The Daily Musings of Andrew

Insight into what has been and what will be…

heacox204 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:15:20 +0000

I apparently have a blog? (It does seem like I forgot this even existed but it isn’t apathy that has led me not to post more frequently)…While life down in the ATL has been for lack of a better word hectic, it has also been a rewarding few months for me. I already feel like I have changed in my time here and am eagerly awaiting to see what my full transformation will be like come August. Each week consists of working on the unit with my kids during the day and planning and running an after school program in the evenings. This while being exhausting and time consuming has become rewarding in itself. I am co-running a sports after school program Sports & Outdoors club for kids, right now we are attempting to play soccer and teach the rules and parameters of how to play soccer to the kids. Surprisingly it has been working out real well especially since a majority of these kids have kicked a ball before but really had no idea what the rules actually were.

Lets see…work is good/tiring/fun as stated above…my AmeriCorps team is really awesome and I do enjoy hanging out with all of them, its crazy that 4 more members will be arriving in January to join our team! Oh yeah, I also have signed up and am taking a class. This class is called TDIT: Therapeutic Drum Instructor Training. I am taking a year long course to become a certified Therapeutic Drum Instructor. This training will prepare me to become efficient at playing 4 different West African Drums and also to run therapeutic classes and seminars on drumming to groups of adults and children. Therapeutic drumming is a really great form of therapy that I can’t wait to become well versed in over the next year.

What else? I really love Atlanta, this city has a vibrant arts scene, and it seems to have lots of really cool people. In the course of the past month, I’ve gone to 3-4 art gallery/shows, watched the Atlanta Thrashers, saw The Weepies & The Punch Brothers in concert, I went to the Coca-Cola factory, went to Bi g Pie in The Sky a pizza place that was featured on Man vs. Food, and I have walked through Peidmont Park. There is so much more that I want to do and yet have not had the time to do it. Douglasville is only 20 miles away from the city so it is not hard to get in and get out relatively quickly.

Internet like i’ve been accustomed to in the past year and change is limited to me in certain areas so again it’s been hard to get on and update as much as i’d like…heading home for Thanksgiving this year which is very very exciting!!

Until next time,

Andrew

Happy Friday!! Greetings from Douglasville!

heacox204 — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:01:58 +0000

Hello Everyone! Happy October from Douglasville, GA. I’ve been living down here now for about 1 ½ weeks and I have to say that while the living conditions are very primitive and this town is a spread out suburb with lots of streets that I have yet to master, (i.e. I get lost often driving in my car) I am enjoying every minute of my experience so far. There are 17 other AmeriCorps workers here that I am working with.13 (including myself) will be doing Educational based work with the kids on site and 5 people will be working with the Transitional team that deals with transitioning kids out of the facility and into either parental custody or in group home/foster care. Due to not wanting to have any confidentiality breaching in any capacity, I will have to be purposefully vague about certain aspects of my job. So far our training has consisted of getting to know the 1,200 acres of the campus that I live on and having team building activities with the other members of my ‘Core’. So far everyone here seems really chill and cool and awesome which hopefully will transition into a cohesive fun group of people to be associated with. The first weekend here was spent getting to know everyone through various activities like bowling, and having a bon fire. We also during the week went camping in Tanner State Park while doing camping activities like smores and telling stories around the fire. It has almost felt like summer camp so far, but the real serious training starts next week. When we get an introduction to the program and learn things like how to restrain a child and how to effectively tutor while also being safe around these kids. There are some similarities and differences from this AmeriCorps State position and the AmeriCorps NCCC from last year but I am noticing this project might be more mentally draining then last year but at least i’ll be stable this year and have more time to myself. The one highlight so far of my time here so far has been the West African Theraputic Drumming. As AmeriCorps we get to learn how to play the African drums. There is also a course that is free to us if we are interested to learn how to become West African Drum Therapists and become licensed in that therapy. It is an intense year training to learn not only how to play the drum, but how to use the drum to help in a theraputic setting. Wrapping things up, its been a blast, i’m learning a lot and hopefully will update soon. The internet access here is only available in our offices which is a little hike from camp site so i’m not on it every day. But will try and update soon!! Andrew

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

heacox204 — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:38:04 +0000

I am alive! Greetings! After getting home from my amazing experience in the *NCCC, I have spent the last 6 weeks basically reacquainting myself to home and hanging out with a few of my friends and family in the area. Finally on Thursday morning, I will be packing up my car and driving down to Douglasville, Georgia where I will be working with Youth Villages AmeriCorps for the next 10 months. I am going to be heading down to Virginia to visit my Aunt Eileen and family for 2 days and then from there heading down to start my next term of service. This will be a little different as I will be working in one location and I’ll be working with kids the entire time. I am very excited for this opportunity though as I know that in the future I believe I would like to work in some capacity with kids. Immersing myself into a job with kids sounds like the perfect way to get experience. Also, after living in Colorado, Louisiana, Texas and Missouri last year there was no way I could stay in Pennsyvania I’ve already done that, might as well add Georgia to my list of states I’ve lived in!

