Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Two weeks and still going strong!


Once again I’m sitting around waiting for the Tuesday night room inspection, which finally gives me time to blog. The past days have been so busy but I’ve been productive which has been good.

Today my team and I went and did a ropes course so its was a very early morning. I was up by seven and of course the first day I volunteer to drive the van we have our first morning frost so I had to bust out the ice-scraper which is quite the undertaking when you’re scraping down the windows of a 15 passenger van without gloves. Thankfully Iowa has a great pop music station so while everybody slept on the hour drive I rocked out to my Miley, Pink, and Kelly. It was actually the first time I found Iowa really beautiful. As I was driving the sun was coming up over all the cornfields that were covered in ice and a thin fog. Not a bad way to start the day. I’m actually surprised that AmeriCorps is even letting me drive the vans considering that during my driving test I hit the gas and was partway out of the parking lot before I realized that my instructor was half way through the door and the other passenger didn’t even have her seatbelt on….but I mean we all makes mistakes.

I’ve been working on finding constructive ways to pass the time here so me and my friends Lauren and Lyndsey started our own knitting club and let me tell you there is quite the waiting list waiting to join. Turns out there are way more closet knitters out there than even I had anticipated. Last weekend I was knitting a scarf on the sidelines of a flag football game and out of nowhere one of the players started approaching me. My first instinct was that of panic and to hide my lunch money but to my pleasant surprise he complimented me on my handiwork and asked me if I could teach him a basic stitch sometime. This never would have happened in high school I’ll tell ya that much.

Last Saturday I had my first Iowa bar experience and let’s just say it’s not really my scene. Turns out it was the night of a big Iowa vs. Michigan game and the bar was packed and people were yelling and screaming and hitting each other as a form of endearment. When Iowa pulled through and won the game in the lasts few seconds the place erupted into pandemonium. People were hugging and flinging into dog piles all over the place. Even the lady by me at the bar who was wearing mom jeans that probably fit a tad bit better back in 92’ took a running start and flung herself on top of the pile of men who had blocked all access to the ATM machine. The whole scene was fascinating.

Here in Vinton, AmeriCorps shares its facility with the Iowa Brail and Sight Saving School. It’s a big deal because it’s the second oldest school in Iowa and Mary Ingalls Wilder (Laura’s sister) went here back in the 1800’s. There used to be hundreds of blind kids that went here but now there are only eight students. These days they usually abbreviate the school name to I.B.S. because there’s not such things as sight saving so you’ll see people walking around the campus with IBS written on their shirts and I just can’t help but chuckle every time I see one because I’m just that immature. The other day I was walking by one of the students here at the school and just to be polite I said hello because we had been told that they have great voice recognition and if we meet them once they will most likely remember us later. Anyway apparently I sound an awful lot like some guy named Todd because this guy yelled back “HEY TODD!” and I didn’t know if I should pretend to be Todd and go with it or correct him but luckily one of the teachers was there to let him know I wasn’t Todd and he looked real disappointed.

1 comment:

  1. hahahahaha. oh my gosh rob. i am sitting in my room by myself dying laughing outloud. your blogs give me the giggles every time. love it. you are fantastic.

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