"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." - John Lennon
We can't tell you how busy we've been making other plans. Things you don't expect, things as big as a hurricane or as little as moving three times in eleven days, happen in life when you're busy.
Preparing for Hurricane Sandy
Responding to Hurricane Sandy
Spike Work
Staten Island:
After Hurricane Sandy, FEMA stationed us in New York to do community relations, an area in which we were completely untrained. Luckily for us, it's mostly about being FEMA-flexible and personable, two characteristics that our terms in AmeriCorps has taught us well. We knocked on doors and helped thousands of individuals move along in the process for getting federal assistance. Summit One knocked countless doors and handed out endless flyers to help the citizens of Staten Island.
Southeastern New York State:
After our Chrismas break, one of our corps members moved to another team to get teams a bit more even. We will miss you Amy! We wish you all the best with Bayou One! Summit One has now been busily serving ten-strong since our return in early January. We've been working as a public assistance team out of an office in White Plains, NY to help the local and state governments in the surrounding area. We help them fill out applications for federal financial aid for money they've spent on Hurricane Sandy relief. Working as project specialists is something in which we've been trained, so we're doing our own projects this round, instead of working under mentors like we did in Mississippi.
We'd like to call out our mentors: Tom, Charlene, Teresa, Richard, Gary and Pat for doing such an amazing job preparing us for our own projects! You are the best! Thank you so much!
Spike Housing
Staten Island:
In Staten Island, Summit One lived on two different ships. For the first part of our work in Staten Island, we lived on the TS Empire State in the Bronx on the Maritime College campus. There was great food for us to eat three meals each day on both ships, so we never even had to worry about preparing meals for our teams. It was Hell for someone with claustrophobia, but for those of us with a hunger for good food and no work preparing it or cleaning the dishes, it was Heaven! The second ship was right off Staten Island, so getting to and from work was so much more convenient. The SS Wright featured the same great foods and even hot lunches, but even more than that, we were living in an upper deck, so we were able to get cell phone reception (3G in some areas, even) and TVs with DirecTV were installed for us. Talk about spoiled national service!
Southeastern New York State:
This part of our AmeriCorps term has been quite an adventure. We started off living in an Extended Stay Hotel in Whitestone, NY in upper Queens. The commute to work was about twenty-five minutes, so staff moved us to the Extended Stay Hotel in White Plains, which was closer to our office in Purchase, NY and saved about five minutes on the commute. However, someone on the floor above our threw some water at a grease fire the day after we moved in and lit her whole room aflame! We all evacuated the building when the system sounded the alarms and the sprinklers went off. Our floor was flooded, so we were temporarily moved to the Double Tree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY while our hotel in White Plains would be fixed. A couple days of repair turned into a couple more days, which turned into a week, which turned into at least ten days. While it was fun at first to eat out every single day, our team likes to be healthy and make good decisions. AmeriCorps staff moved us back to the Extended Stay in Whitestone, NY, completing the triangle of moves in just eleven days.