This program seems really exciting and I’ll be working with approx 12 other people and living in cabins with some of those people as well. It is another year of meeting new people and having some awesome new experiences. I cannot wait.

Under the “categories” on the side bar the *NCCC posts will all still be up there if anyone wants to re-read or perhaps read for the first time the 43 posts that I made during my wonderful experience last year. Hopefully I will have just as many exciting adventures in Georgia as I had last year.

Updates will be hopefully frequent during my time. I look forward to informing the internet world on my next job!!

Until next time, with pictures!!

Andrew

UPDATE: I just got my Mailing Address for the next year. It is as follows:

Andrew Heacox

c/o Youth Villages AmeriCorps

4685 Dorsett Shoals Road

Douglasville, GA 30135

Reaching the End….3 days until my (1st) AmeriCorps experience is Over!

heacox204 — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:41:29 +0000

So, it’s officially the end. I’m sitting here in my dorm room, my parents have already arrived in Denver. (I won’t see them before Tuesday as they are going on a mini road trip of their own in and around South Dakota & Wyoming, using my graduation as an excuse for a western road trip…haha) On campus here it’s been a week of pretty much meetings on checking in equipment that we took out and having multiple room checks and cleaning. Lots of down time but that will slowly be going away…Monday we have to have our room spotless and then they proceed to lock our stuff up in vans. Tuesday we wake up at 5AM must be out of our rooms by 7AM and then graduation starts at 9AM. After the quick ceremony, the majority of the campus hops into vans to shuttle them straight to the airport. They really seem to want to get rid of us. After about 11AM tomorrow my NCCC round will officially be over. To further emphasize the point of getting rid of us they change keycode of the dorms at 9AM while the graduation ceremony is starting. I’ll be spending 3 extra days in the Denver Area with my parents before we takeoff and head to the airport. I’ll be back in Philadelphia by 3:50pm on Saturday July 31st.

It’s really surreal. It’s been 10 months? Really? It definitely hasn’t felt like that at all. It feels like not that long ago I was in Missouri at the start of this program. Taking time to reflect though it has been a wild journey. Some projects were much better then others I was on, but I did at least learn something or take something away from each experience that I had this year. In these past 10 months I have either lived/worked/traveled through Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Louisiana. I got to see many cool things that I’ll never forget. Mardi Gras? Superbowl Victory? Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial? Shakespeare live in a Dallas Park? The City Museum in St. Louis? Colorado Rockies/Avalanche and Texas Rangers games? Yes, did them all. However, I think the best thing about this program is that I have met sooo many people this year, and many of them are genuine honest people who really want to make a difference in this world. Regardless if I keep in contact with everyone that I met in this program, I will always remember them and the impact they had on my life. Each place that I spent some time this year, I always met some benevolent person who made me really think about what’s important in life. Not to go all philosophical here but if there’s one thing that I have learned in the past ten months it is this: ALL that should matter in life are the people you surround yourself with. You could have the best job in the world, but if you surround yourself with curmudgeons then how happy can you be? The people with whom you associate yourself with can make or break how anything that you deal with in life goes. I am realizing that for me, I need to make sure that people who are positive, compassionate and not selfish are in my life. Also that my life doesn’t need to be dictated and planned out. Life will happen and take advantage of all the opportunities available to you but don’t look so far ahead that you miss out on what’s going on in the present.

Each round that I had, I can think of at least one example of someone that I’ll never forget due to how they had an impact on me and made my time in their community even better.

Missouri: At Shaw Nature Reserve, everyone was really nice but the one person who stood out to me was Glenn. Glenn was one of the staff workers and he was possibly one of the nicest men I have ever met. He cooked catfish for us one day for lunch, always seemed to care how others were doing, was a hard worker and just a real genuine person. One day Ashley on my team thought she lost a ring in tall grass out in the prairie. Glenn drove home to his house picked up his metal detector and ran back out to the fields to help us look for it after work hours when clearly it was not something that he was required to do.

