Minot

So far so good!
We got in on Friday and got a short orientation to Hope Village and the housing situations. We're staying in a house owned by a Lutheran church (we're working with Lutheran Disaster Response) for the first month then switching with the team which is currently staying in Hope Village. Hope Village is an area for volunteers to stay in donated trailers. The house is right down town so we can walk EVERYWHERE so that aspect is amazing, but HV has catered meals so both have good aspects.
As for the work...my team is based in the warehouse (recoverywarehouse.org) which is a building supplied by the city to house building materials for flood victims. Victims go through a process known as RAFT to apply for aid in the form of building materials. We go out on deliveries which include dry wall as well as other small building materials such as dry wall mud, house wrap, paint, etc...so far there haven't been many deliveries but we've done 3 and they were amazing. We delivered drywall to two houses and some dishes to a church...the people here are super greatful for the aid they get. It's a very good feeling.

Minot in itself is very interesting. I like the city so far. It's not like Richmond, there's not necessarily a "good" part of time nor is there a "bad" part of town..it's pretty equal. Seems like the flood kind of knocked everyone onto the same playing field...you can see how the community has come together to help each other build up their lives. One example are the hope stars on every corner...painted wooden stars are on nearly every corner with inspirational things on them to help boost moral.
The house started out having wifi but that quickly faded..now I just walk to local places (like right now I'm at a FroYo place, but normally I run to the laundromat) for wifi...my phone has absolutely no service out here..it's interesting. I am learning to cope, I have an app where I can text on via wifi but i obviously don't have wifi all the time so it's a little stressful but nothing I can't handle.
We got a membership at the YMCA in town so that's where we go to work out, I'm hoping people will want to go more than 3 days a week...i feel like I've gotten out of shape so I'd like to start working out more.

I've become a lot more adventurous with my food! Tonight I had a veggie casserole..which was baked onions, celery, carrots, corn, and broccoli :) I also had chili the other day!

Our sponsor is former NCCC so it's fun to talk to him, he was actually a corps member with another team mate of mine..small ameriworld! It's interesting how we worked with LDR when he was in NCCC and now he's staff there - such a good example of a benefit of NCCC, the networking aspect, you just meet people ALL over and you never know where you could end up!

That's about it, no cell phone service, eating better food/being more adventurous, I like Minot so far...yup :)