Day 90: Puerto Rico Dai Bouken! Part 1 of 2

So I have a lot to talk about...




The reason I didn't post as it was happening was because things kept happening every day, the situation changed all the time, I thought it was important I had the full scope of events first so I can emphasize what was ACTUALLY important to share y'know? Also it's more of this lack of motivation to write, heck even when I told myself I'd write when I get back, I'm writing this on the Wednesday after I came back, we returned on Monday (that was a long day wow). I'm already writing run-on sentences, great. Probably gonna be a lotta those. Anyway where should I start? TL;DR?

Puerto Rico was nuts, our Unit Leader (one rung above my Team leader) was pretty sympathetic to our situation, apparently asking if we wanted to pull out several times, but we stuck it through. I think our team is much stronger in the long run but who knows what it did to our bond as a team or fatigue with the program in general. I'm personally pretty happy with the experience thus far, it's exactly what I signed up for. Though yeah to have THAT as our FIRST ROUND was pretty aggressive. Let's get into it!

PUERTO RICO ITSELF

We were based in the north-west region of the island, living in the Aguada region, with our sponsor just south of that in the Añasco region, and a good deal of our work taking place anywhere in those two regions plus the Mayaguez region south of Añasco. We sometimes took some time visiting nearby Rincon, and we often had to make the two hour drive to the island capital of San Juan, where we flew in from and rented our vehicles from Enterprise. I wouldn't say there was much difference in the regions we worked in; San Juan was certainly the densely packed, commercial, touristy city while Aguada was far poorer economically. It wasn't third world country levels, but it's an island, they can only do so much. There certainly was hurricane damage all over the place, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "disaster zone." Life pretty much had returned to normal, just not totally prosperous. All that being said the views were just stunning. It was a mountainous region and most neighborhoods were on these mountains, you could very often see for miles. Every house was distinct from each other, from what we were told building codes are far more lax in Puerto Rico. So long as it's safe and doesn't disturb neighbors, go ahead. This leads to a lot of crazy design ideas with staircases, balconies, garages, roofs, gates and fences, columns, etc. etc. I'm probably gonna put most of the photographs I have (and have shared with me) at the end but yeah it was incredible. That's about as much I can say that was "incredible" in the positive sense.

Puerto Rican traffic is hell. Thank God I only drove for maybe a third of the time we were there (I'll explain later). The roads are littered with pot holes, and most of our projects were in neighborhoods, which were on mountains. Very often roads would be narrow enough to just fit two cars, they would snake around tall cliff faces, and many times the roads would be inclines of 45 degrees or more. It was like a really slow scary roller coaster, especially when you were in a truck carrying I frame ladders that had to be hurricane strapped and extend out the truck. We would get lost all the time, miss turns, get sent to the wrong location. There were no addresses, not even street names, the first time we'd get sent to a houses were through general directions--"It's the green house!" "It's the one with the big gate in front!" "Take a right after the house with the boat painted on it!" We would drop pins on google maps and have to use latitude and longitude coordinates to get there. And that's not to mention the driving etiquette, they were AGGRESSIVE, and they probably knew if there was an accident they could get away with it because communication and traffic in general is so messed up. Our body count speaks for itself. Not...human body count haha We went through nine vehicles altogether. I'll probably go into the vehicle thing in a different section, but needless to say there were three car accidents and a car robbery.

But that doesn't even factor in the weather down there, we came during the wet season. Meaning, it rained on a more consistent basis than I'll probably ever see in my life. It didn't just rain, it POURED, almost without fail, at approximately the same time frame, every single day. At about 2-4pm, even if it might not be raining in your specific area, you could see storm clouds in the distance and you knew it was raining a few miles away. And the opposite was also true; I was mesmerized by the scenes of perfectly sunny weather being juxtaposed to rain falling at the SAME TIME. Some Puerto Ricans we worked with literally adjust their work schedule around this, because they know when it starts they can't do any more. Their traditional work day was 7am-3pm. That wasn't OUR schedule exactly, I'll get to that too, but you can see how substantial a factor it was. We got caught in the rain several times, and while it was an incredible inconvenience, at least it was a nice way to cool off from the consistent hot weather and humidity. I personally didn't think it got any hotter than it was back at Yawgoog (the camp I've worked at for 7 years), but then again I don't think I've ever sweated THAT much or got THIS bad of a farmer's tan. And I won't shy away from the embarrassing, I got sunburnt twice. The first was not cause of the sun, I put my bare knees on a hot zinc roof and burned them for about a week. The second was on my left ankle, weird right? I wasn't wearing socks that's why...I didn't have socks for like half the time I was there...you'll know why later (sorry too much foreshadow?)

