Thanks dad for teaching me to be tedious and to have such good organization! :)

Update

Nothing really new for now. We have been plugging away at sanitizing houses and are making the list of "clients" decrease. It's been cold and rainy which is better than being warm with all the gear we have to wear while sanitizing. 

I went to the train museum this weekend just on the mear fact that we wanted something to do. The boys had fun playing with the toy Thomas trains that they had. 

This week it looks like we will be sanitizing houses again and then who knows what's in store for us for the rest of our time here. Seems like we are running out of work to do. 

No more demo...for now

We have finally finished with the cursed house where everyone gets hurt at. The last thing we had to do was wait to get dump trucks so we could bring everything to the landfill. While we waited for that, we have worked on several other house picking up debris and preparing the house to be sanitized. The weather has been rainy and kinda chilly so that limits what we can do to some of the houses. But, one of the houses we have taken the siding off, removed all electrical wires, cleaned and cleaned. I don't know how many times I have swept that house, it's ridiculous. But on Friday, we were able to power wash and sanitize the whole house. To do that though, we have I wear multiple layers of ridiculous clothing. The white suits are only worn for the hood because we have to be covered from the chemical in the sanitizer. And on top of that, we have to wear our rain gear to keep us dry from the power washer. But on top of that, we have to wear our P100 masks because of the mold we are spraying off. It's quite the process. We are going to get quite comfortable in these suits bc I think we will be sanitizing a lot more now. 

Other than that, nothing else exciting has really happened. We went a week without making a trip to the hospital or clinic!!! 

Not much planned for this weekend, we get Memorial Day off so it's a 3 day weekend here!!  

Somehow we are still alive...

This first week of work has been quite an adventure. After our moving of debris, we moved on to a house that we were too demolish. Our first day at this house we started by removing the shingles. It was a good day. The rest of the time since Thursday, from working on this house, we have not gone a day without and injury. These included, someone getting wood chips in their eye, a nail in the foot, electrocution, a wood chunk in someone's arm and 2 walls falling on the same person. From the walls falling on lex, he first suffered a concussion and then his arm in a sling. We are still working on this house. Thankfully all the walls are on the ground in pieces but we are convinced this house is cursed. 

Oh, more exciting stuff that happened, after lex got electrocuted from wires that should have been shut off, we broke the gas pipe and natural gas was everywhere. The fire department came as well as the gas company and we were delayed work for a while. Cedar 6 has a tradition now that each round the fire department has to be involved somehow. It's only been a week and we have had quite the experience. The house is fully demolished, just needs to be put on the dump trailer. 

Yuck!!

Today our work consisted of moving debris. We first started out at one house shoveling all the drywall and debris they threw outside. This took 2 huge trailers full (one picture). That took us about an hour so we moved on to the next house. We initially went to this house with the idea of just removing appliances that needed to get out but once we got there it turned into a whole day project. One of the appliances was a old chest freezer. This freezer was in the basement of this house, full of food. This food has been rotting in this basement, not plugged in or anything, for 2 whole years; going on the 3rd. It was discussing! We had to wear our big masks and that didn't even mask the smell. The freezer was too heavy to move by itself otherwise we would have never opened it. To empty it, we picked up the big bags of food and put it into bags. It eventually turned into soup so we took a huge cup and scooped out the remaining rotten smelly water into 5 gallon buckets, took it outside and dumped it down the sewer. Disgusting morning. The rest of the day we cleaned out the rest of the basement which included filling 2 huge trailers of wiring, duct work, drywall/plaster, and wood framing. 

Although I may complain, it has been a wonderful experience here in Minot so far. I enjoy the town and look forward to staying here. To top off our fun filled day, we had a huge fire! :)

Lutheran disaster response

We made it and are all settled into our home away from home in North Dakota. We are working for Lutheran disaster response and living in relief trailers for the time being. The picture with all the doors is our living/ beds. They all have one set of bunk beds so we split up and are separated into different rooms. Our bathrooms and showers are also another trailer which is shown the other pictures. Surprisingly, the showers are nicer than the showers in Iowa and Michigan. The beds are a lot comfier too!

Since we arrived, we have just been exploring the town of Minot. The mall and downtown are really close so that's a perk

We start our first day of work tomorrow!!

North Dakota, here we come!

We on on our last day of training here in Iowa before we head to Minot, North Dakota! I just finished packing up all my stuff again and waiting to pack the van. I have been increasingly consuming more and more things. Although i have learned how to jam pack this red backpack to the rim, i still need to reduce my piles for next round...

Had a wonderful weekend with my bestie Devin and will be sad to leave her again. But I'm super excited to rebuild houses! We will be stopping in Fargo for tomorrow night and will arrive in Minot Friday afternoon.

Almost time for bed as well, 6am room inspection before we head out...

Packing up. 4/26/13

This was our last week in Jackson Michigan. We are currently packing up our things to head back to Iowa for a week. This last week of work we were chipping all of the trees we cut down. About 4 days of chipping, it came to about 21 dump truck loads full of chips! :)

The time here at storer camps has been quite an experience. Lots of hard work, coldness, and fun. I love being in the camp setting but I'm looking forward to doing some construction work and having instant gratification of our work. :)

There is some pictures of the team, me working, a before and after of one part that we cleared, and a baby turtle I found by Lake Michigan when I was home.

Back to packing up all my stuff.