We awoke with the roosters at the crack of dawn to venture into the unexpected. It was our first day of work with SALS and none of us had any idea what to expect. Bag lunches and the seven thirty alarm clocks were going to take some getting used to, but luckily today we were all eager to discover what exactly we would be doing for the next five days.
As we arrived at the work site after a thirty-minute drive, we were greeted by a run-down elementary school, Oakhill Elementary, and our “boss” for the week, Dave. During the first half of the day we taped and primed a room that is going to become a new health clinic at Oakhill. After our lunch and a nice walk through the snow, yes, SNOW, we were split up into two groups; one group, who stayed and painted the room, and the other group who was going to begin cleaning and sweeping up the left over remains from the vandalized elementary school. Before entering the school everyone seemed a bit anxious, not knowing what was going to be behind those two old school doors. Once we entered and saw the hallways and classrooms in ruins, we knew we were going to have our work cut out for us this week, but also an extensive amount of ground to cover in exploration.
We started in the school cafeteria where the ceiling fell in and coated the floors with debris. The Disney cartoon characters painted on the walls had been smashed in by the vandals. It was saddening to think that children who have spent their school years in the cafeteria laughing and eating lunch, could never come back to cherish those memories because they had been ruined. We all were intrigued by the remains that seemed to have just been left by the teachers before the school closed down. We found grade books, posters, textbooks, and many belongings from one particular child Alisha Evans; by the end of the day it felt as if we almost knew him. Meanwhile, the entire room had been painted by the end of the day and was not even recognizable. Together, the twelve of us had made immense progress on the school and the future health clinic. We also met our SALS crew, Daniel, Andrew (Crash), and Dillon, who we would be working alongside for the entire week. All of us longed to get to know them, hear their stories, and learn the culture of West Virginia through them.
Our first day ended with a charades game against Boston University, which OF COURSE Rutgers beat them! All in all our first day was memorable and already different from anything I had ever experienced in my entire life. I already bonded with each and every one of the people on the trip and we still had a whole week together!
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