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Tuesday, March 12: Day 4

Living in Indiana, we don’t have to deal with as many natural disasters. We deal with tornadoes sometimes but nothing like what we’re seeing here. Location makes a difference. I wouldn’t know how to really help people in this situation if I hadn’t volunteered. It makes me want to learn how to help others even if I may not be in the same situation. At least I would know how to help.

I’ve volunteered after other disasters but a long time after they occurred. I’ve never been involved with this stage of the work so it’s interesting be involved with this process, with the rebuilding houses.

This is a completely new unique experience for me.

I worked with habitat for humanity before and with that, you’re working from the ground up and here it seems like we’re almost working backwards. It’s still a similar experience because we’re working with families that are displaced from their home and really want to get back into their residence.

I have the ability to do physical labor and I see the people who live in these houses and know I can do more work that they can. In the first house, the woman was older and wouldn’t be able to do the amount of work that I can. In the second house, there was a strong looking man living there who looked like he could have been more helpful.

It’s different than any experience I’ve had. I’ve worked mostly in hospitals where people are physically unable to do some things where as here, we’re taking the initiative to help those who may be able to help themselves, but still need the extra hand to do the things they can’t. It’s a good experience but it didn’t come from something good.

A privilege to me was just that I could see the damage on tv and not have to be there. Anything that has to do with kids I’m really interested in volunteering. A child is more helpless and can’t do things by themselves but adults are usually able to take care of themselves. Now I see that these people really can’t do their own work and need people to help them.

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Monday, March 11: Day 3

How did you step out of your comfort zone today? Team Indecisive: We stepped out of our comfort zones by diving into the local culture by eating the food and walking through the unfamiliar New York City. 

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Day 2: Sunday March 10th

How has the experience meet your expectations, if not what is different? Annie - My experience was different today than what I expected because I did not really have any idea what to expect. I knew we would be working with molds and water damaged homes but I did not expect to be working in apartment complexes or to be sorting so many different parts of a house. I think I expected a single home somewhere where floodwaters would have gotten to it, not the first floor of a heavily populated area where people would be going on with life like nothing had happened and it was all a moment in the past. It was also surprising to see how much wood, metals, dry wall, and extra furniture’s can come out of one little apartment and how much can be destroyed in one big storm.

Team Fantastic Four: Group fantastic four was really touched on a lot of topics that they now realize are so important and can be easily taken for granted. The first one was just the fact of having a roof over our heads. We take that for granted each day and these people don't even have that necessity. Secondly, to go along with a roof over their heads, these people don't even have a place to call their home. We call even our residence halls at Purdue homes and these people don't have a chance to even call something a temporary home. Thirdly, this family has lost most of what they call tangible memories. It is hard to think about losing everything: pictures or home videos. And finally these families have lost any sense of security. We can't imagine not having a sense of security; it would make for many hard, worrisome nights.

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Team Fantastic Four and Team Leaders Natalie & Kaitlin ready for the volunteering that is in store for them!

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Team logo! Ready to start volunteering!

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Part 1: GoodBye Purdue, Hello New York!

So tonight is our first night in our Hotel here at Staten Island.  These past 24+ hours have been an eventful.  The trip started off rocky with a small mishap on where our food was placed.  It turned into a sort of Hide-and-seek with our lunches for the next 5 days!   Thankfully the amazing Purdue Res Life team was able to track the food down for us.  We were finally able to leave at 9pm on Friday night. The bus ride was calm and went pretty fast.  Breakfast was had and we arrived in Staten Island this morning at 11:45 am.  Today was just a day for all the individual teams to get to know each other and a time for sleep and preparation for our first work day.   I feel this whole week will be very rewarding.  Not just for the work that we are doing in Brooklyn, but the hotel that we are staying at is also housing victims of Hurricane Sandy.  Already we are feeling the appreciation of the people affected by this natural disaster. 

-Matthew Gray, Team Leader 

Senior & Staff Resident of FRST 

Purdue University