Okay, here’s the blog entry I promised to write back in May. It’s fucking long, so I won’t blame you if you don’t read it. If you’re one of the amazing people I met and made friends with up in Oofunato, I really hope I don’t lose your friendship because of this post. But I …
Tag Archive: Volunteering
May 28
Back to the Good Life
I’m typing this (or at least starting to type this; we’ll see how long the battery holds out) in Sendai city, waiting for the Curry Express to come and pick me up, ostensibly at 16:30, but we’ll see. While I wait, I’m burning a good ass-mark into a seat in the Starbucks near the station’s …
May 27
Last Day in Oofunato–The Best of Both Worlds
Today I got back into the canals… the ones on the rice field, though, not the ones in the city. The ones on the paddies definitely smell better. I’m so tired that I can hardly type. I’m writing this while I wait for my photos to transfer from my camera card to the PC. …
May 26
Paddywhacking and Meetings
Today I signed up for the Paddywhacking crew, which meant that we went out to a bunch of rice paddies in Rikuzentakata and pulled junk out of them. We also started work on the canals and ditches around the site. <—THIS PHOTO IS NOT ME I stuck with paddy work today because I …
May 25
Of Ditches and Bitches, Of Pals and Canals
So I finally manned up this morning and joined a proper crew: the Ditch Bitches. Our job was to clear out the canals that drain the grey water from local houses because they are totally blocked with tsunami debris. Ow. I hurt. My job was to shovel or otherwise haul muck that …
May 24
Oofunato
I need to write this briefly, because I don’t find myself with a lot of time. There are a number of people here who are awesome and I’m loathe to trade time with them for writing on this blog or any one of the other things that I REALLY need to get done before Saturday. …
May 21
The First Night
Typing this on the air mattress, which turns out to be like, a queen-size. I’m sleeping in the All Hands common room at the HQ tonight, because they didn’t want to move me over to the second set of facilities in the Evac center. Which is fine. Except they made a big-ass deal about …
May 21
Today’s Tweets Extrapolated
And the good ship Curry Express is off for Tohoku! (@ YC&AC) http://4sq.com/jmI0TI I woke up at 4:30, and was on my bike and off to the departure site by 5:20. Good friend Dave had driven my heavier bags over yesterday, so I didn’t have to worry about how to carry them. He will …
May 21
Oofunato Bound At last
I’m writing this on the bus to Oofunato, which I caught with just moments to spare, thanks to the help of @peacefulandjust (I mean, her help is the reason I caught it at all, not the reason I was running to catch it). Where to begin? About a month ago, I signed up …
May 11
Finally Signed Up
It’s been two months today since the Tohoku earthquake, and nearly a month since I first talked about going up to Tohoku to volunteer. I’ve done a couple of volunteer things here with a local group, and in three days I go up as part of a caravan delivering supplies and Indian curry dinners …
little birds