Earlier I made it a bit too doom and gloom saying the landscapes were the ONLY fantastic Puerto Rican thing. It's the only thing that really WOWED me about being there, but the food and people were pretty neat too. I did have Mofongo several times, plantains taste a lot like mashed potatoes, I liked how juicy it was. Easily my favorite Puerto Rican dish were empanadas, they're basically calzones but with a manageable portion of meat to it. Otherwise it was pretty traditional, we ate a lot of stuff like pasta and pizza, but what was exceptional was that the people we worked for often were kind enough to feed us lunch! We always packed a lunch, we never required them to make food for us, a third of the sites we visited they insisted. Even if it was snacks or iced bottled water, the people were very generous.

This one time I walked up to one of the supervisors to ask about something, and she was talking to one of the neighbors or just general local people. He had a green coconut in his hand (not the brown furry kind you're thinking of) and a machete in the other. I said hi and everything and he takes the machete and wacks the coconut a few swift times, exposing a hole in the hollow coconut and just handed it to me. They wanted me to drink out of it so I did, it was fresh coconut water. I was stunned, enjoyed it, and gave it back but they insisted I keep it. I was grateful, felt a little awkward since I never thought I deserved it. It was certainly a morale booster.

That whole exchange with the coconut hardly had any direct conversation to it. My supervisor spoke English so she could explain to me about the coconut, but the guy didn't speak English. We were in a part of the island where it was uncommon for the residents to speak English. I never really bothered to learn Spanish beyond a few easy phrases that I already sort of knew, I was able to make do with what I had. It was only ever a barrier when the people we were working with directly hardly spoke English, in particular the very first work site in Aguada. Those dudes were very nice, but it was hard to teach or ask of us anything more complicated than "bring this here" or just anything that could be explained through pointing. It got to where there was a day of work that only they could accomplish, and we were delegated to waiting until they needed stuff handed to them, which is not exactly what AmeriCorps wants us to do, so we left that site shortly after.

Needless to say with the people, language, food, weather, traffic, and overall exotic locale, Puerto Rico was a work environment I don't think any of us would ever experience in this program again. For as diverse as the United States is, nowhere is THAT "diverse." There are many other things to compound on this that I'll get to, but I'll say now that this all added up to a HIGHLY unconventional Round 1 for our team (idk if I've laid this out in the blog before, there are 4 rounds).

WHERE WE LIVED

Our "Spike Location" or where we made us our base for two months was the Aguada Athletic Center. There were a few buildings we never went into, our building was the bleacher complex alongside the track and field. There was a large parking lot behind it, it was a long network of hallways and rooms. The typical entrance we went through had a display case filled with dusty soccer trophies, and split into two hallways, we took the left (never saw down the right). Down that long hallway and there was the kitchen/dining room area. It was three walls and a garage door that never opened, with stairs that led to the open air bleachers, with iron gates that I never ever saw opened, but at least it made for good ventilation. There was a stove with only one working burner (we got it replaced maybe two weeks before we left), a washer and dryer that didn't work at all, three fridges and two long red counters. These counters were falling apart, there was not a single drawer that either opened or were clean enough to use, all of our kitchen supplies had to be stored on a separate folding table. The sink was alright, it only had lukewarm water come out of it. Sometimes the city's water supply stopped working and we had no running water for several hours. Sometimes the weather caused power outages for who knows how long so our fridge stuff could be in jeopardy. There were rats, I can't remember if any of them got to our food, they might've early on. I don't think we ever learned of their exact hiding place, but there were some nights where we were aware of a rat's presence, setting up barriers to trap it out in the open so it couldn't escape and try to kill it. Literally the movie Mouse Hunt, that was a good movie. Been so long since I've seen it...

Connected to that was another hallway, and this was "our" hallway with three rooms and a bathroom. Each bedroom was formatted the same. Tile floor (like the rest of the interior), VERY high ceiling, air conditioning, small windows on the back wall where you could see out to the parking lot, and 5 or 6 bunk beds. I can't speak for the girls room, I only ever went in there to get keys or if I had to talk to one of the girls inside. But at least for the boy's room I was pretty comfortable with it. I took the bed in the farthest right corner when you walked in, and was only one of two that took the top bunk. Everyone else had a bottom bunk, there were eight of us boys altogether. The others used the top halves of their bunks as shelves, the reason at least three of them couldn't take a top was because of their body types being on the heavier side. It's the same as CTI, since I'm willing to take the top bunk I take it. I haven't slept on the ground floor of anywhere for four months now haha But at least this one wasn't too high to require climbing, I could usually just jump on. All the bunks squeaked and creaked something fierce, and while I'm not a mattress connoisseur I could tell they weren't GREAT if I sat on one for so long it would create a lasting dent. My bed was also my desk, I would chill there all the time watching my anime and writing my scripts and editing some video. There was no wi-fi where we were, some had hot spots which I used once or twice, but otherwise there was a cafe a quarter mile away that was useful. I enjoyed this because especially coming back to campus I've realized how easily distracted I get being online, I honestly hate how unproductive I get when there's internet, when I get a place of my own maybe I WON'T have wi-fi access.

