Set Up Week!

So the past few days have been set up week here at the porch. We have been going around on IHVs (Initial Home Visits) looking at different possible houses to work on this summer. It has been filled with driving through narrow mountain roads in either Sandy our giant van or Elmer the truck. Its amazing the views that we see on the way to some of these houses. Today especially was cool as even though it was raining, the clouds rolling over the mountains looked amazing.

I have decided to keep up with "Torre's Critter Count" and keep up with all of the animals I see each day. Yesterday I saw a Ground hog, a baby bunny, a few turkey vultures, your standard cows and horses. However the most exciting was the turtle. To those individuals not familiar with the traditions of ASP, turtles are a vital part of the environment here in Appalachia. Staff members have done there best since the beginning of ASP to protect these little critters who seem to find there way onto a lot more roads then you would think. As much as we can we perform "Turtle Saves" and help these little buddies across the road so they can avoid being hit. I had an interesting start to my turtle saving career as I was unfortunate enough to be one of those despicable people who hit those poor turtles. It honestly was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt and my fellow staffers who were in the van with me can vouch for my sudden downcast look. Since then however I have done my best to make amends to the turtle community by going above and beyond the call of duty and putting my own life at risk. Not 1 hour after my act of murder I came upon one such turtle and performed my first Turtle Save. That was only yesterday! Today I was on IHV's in the rain with Chelsea and performed 2 more turtle saves. I have decided that I will not come out of my time of mourning until I perform at least 2 more turtle saves and then I will do my best to go on with my life.

On a more serious note, today I witnessed some of the hardest things to see. One of the houses we visited was a lady living in an old trailer that was in very much need of repair. There were 4 holes in the floor that were barely staying together. They had a leaky roof and only one safe exit from the home. To top it off she had 11 kids living there with her. 11! Here she was living in a home that was barely big enough for her own self and yet she still took on children to look after from those around her. It is amazing the people you meet here in Appalachia and even though they can barely get by them self, they still find it in their hearts to help out their fellow man. God works in mysterious ways.

Hopefully I can figure out how to put up some pics here.

Overview of Training

So I realize that I have been lacking in my updates on this blog and in general. For those who don't know, I have been at training from Wed May 26th until yesterday. During that time I learned a whole mess of stuff and met some amazing people. I realize as I am sitting down to write this that I will never be able to write out in detail all of the things that went on at training and I will try not to overwhelm everyone with trying to explain everything that I did but I will try my best to tell a little about what all I have been doing.

I left my house around 8:30, a little later than expected but no matter, and set out for Jonesville VA on Wed May 26th. The trip consisted of windy roads, spectacular views and much shuffling of music. I ended up stopping at a small town Wendy's and people watching for a bit but overall it was an uneventful trip. I arrived at "The Hill" and was met by a bunch of CDs (Center Directors) who had already been there for a few days for specialized training. Oh, ASP uses a lot of acronyms so I will do my best to explain them as I use them. I moved in my stuff, dropped my car off and headed up to the Porch. ASP has been using the Jonesville center for training for quite some time now and the Porch is a center piece of that. The Porch overlooks the hill that the center is located on and is filled with over 20 rocking chairs. All of the staffers come together here for our intense 10 day training every year and it also serves as a year round facility that ASP owns and operates.

Over the course of the next 10 days I would learn more about construction than I ever thought possible, receive specialized training for my position, go through sessions on spiritual leadership and just about anything else you can think of. Every day we devos, breakfast and then sessions pretty much all day. We learned about the different types of foundation, floors, both exterior and interior walls, siding, roofing, insulation, underpinning, electrical, plumbing, trailers, porches and ramps to name just a few. The little free time we had was spent meeting some new amazing people as well as hanging out with ones that I met at my SAW (Staff-Applicant-Weekend). On Sunday May 30^th we drove to The Natural Tunnel State Park for a picnic and one of the biggest moments of the week. Staff Reveal! I of course played a bunch of Ultimate Frisbee and sweated up a storm before we grabbed some food. We then started out on the time honored tradition of the Staff Reveal. We were put through the gauntlet of random activities ranging from putting on Skittle war-paint to finding of piece of PVC pipe with our name on it in a kiddy pool. Each activity narrowed down our groups until we were finally left with all of our staff minus our CD. We then were covered by a blanket until our CD came and pulled it off, revealing our whole staff team for the summer. It was an awesome time capped off with some ice cream and staff bonding afterwards. My staff consists of my CD Tina, our Returner (someone who has been on staff before) Chelsea as well as my fellow first-years John and Angie.

The days following staff reveal were filled with even more construction training as well as our specific position training. I am the Finance Coordinator on my team and I am in charge of keeping up with our Budget and insuring our accounts are paid at the end of each week. It is an important job and I think I am going to do a great job at it. I also found out where I will be going for the summer and it is not too far from where training was. To be specific it IS where training was, I will be here in Jonesville for the summer. I am staying in the equivalent of the Ritz Carlton of ASP Land and am very excited for it.

On Friday June 4^th we traveled to ASP Headquarters at JC (Johnson City) to get our vehicles for the summer. It is an ASP tradition that all vehicles in the fleet are named and ours are named Elmer, Lucy and Sandy. Elmer is a big green Ford pickup, Sandy is a massive 15 passenger van and Lucy is a smaller 12 passenger van. Elmer and Sandy are new to the fleet this year while Lucy only has a couple years on her. All three are going to great to drive this summer and I have quickly fallen in love with them. The next day was our Commission and sending off of all the staffs. It was a bittersweet day as I had to say goodbye to all of the friends I had made on the porch but I also got to get ready for the summer by moving into our center and making it our own. After saying goodbye to everyone our CD Tina surprised us with plans to drive to Hancock County and stay at a little cabin in order to get away for a little bit. After getting lost (something that happens quite often in Appalachia) we finally found the place and had a fun night filled with the Wilderness Survival Game, reading random logs from past people staying there and watching Juno.

We woke up today and ate at a little local place for breakfast before driving around for awhile more and eventually heading back to Jonesville. We spent the rest of the day setting up our staff office as well as reading home repair applications. Hopefully I can keep up with this on a more daily basis so that I won’t have to type up entire novels every time I get on the computer.As far as reaching me goes the computer will still be your best bet however if you really need to you can call our center phone at (276)-346-3377 ex. 28. I would really love any sort of letters you would like to mail to me and I will try my best to write you back as soon as I can. Here are a few pictures of some stuff from the past couple days and I will also try to post pics with all of my posts from now on.