New Orleans: Down in NOLA although I felt like the work we were doing was mostly busy work, I was still impacted greatly by it. It was the first house that I worked on in NOLA that touched me the most. Mrs. Barbara was an elderly woman in her 80′s who lived on a street in a bad neighborhood that got flooded. She then poured her life savings into finishing her house and a contractor stiffed her and did 1/2 the work took all the money and bolted. We were helping to remodel her house while she was living in it and sleeping on a couch. The woman had little to no money but insisted on cooking us lunch everyday we were there and would say “eat eat, god bless you” to us. She had lived in that house for over 50 years and while she had to deal with all of her financial problems and stuff she still was one of the nicest woman I had ever met.

Freeport Texas: I could name any of the children that we worked with here as people that impacted me. But it was a man named Joe and his wife that we met at Relay for Life that we were volunteering at. They were so touched by what we were doing and helping out at the Boys and Girls Club that they not only gave us free T-shirts from Relay for Life but they took a group picture of us and then made 4X6 copies of it and gave it to each of us. They also came over to our house and brought Pizza for dinner one night and just came to talk and hang out with us. They were just awesome and really seemed to care about the service we were providing in the area regardless of how short of a time we were down there to provide it.

Larkspur CO/Dallas: For Operation Purple Camp, the person with whom I will take away the most from was the Mental Health Consultant for the first 2 weeks Eileen. A woman with her pedigree and extensive psychology background could easily have been bored or uninterested in working at this camp for two weeks. She not only cared for the kids that she was trying to help deal with the emotional stresses of having parents in the military, she went above and beyond in trying to care for them. She would also do the extra leg work of checking in with the kids in camp with whom she felt might have the hardest time dealing with either being away from home the first time or with missing their parents.

In Dallas our sponsors Peter and Casie they were people I’ll never forget for many reasons. They really seemed to care about us. Casie was always trying to find free things for us to do in Dallas in our spare time. Peter had a pool at his house and invited us over multiple times to go swimming and to cook for us. These two made our experience in the hot Dallas sun much more enjoyable then it seemed it would be.

So that’s about it. Fire 3 has disbanded and our time here is soon over. I am going to miss some of the people here but I have had a hard time paying attention to this program ending as I am starting to make contact with the people I will be working with next year in my new AmeriCorps program. I interviewed and got a position working for Inner Harbour in Douglasville, Georgia next year starting end of September. There is a team of at least 14 (not sure exact #) that I will be working with next year as we help youth patients that either can’t be in a traditional school setting or have some psychological need that live on campus through tutoring and outdoor type activities like interpretive drumming and leadership building activities like ropes courses. (I think this is the premise of this organization? I’ll find out more when I get down there obviously.)

It’s been a good run in Denver I’ll miss it. I also have to say I’ve changed a little bit as well in this program.

This is me the day that we received our uniforms, before I had done 1 hour of service in the NCCC…

This is me after living in 4 different states, working at 5 different projects, after almost 1900+ Total hours and 90+ hours of ISP.

At least I don’t look like this program bogged me down or stressed me out haha!

July 31st I’ll be back in PHILLY!!! Thanks for the comments everyone as always!

Take Care everyone! (The blog will continue even though my program has ended..)

Wrapping up GroundWork Dallas & AmeriCorps! Program Ends the 27th!

heacox204 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:35:08 +0000

It’s been a while since I updated…(I know as the year progressed I got worse and worse) Internet connection was not readily available in Dallas and updating from my phone is really a pain…anyway I am sitting back in my room in Denver ready to wrap up the AmeriCorps experience. GroundWork Dallas was an interesting project. The aspirations of this non-profit are awesome and I would love to see if they complete all of their goals. The fact that this group is being funded by primarily private donors to aid in creating massive outdoor bike and hiking trails through out the entire city of Dallas. They did however not give us lots of work. We would work on the trails in the mornings and then teach the ‘green team’ youth how to swim in the afternoons. I would have liked to work more honestly but the project is awesome and the sponsors were just great. It was a great way to end the year. We got to do some really interesting things like go to Shakespeare in the park and we went to a Texas Rangers baseball game. We got to explore Dallas and Fort Worth. It was a really awesome experience.

Back on Campus now. My 10 months are pretty much at an end. We graduate from the AmeriCorps on the 27th and are done after that. It’ll be bittersweet. I’m glad to be ending but i’ll be missing lots of people and awesome experiences I had. My parents are going to be out for the Graduation and we’ll spend a few more days checking out some sites in Colorado and possibly other states. It’ll be a good time. I’ll be home the 31st and I can’t wait to see everyone!!!