Anyway it was comfy, and the bathroom wasn't a chore to walk to. The bathroom was unisex, which apparently was a challenge for some of our members at first to the point we had to have gender specific shower times, but we got used to it after a while. It had four toilet stalls, six sinks and four showers. The showers weirdly shared two wide curtains, so it was tricky when you had two share a stall next to each other and had a little tugging match with the curtain, but it wasn't a big deal at all. Oh, and as for that third room we had access to, for most of the time it was a secondary girls room, but when some of us left (I'll get to that) it became half pantry half dining room. This was because for the last week a collegiate baseball team from the States would be using the neighboring hallway to the right, and would have to use the kitchen area. The supervisors told us of the stormy relations they had in the past, the team would hot-box their rooms and steal other people's food and property. This made us extra cautious, but nothing ever really came of it. We hardly ever saw them, and the ones we did were pretty chill. Mutual distance was maintained.

There was a door to the outside from the bathroom, and it opened to the giant quarter mile track and field. We will probably never get easier access to a PT space again. PT or physical training is a 45 minute exercise session we were required to do three times a week. Our team chose to do it on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and exclusively in the afternoon to evening (none of us are exactly "morning people") It was easy to do in the evening, the track was lit up to 9pm, but even then some of us pushed PT off so long we ended up doing in the dark anyway. Local people would be walking it all the time, particularly in the latter half there would be sports teams practicing there too. PT was never something we planned in advance, we were just too preoccupied to think ahead. We couldn't even pin down an exact time since we never knew how long we'd be staying out in the field, sometimes it was back at 3pm, other times it was back at 8pm. Even then it would always conflict with having to make dinner, those of us responsible for dinner ending up with having to do PT much later. Many times this would resort in "doing our own thing" which isn't exactly what the program encourages us to do for PT but we let it fly anyway. Run, walk, do exercises along the track, use the body weight "prison-gear" machines nearby, so long as you get a work out for 45 minutes. Other times we'd play team sports in the middle field, like Ultimate Frisbee or Capture the Flag. We even played Soccer exactly one time. Capture the Flag was probably the best sport, most everyone loved it. We'd use the neon safety jackets they lent us for work as flags. Come to think of it, when it came to Ultimate Frisbee I can only recall one time, it was far late in the Round, just our team at the time. We didn't have a Frisbee, we had a plastic lid used for a cracker bin that almost worked as a Frisbee. That was a fun game because we used the whole length of the field, but the lid was so bad at flying we could only score in the same goal area the entire time. Since in Ultimate you switch goals every volley, this would mean it kept getting tied and the only way OUR team could take the advantage (since we went 2nd we could only ever tie the game) would be if we managed to get the lid all the way to the other side of the field. We ALMOST did, we were the closest to do it out of both teams. But that was a frustrating experience yet memorable and fun.

I should mention now that it wasn't just our team of ten that lived there, when we arrived there was a composite team (a team assembled of members from different teams) of 8 or 9 members from California that had already completed their term of service and were serving extra time, and a day after a 2nd team of eight from our campus would join us, River 2. I'll get into each of these guys later on but in short for about three weeks there was 26 of us living under the same roof, then 18 of us for most of the Round until the last two weeks when River 2 moved to San Juan, and then it was just the 10 of us. When we first got there, the Pacific team already had food in the pantry and fridge, but Delta 3 (us) and River 2 pooled their budgets together for food. Allow me to explain food: $4.75, per person, per day, allocated to us every week (or maybe in one big bulk, I'm not actually sure. I'll find out soon enough). That's for all three meals, for 18 people. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you buy smart and buy in bulk it can actually go pretty far. We didn't even spend all of what we were given, we only spent 80% of what was allocated.

This created a savings for the end of the round that we could use on more extravagant stuff, like going out to eat or snacks for car/plane rides. That being said, for half the round (back when I could spend money) I bought my own bags of generic brand cereal to make sure I ate that for breakfast. For this I was made to be known as a cereal fiend, and I embrace that title, I really do. Give me cereal for three meals a day tbh. But for lunch many would make sandwiches, to the point where our team explicitly doesn't want to buy Peanut butter next round. I would make such lunches at first, but the hassle of grabbing the bread, peanut butter, knife, and bag to put it in, then spend the time spreading and making it, then having to wash the oily knife off afterwards, I just got sick of it. Turns out our uniform shorts and pants have excellent cargo pockets, so much room for activities! Our team liked buying bagels, I resorted to just grabbing one raw and stuffing it inside my pocket, along with a couple of crackers. Oh the peanut butter crackers! How expired they were! Yes our budget didn't exactly allot for "snacks" per say, but our organization was kind enough to donate these BAGS of peanut butter crackers, except literally all of them were expired by at least seven months. They came in all sorts of brands, and some were better than others if you knew what was what. Pretty much all the Keebler elf ones had some dark fuzz on them. The Ritz ones LOOKED old. But a vast majority of the generic brand were actually pretty OK. I ate them often cause I liked them, and apparently I was the only one aside from my Team Leader on occasion. We were given that bag a month in and we didn't even finish it. There was one later in the round, that I took once that I opened, put one in my mouth, and stopped. I slowly took it out, there was something...............off, about it. I looked at the wrapper, all of them had the date on them.

October 16th, 2016!

For dinner our team had several people capable of cooking, and one exceptional cook. I probably just have low standards but I enjoyed pretty much everything our team had for dinner. It was again, stuff that was made in bulk, so stews and soups and LOTS of rice, but for our own sanity we did our best to keep a variety to it. As such I can't accurately explain all the dinners we had, there was nothing consistent about it. Granted I had a bad habit of being late to dinner or missing dinner completely, but since it was always my fault I was never salty about it. It would've been nice to have it on a rotation but since some of us were more capable than others it wasn't ideal. I helped on occasion, it was mostly prepping and some cooking, stuff I knew I could do.

You couldn't ask me to have an idea of what to include and what the best consistency was but damn could I chop an onion. Our team really likes using onions...my eyes stung a lot. I helped make burgers one time, they turned out to be pretty THICC burgers with onion pieces in them, they were great! Sometimes it was pasta, I love pasta, but our team puts more effort into meal making then me so it was never JUST pasta. Our team really likes meat, and nobody on the team has any major allergies or dietary restrictions, which is pretty darn lucky except for one member on River's team being vegetarian (or vegan, can't recall...) so a lot of times the sauces or meats would be kept separate. One time we made cauliflower pizza, but we didn't have the resources to make it quite right. One time we did breakfast for dinner, it was the first time one of our members cooked French Toast, he did a pretty good job I thought! However I can't fail to mention those times our team would just resort to getting Little Ceaser's pizza, which was just down the road. This happened twice when we had to scramble to do our laundry. Speaking of...

Most businesses close on Sundays, and our Saturdays were busy with other things so ultimately we settled on doing laundry on Mondays. We mainly went to this one place that was pretty out of the way, like 15 minutes away, but had a good number of washers, dryers, and wi-fi. We each got $2-4 for washing, and $2-4 for drying. There was a lot of multiple loads and sharing washers/dryers going on, for me I had very little in the way of laundry. In fact there was one week I had so little I skipped out on the day cause I didn't want to waste the money, but it turns out AmeriCorps requires laundry done once a week so I had to do it the next day.

My camera is real trash, but I made sure I took SOME
documentation of this scene outside the laundry mat.

It turns out we ended up going way over-budget with laundry, so that's something we'll need to work on. But yeah the Little Ceaser's thing, two times during the latter half we were stretched for time, what with work getting out late, so we had Little Ceaser's outside of this laundry mat. I dunno, sitting out at these trucks eating our four slices each of stuffed crust at night in the parking lot of this laundry mat while our laundry got done, it was pretty dope. But yeah we hope we get a place next round where there's a washer and dryer on site.

Allow me to run through a typical day. The night before is when we find out what time we gotta wake up tomorrow. Sometimes it's 7am, sometimes it's 9am which meant you're going to the office, sometimes it's 6am if it's a far away work site. You never knew on a day to day basis, even when we had a week to week schedule made, it changed all the time. You could say it was an unreliable narrator. So when I got up I wouldn't shower, since I most often showered the night before after PT. Put on my uniform which comprises of a T-shirt (with hoodie, fleece zip-up, and long sleeve variety), tucked into cargo shorts/pants with belt, and sneakers OR cargo boots, depended on what the job was so long as it was close toed. Far less elaborate uniform than what I was used to from Scouting (which was the same apart from a required shirt underneath, BSA socks, name tag and staff hat). But in terms of what to bring, it was usually asked to bring most or all PPE (personal protective equipment). Helmet with our name taped on, safety glasses, gloves, ear protection, rain gear (bright yellow coat and pants), safety vest, and jumpsuit (blue, for painting) I used the gloves almost all the time, and the safety vest was easy to just put on as well, but I can't say the same for the rest. We all wore helmets for the first few weeks like dorks, but noticing how everyone else working alongside us didn't we just took them off eventually, I haven't worn mine in weeks.