Until Then,

Andrew

Happy 4th of July…Update from Dallas!

heacox204 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:52:46 +0000

Happy 4th everyone! I am sitting in our house right now in Dallas updating on my cellphone. So its been an interesting two weeks here so far with Groundwork Dallas. We work Tuesday through Saturday and spend most of our days doing Trailwork in the Mornings and then teaching the “Green Team” how to swim in the afternoons. We work with the Green Team out on the trails most days. A group of 9 inner city HS kids that volunteer and learn skills of cutting trail. I’ve got to use machetes and pulaskis and McClouds and lots of other cool tools as we spend the mornings working on walking trails in the great Trinity forest.

Peter and Casie our sponsors are really nice people and Peter has invited us over his house multiple times to use his pool and grill. Our home away from home and really the highlight of being in Dallas is the free memberships we got to the ridiculous downtown YMCA. Its the nicest one I’ve been too and its FREE. We go like everyday. Other then that, its hot, 11 people in a small house with a crappy toilet, and I think a decent amount of us are ready to head on back home. We graduate in 23 days? Nuts.

As always pictures

Andrew

Week 2 & 3 Camp Recap–Heading to Dallas for Final Project!!

heacox204 — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:05:09 +0000

Greetings everyone!

It’s been a while but I finished my last 2 weeks of Operation Purple Camp and am now about to embark on a journey to Dallas, Texas to work with Groundwork Dallas! I honestly am not looking forward to going to Dallas because the humidity is going to be brutal. Also, working at OPC was the BEST project I have had so far. I got to go rock climbing, go horseback riding, white water rafting, I got to visit the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and lots more. I got to work with about 40 kids ranging from 11-17 years in age and some of them I actually felt like I was able to be a good role model for them. The staff there was outstanding and even though I was logging 80-90 hour weeks and was getting exhausted, I loved every minute of it. I now feel almost 100% certain that my future career must include the aspect of working with disadvantaged teenagers in some way shape or form. (A year from now I might laugh at this post but at this juncture in my life that is what I am really feeling). Week 2 involved 12 teenage boys who decided to call themselves “The Blues Brothers”. This group had a few clicks in it and I had a kid with Aspergers that was tough to deal with but other than that it was a great group of guys. I had two boys fly from Ohio and Illinois just to come to camp and it was really cool to see them interact and fit in with all the local boys in the group. Week 3 was my most challenging week by far. My group called themselves “Mean Green Fightin’ Machine”. I had 16 boys ranging from 11-13 years old. In my group I had at least 6 boys diagnosed with ADHD or ADD and 3 of them for some reason their doctors decided they would be ‘off medication’ for the summer ( If I ran into their Doctors I’d like to give them a BIG THANK YOU!!! Totally made my life easier…ugh). I had a few boys who were dealing with homesickness, a set of brothers who wanted to kill each other, and even one boy who moved from a base in Japan where he lived for 4 years to Colorado the day before camp started. This poor boy didn’t have any friends and didn’t even know where ‘home’ was. He had stepped off a flight from Japan less than 48 hours prior to arriving at camp and was in a totally new world. This group was the most challenging to work with, but they definitely taught me a lot. I learned that one of the kids was starting to shave and was attempting to learn how through an e-mail his father sent him from overseas. My co-counselor and I decided to set up a 5 minute shaving clinic to show the boys how to shave. It’s amazing when you realize how much these kids have to do on their own and don’t have their parents around to teach them the basics and to help them as they mature. I even had one kid who acted out a lot and then I found out his father had been deployed 8 times to Iraq, Afganistan and Kuwait. No wonder why he acts out.

Operation Purple Camp was such an amazing experience and I wish it continued success in the future.

Last Spike Travel!! Just two days of traveling, heading from Denver to Amarillo, TX (Trip #3 to Amarillo Texas) and then Amarillo to Dallas. Apparently we have a house but no stove (no furniture? and no address given to us yet so who knows what we are going to run into…) and I was looking at the weather and it’s averaging like a high of 101 and a low of 80…ugh. Anyway after working at the camp I already have my 1700 hours and my ISP hours already done so its a little tough to think that I am going on this last spike and I don’t really need to because I have all of my requirements needed for my wonderful Eli Segal Education Award.

Anyway, will update with some great information from Dallas!!! Less then a Month and a Half away from coming back home!!