I've used the rain coat once but not the pants, and have yet to put on the jumpsuit even when we've done such messy things as sealing and tarring. Besides PPE and lunch though we also brought water jugs, and this is a point I wanted to bring up. You have no idea how valuable these Dasani jugs were, I want to say it's at least a half gallon of water? That was the amount of water we needed to drink every day, and usually did. While I really enjoy the water bottle I bought, eventually I stopped using it in favor of these larger jugs. I wish I could've brought mine back as a souvenir but there was no room for it. So we determine who of the four to six of us are driving and who goes in what vehicle and pile in after eating breakfast and making lunch. We very rarely left on time. When I wasn't driving which was most often, I'd have an episode of Doremi or Galaxy Express 999 or Digimon Frontier loaded up on my phone since those are the only shows in a compatible format and would have one of those for the ride most likely to Somebody Cares a little over 20 minutes away. Somebody Cares is our sponsor and I'll get to them later. After we loaded whatever supplies we needed from them we headed off to the work site, and we could be there anywhere from 6-9 hours. It might get rained out, we might get done early, we might use up all the materials we brought, it varied site to site. We'd eat lunch anywhere from 10am to 1pm, again depending on what we were doing or the schedule of the workers we were with. And then we went probably back to Somebody Cares just to drop off the materials we used, then came back home anywhere from 3pm to 8pm, it was always different. That variety was stressful at times, but there was no monotony to it at least like clocking in and out to somewhere. When we got home it was also sort of willy-nilly when we'd make dinner and when we'd do PT and when/if we were going to clean the spike location. When we cleaned, it was split into groups. Some cleaned the bathroom, some cleaned the kitchen, some swept and mopped everywhere. Then at least personally I'd go to bed somewhere from 11pm to 1am. We worked Monday through Friday, and had Sundays off most of the time. Saturday we either had off or did something fun like the Waterfall (full story I'll get to) or did an ISP (Independent Service Project) which is a job divorced from our current sponsor. The reason we'd work on these is to earn a required number of work hours. AmeriCorps wants us to work for 40 hours a week at least, and over the course of the year accumulate 80 hours from ISPs. Adding to training hours we need to work 1700 hours in total for the year to get the financial award and complete the program. That means for four rounds, you should have 20 hours of ISPs per round, which I got just the right amount (21.50). Add the 150 hours of training and 347 hours of traditional work, I'm right on track.

A view from the center, but none OF the center! Brilliant...

SOMEBODY CARES PUERTO RICO

This was the non-profit disaster relief organization that we were partnered with the whole time we were in Puerto Rico. We were the only team that stayed the whole time, the other two teams would inevitably leave due to finding better work elsewhere. The one full time employee, Mykol, was a really great guy. Young, spoke good English, really cared about the mission they were driving--bringing relief to the victims of Hurricane Maria. He was also running everywhere doing everything pretty much by himself. The previous "head" of the group--who I never actually learned the name of--"had his contract ended" and left it in shambles.

Tablets with important information all locked and no passwords found. They didn't have houses lined up for us, nor did they have the resources to fix them, nor did they have anything organized well to properly distribute those resources. All this stuff should have been lined up, but it fell through right before we got there. Some of us including myself worked with an outside group towards the end of the Round, and we brought them up. They scoffed, "Somebody Cares, they Don't Care." Apparently this group had partnered with Somebody Cares months ago, and among other things they were essentially hoarding materials "for the next hurricane." A volunteer had uncovered four or five generators just gathering dust when they could be used to power people's homes. This was apparently by design from the previous guy who had left before we got there, Mykol and the rest of the group being under his thumb. Most likely the same one who requested us from the beginning. I wasn't there obviously so this is an account of an account, but it wasn't spoken of favorably, but since this guy left things had at least gotten a LITTLE better. Honestly again, people there were good, and did care, but were dealt a pretty shitty hand that we had no choice but to play.

The facility in Añasco was a school building. It had a long driveway up a big metal gate and security check point. It was a pretty modern looking building, concrete with large windows in front. It's primary function was as a school, so kids from 6-15 would be around in uniforms (blue and yellow striped shirts, most often over-sized on them) hanging around the front lobby or in the large dimly lit gymnasium. On the ground floor we'd have to walk across the gym where'd they be playing basketball or soccer to get to the auditorium.

Silly us not taking like any real
pictures of the place. Here's that
Dasani jug I treasured so much!

It was a large auditorium space with a fairly advanced stage and maybe 400 seats. It was a place where they held church services, and I only know that mostly for sure because Somebody Cares was partnered with the main owner of the building "Catacumba 5" which was a religious group. There was a large cross hanging over the gymnasium you'd pass under to get to the auditorium. Past that however was where most of our action happened. Tucked in the furthest back of the building was the "warehouse" which was filled with palettes of stuff. Modern mattresses that come in easy access boxes, construction material, toys, emergency kits, water, all sorts of random things in boxes. Next to it was a garage door large enough for several trucks to back into, and outside in the back were kept the zinc roof sheets and various lengths of 2x4s all covered in tarps since it rained every day. Upstairs was accessed from the front of the building, and there were multiple classrooms and labs and offices. The one we were based in was on the left side, down a hallway. It was furnished with several tables and chairs, and a whiteboard we figured most things out, like our schedule and who goes where.