As always a few pictures,

Andrew

Ragin’ Smurfs…week 1 of Camp!

heacox204 — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:51:14 +0000

Greetings from my cellphone sitting on my camp bunk. Its been a tiring week. I am in charge of 12 boys ranging from 14 to 17 years in age. They call themselves the Blue Ragin’ Smurfs. They are some pretty cool guys and they get along real well with each other. We did lots of team building activites and things like high ropes courses and rock climbing and tomorrow we are going white water rafting with the guys which will be awesome. Breaks are few and far between and days are looong but its been neat to see these guys bond and create friends with other guys dealing with parents in various stages of deployment in the military. Time for me to get them to go to bed.

Pictures from a hike we did comin up

Andrew

Operation Purple Camp!! Starting Sunday!

heacox204 — Thu, 27 May 2010 03:59:27 +0000

Greetings!!! My 3-weeks as a camp counselor are about to start..so excited. I learned that I am going to be co-counseling Troop 6!! Steve and I are going to be heading up the blue troop of teens that will consist of 15-17 year old boys. The oldest group of campers that will be at camp. There will be about 14 boys the 1st week that we will be in charge of. Activities that these guys will be doing will include doing a ropes course, (which us counselors attempted on Monday its pretty intense!!) actual rock climbing at red rocks canyon, and white water rafting in Ft. Collins. When these activities are not in session, it’ll be our job to entertain these kids as well as get them all to bond as they are children who’s parents are all serving overseas. Breakfast is at 7:45 and lights out is 9:00 (but since thats a campwide time the teens can be “extended secretly” until about 10-10:30). It’ll be long days but really awesome I hope.

Today in training we completed our final procedures and policy information and then our leaders made us watch this movie called The Peaceful Warrior. Here is a LINK to the trailer, it is a really really awesome/inspirational movie and I would recommend watching it. It really makes you think about what’s important and not to clutter your head with things that really are just distractions. At first I was confused why our leaders wanted us to watch this movie that has nothing to do with the military and camp, but after watching it, I get why they wanted us to watch it and what messages we should take from it to be effective leaders.

Tomorrow we are driving out to camp to get our troop lists, make up signs for the kids and get everything ready for their arrival on Sunday!! Really excited.

No pictures this time, will be trying to take as many as I can during camp (though for legality reasons we aren’t allowed to take pictures WITH the campers due to lack of parental consent and a whole bunch of other things).

As always thanks for reading,

Andrew

Operation Purple!!

heacox204 — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:28:49 +0000

Hey Hey Hey!!! Greetings from beautiful Denver Colorado! I’ve been living here for the past 3 weeks and I can say that staying in Denver is really not a bad thing. I’m enjoying almost every minute of it. I have my own room for starters, which I haven’t been able to sleep in a room by myself on a consistent basis since, I don’t know December? It has been really, really nice I definitely am not complaining about that. We have been commuting to Denver to this old mansion that was converted into offices and has a really sweet coffee shop in it. This is the headquarters of OEP or OuterEdge Performance. This group is a small group that heads up all of the Operation Purple camps throughout the US and Hawaii. I have always felt on past projects that I have not had that much authority or haven’t been given any real responsiblities but I do say that on this project that will not be the case. One of my teammates and I will be the camp counselor for about 15-20 boys either in the Littles (9-11), Mids (12-14), or Teens (15+) age group. We are basically being given a crash course on team building activities and games to do with kids and after one more week of training we will be basically leading kids around 3 different groups for one week intervals. This camp I’m hoping will be the best project so far. Each week we will help 150+ teenagers who’s parents are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places forget about their stresses in life and have fun with kids their own age. Activities include White Water Rafting, Hiking, Rock Climbing & much more. I am sooo excited for this to start.

Living on campus has been fun too as I’ve gotten a chance to see the Rockies play a few times. Coors Field is a beautiful stadium. We’ve also been cooking on campus which is a pain because you share a kitchen with another team, so you have to stagger your cooking times but other then that it’s been good. On Saturday we went on a really sweet hike in Boulder which is becoming one of my favorite places I’ve been. It’s just a sweet sweet city and I’m jealous of the people that live there. We decided to go on a hike, had no idea where we were going to go eventually found Chautauqua Park. We took a few trails and was led up to this giant Stone Arch that showed a beautiful view of Boulder from above. It was a beautiful hike.

Things are kinda just going here, looking fwd to heading to Larkspur, CO on Sunday when camp starts!! It’ll be a crazy 3 weeks of camp but i’m looking forward to it. Monday we travel to the camp to do the ropes course and see the grounds for the first time. I am so excited!!! I miss everyone at home big time.

As always, a few pictures from my hike!

Andrew