Like I said, they didn't have very many houses lined up for us. The only reason they had ANY right when we got there was because the Pacific team had already been with them for a couple weeks. Our Team Leader Brenda was the only person on any team that was bilingual, which is likely why our team specifically was the one that stayed the whole time. She would most often stay at the office, making phone calls and finding jobs our team could do. This was not a process I was present for, but I knew it wasn't easy. I remember there was a point where she told us we might have to drive around the neighborhoods LOOKING for tarped/damaged roofs for us to repair. When there was a candidate, she and Mykol would visit and assess the job seeing if it was substantial and something we could achieve. Brenda told me they had to turn down several offers which must've been quite awkward. Even so houses would drop out on us, or we'd finish sooner than expected, or we'd run into a bigger problem than we anticipated.

My team leader Brenda, giving a mattress
to some dude, the back of the facility. 

Anything could and would happen, and while AmeriCorps did warn us to go with the flow, it shouldn't have been THIS inconsistent. Several times we ran out of options and resorted to "organizing the warehouse," which often seemed menial and tedious. Some of us did "office work" which entailed us being on our computers with wi-fi waiting for any stray orders like making an excel sheet of something or a document of some kind. There was even a day where some of us spent the whole time doing yard work for a volunteer of the organization. Hard work but you could tell they were grasping at straws. Speaking of volunteers we often were accompanied by one named Lucas. He was cool, friendly, spoke English, and even had a collage of different colored Goku's as his lock screen, and I'd sometimes hear him watching Hero Academia on his phone. He wouldn't WORK with us, he'd supervise. I know he wasn't assigned to us to work, just to be the translator in case we needed that, but some of our members couldn't help but point that out pessimistically. They'd ask us to find jobs online but none of us could speak or read Spanish and communication was pretty sparse there, it was fruitless. Everyone could only do their best with what was given.

Over the course of the round, we had several visitors come to the office and the group at large. There were two church based organizations that came and helped us for a week or two. The first was just called "The Baltimore group," and while they helped us on some projects I wasn't present at those sites at the time. We did a session with them one afternoon where they got to know us and they did some activities like "Go to this side of the room or this side of the room if you're ________" type things. One of them was each of us sharing something we admire in another person, that was wholesome since the team had grown a habit of self-deprecation and mutual deprecation. Things didn't end up well with them however, apparently there was a day where our team and theirs distributed goods to a neighborhood. That in itself was good if it weren't for the fact that the neighborhood didn't REALLY need that supplies, and we were being used for press by a guy who was running for mayor. He omitted that information to all of us, including Mykol, and not only is that flagrantly against our policies in AmeriCorps, but the Baltimore Group especially did not appreciate to be used like that. I'd heard they chewed Mykol out and left on bitter terms, to put it mildly.

"The Warehouse"

The second group was called "Hopeforce." It was a group comprised mainly of construction guys, and they were able to teach us a good deal of roof stuff. Unfortunately their quota was not based on hours, but on results. They wanted to hit as many houses as possible, finishing three houses in one day which were meant to last us the week. Hopeforce was clearly a little begrudged by this, but they stayed for two weeks while also working with a separate organization. One day two representatives from AmeriCorps' national headquarters visited us to talk about our experiences. They were very nice and even gave us limited edition 20th anniversary pins. I can't recall if I lost mine or never given one, but either way I don't have one. What I do have now is a decal on the back of my laptop that they also gave us, so that's cool. I would say even at this point AmeriCorps is just as much a part of my life as Yawgoog, school, anime, theater and church have each been, so it was worthy I felt. Lastly in the latter half of the round there was an afternoon we spent at a Q&A with an employee from Somebody Cares, as well as listening to Mykol's father tell his life story. This was for one of our member's assignments for her specialty role as Life After AmeriCorps representative. Mykol's father had to be translated by Mykol, but his story was fascinating, coming up from his own peddling business, to working for the government as a fraud officer (which I asked how often he dealt with cases where people KNEW they committed fraud or if it was just an accident. He said it was never accidental, yikes!) to owning a gas station, to devoting his life to the church and non-profit work. It gave me more hope about finding the ONE THING I'LL DO THE REST OF MY LIFE stress that I think is easy to fall into when I'm this age.

This was taken hours after we started clearing it. The pickaxe is about where it was settled initially.

THE WORK WE DID DO

Ok what exactly did I even DO down there?

Mostly roof work, a vast majority was being on top of different kinds of roofs fixing them. The grand total at the end was 15 homes we worked on, but I didn't work at all of them. I was happy most if not all of it was straight-forward work. Build this, lift that, wash this, seal that. I think I'm just gonna go different paragraphs of the different sites I remember working at.

The very first one was a house in Aguada. The older woman living there had her roof torn off completely, thankfully it was a rare two story house. We worked with two guys, one of which spoke a little English, the other no English. This was the one that ultimately led to the "fetch me the wood," "fetch me the saw," "fetch me my water" kind of site, but we did a fair amount of work beyond that. We learned how to mix one kind of cement (turns out there's all kinds of ways) where they mix sand, crushed stone, and the instant stuff and used a sift to make the solution before adding water and spreading that around a particular way. We also screwed into zinc roofs for the first time there, something we'd do for a couple other houses. The most interesting part about this site however wasn't even AT this site. Twice during this time at this house, one of their supervisors stopped what we were doing, and we headed to an undisclosed location to do something else real quick.

The first time it was to clean up a mudslide that happened the day before due to heavy rain. It landed right in between two houses, and we spent the whole rest of the day to clean it all up. Mudslides are much worse to clean up than you think. See it's not just mud, it's literally packed earth. Large rocks. Trash. I remember I found an appeal with using the pick-axe to break up the dirt so the shovels could get to it easier. We'd dump it in one of two wheelbarrows and dump it down the rest of the hill (we were on a flat lot of the hill). I found it very satisfying, it felt like we were really making a difference! They served us some iced in the middle of it, very nice of those folks. The second time we were sent to a sidewalk corner that was beat up and practically non-existent. We spent the rest of that day cleaning and helping pave that corner with cement! A bulldozer came to grab the extra big pieces, and a cement truck came afterward to supply the cement. Contouring the cement in a way to match the rest of the sidewalk was pretty cool, and we got that done that day before the rain came thank goodness! I enjoyed that site a lot, though we stopped going pretty suddenly, which I felt pretty bad about.

The rest isn't gonna be chronological. Next is a project I was pretty proud about because it was the first house we worked on all by ourselves! We called it the Doghouse because they had dogs there, even though several of the houses we went to had dogs. Man I didn't mention the animals huh? Y'know there were horses outside of our spike location? They'd just walk across the parking lot sometimes like strays. One of them got right next to my window one weekend. There were large iguanas too! Anyway this was literally one of those houses we were in the neighborhood working on another house and we saw this one with a tarp on the roof, so Brenda went and knocked on their door and said "Hey you want us to help with that?" It took us a couple of weeks just due to delays and often running out of materials which we had to keep driving to the specific store that sells Zinc metal sheets. This job we covered new sheets right on top of the old rusted, hole filled zinc roof. The problem we faced with this roof wasn't that we had to sawblade cut every sheet to the right length first, or that we had to hammer these sheets on with roof nails (hammering onto steel layered on steel then into the beam is not a fun process), but in order to nail these down we had to avoid the nails in the previous sheeting, and they were in totally sporadic random places, so we had to actually MAP out where the nails all were so we could avoid hammering on top of them. We still struck out a couple of times and hit on top of the old nails, so we'd have to hammer somewhere else and caulk up the hole we permanently left. Interesting point to note, the zinc sheets were waffle shaped, meaning they had curvy ridges with peaks and valleys, and a point on contension was whether to hammer the nails into the "peaks" or the "valleys." Hopeforce did it in the valleys, which I thought makes the most sense since it hugs closer to the beam it's connecting to and less likely to come loose. However Puerto Ricans, as well as the gentleman who's roof this was, wanted us to hammer onto the peaks. I suppose because rain won't seep into them as well? I was willing to do either or but we did peaks per his request.

I was only on this one site once but it was enough to make an impact on me. It was another zinc roof, but this time instead of dealing with any new sheets we just had to use tar to cover up the nails and holes that were letting rain water get through. There was two cans of black tar, and four paint scrapers to scoop out dollops to smother the nails with. It'd be so hot on the roof, and we'd only have four scrapers but like six or seven people on site, that we took turns between that and doing a little clean up around the back yard. The couple was elderly (basically all the houses we worked on were occupied by old folks) and had dogs and chickens wandering in the back. The tar was pretty troublesome and gross to handle, I'm usually not skeeved to touch things like paint or cement, but tar was a hard pass on me and my fingers. Several of us put the jumpsuits on to prevent getting any on our clothes, I sure didn't though. Too much of a hassle. Everyone was jealous of me being able to squat for long periods of time with just my heavy boots touching the scorching hot roof. Unfortunately this was also the roof that 1st degree burned both my knees. Maybe it was the sun since that squat did put them in direct sunlight, but I'm positive it was the moment towards the end of the day where we needed to tar a part of the roof that was UNDER another part of the roof (like a porch roof), and in trying to see it I rested my knees on the very hot roof. That lasted well over a week. Good house though, they apparently painted it later on. The woman was nice, gave us some snacks and soda. I think that's where I tried coconut soda first. That was...a beverage I drank.

I went to this next one two or three times but pretty much did the same thing the whole time. It was a community center run by a blind couple, like full on blind. I only learned about that after we left the island during our debriefing. The front had a whole mural in front that I think was getting water damage? All I was told is it had to go. I spent almost the whole three days taking a paint scraper to it. Some of it came off satisfyingly easy, other parts had to be forced off bit by bit. It was honestly very therapeutic, it reminded me of the work I would do to my own fingers haha

For those who don't know me irl I have a terrible finger biting habit, people ask why and I've determined it's when I'm bored, terribly bored. The skin around my nails on the top is all puffed up and scar tissue ridden, sometimes bloody. I'm not embarrassed by it, I know it's a bad thing but it hasn't negatively effected me enough to stop. Anyway this paint peeling released a lot of those similar chemicals in my brain, only it was productive! They even did some of that on an interior room too. Other work included weed work and power washing the flat cement ceiling. This was one of the houses that fed us, they hosted us in a kitchen of a nearby building, we had mofongo and chicken. I enjoyed that site a good deal.

This next site was one that I went to on a whim with some of the River members for two days, and I enjoyed it so much I insisted I go back the third day with some Delta members (since that was River's last day so they couldn't go). This was rebuilding an entire floor of this old man's house, we partnered with a THIRD church organization from the states, this time from Las Vegas called Linked8. Only these guys weren't with Somebody Cares this time around, in fact they were the group that told some of us about their poor experience with Somebody Cares months before.

The Linked8 fellows were by far the best people we worked with in Puerto Rico. They were super knowledgeable and friendly like Hopeforce, but were far more willing to put in the time to teach us and have us do a lot of the work. Measuring, cutting, assembling, we did it all. Some of us actually voiced concerns if we were holding them back with our slowness and lack of skill, but they laughed it off. If we were in their way they said, they wouldn't work with us!

They also had a film team alongside them documenting what they were doing, that was kinda cool. They didn't exactly film us or anything but whatever pictures they took of us they drop-boxed our media representatives later on so that's nice. Their sponsor was a phenomenon too. Her name was Maribel, and beyond being super nice, generous and smart who spoke good English, her stories about assembling the community together after Maria hit was fascinating. She had connections to everybody, the police, the energy department, the government, and she herself headed several non-profits with a giant list of people who needed help, all while also having this bakery with extra rooms to rent out to volunteer workers like Linked8. She just radiated power but she was also super approachable and open to talk with us. When we first got there we worked on rebuilding the floor, which sounds odd until you point out it was a level far above the ground with a basement floor underneath. The whole building was on the side of a hill, so the views were probably the best of any site I went to. Anyway, we rebuilt the floor with plywood and spent the rest of the day building the left side wall and getting it ready to be hoisted up. We worked from 8am till it got dark at 6pm. The next day we arrived sort of late but thankfully we caught them about to hoist up the wall, which was a whole dangerous process that if we failed the whole wall would drop ten feet and roll down an incline of well over 45° who knows how far down! We got it to work though, and we spent the rest of the second day building and hoisting the right side wall. The next day, Friday, would be their last day, and they still had the outward facing wall to build AND hoist, as well as build and attach 13 roof trusses across AND assemble plywood on top, AND install tar sheets on top of those, AND attach zinc sheets on top of that, AND build a cross interior wall.

Clearly this wasn't all going to get done in one day, but they would try their best. The third day was allotted to both assembling and hoisting that third wall and building all 13 of those roof trusses, which is pretty much all I and my team mates did that day. It was pretty tedious and repetitive cutting the right lengths, putting the pieces together, and screwing them down flush and securely, but I felt pretty satisfied doing that work. We stayed there well past 8pm, they had to bring flood lights to keep working. While they couldn't finish what they wanted, Maribel had a contractor lined up, and we extended a hand to help continue the project, but the contractor had enough capable people and declined the offer. The day before the last day, River's last day with them, they invited us to dinner at Maribel's bakery. We got the OK from our team leaders and accepted their offer gladly. She fed us sandwiches and the 12 or so of us played this card game afterwards that I forgot the name of but was super fun. The object is to get rid of the cards in your hand and the eight cards (four face up four face down) assembled in front of you.

You do this by discarding cards in a descending order into a pile that gets passed to each person. If you throw four or more of a kind or add the same suit to make up four or more, you clear the pile and start anew. If you can't clear or throw less, you have to pick up the pile. The round ends when someone has no more cards and the rest of the players tally up points based on what's left in their hands, and the game ends when somebody earns over 200 points--only it's scored like golf, you want the lowest number of points possible. If anyone knows the name of that game I'd be happy to be reminded!


Ok so this took me the whole week to write, and that was mostly due to laziness on my part, I'm sorry. This isn't even the rest of it, I still have a few sites to recall, SEVERAL interesting stories to tell, and of course describe to you the eccentric nature of the people I worked, ate, exercised, drove and lived with this whole time. As well as all the anime I've been watching, holy smokes I finished like four two cours and four one cours, about to finish two four cours and started four more two cours and four three cours (lol bet that just got confusing!) And where the HECK am I going NOW???

zomg face reveal 😱

I know already but you're gonna have to find out! So I still have a good deal to write but if I wait till I completely finish it who knows how much longer it'll take, so I'll give you this for now. It's a good chunk anyways right? Hope you enjoyed it, why don't you send some feedback my way? I'd love to read it!

See you again! ✌













I suggest clicking on one photo and you can scroll through the rest, pretty sure that's how it works...