Week One

I started work on Tuesday June 10th, the day after I flew into Pennsylvania. Two weeks ago when I flew out to PA for orientation we learned all about HOPE and met all the staff that we would be working with this summer. Orientation gave me something to look forward to this summer. After each day of orientation we went to a different HOPE staff member's house for a barbeque. It is really cool how the interns are integrated into the culture of the organization from day 1. The first couple days of work this week were pretty difficult. I am interning for the founder of HOPE International, Jeff Rutt. He started a company called Keystone Custom Homes before he founded HOPE. Since I am his intern, I am sitting downstairs in the Keystone office even though the HOPE office is upstairs in this office building. It was a tough first couple days because I met all of the Keystone employees and I le what I would be doing this summer. It was a little overwhelming. On my third day of work, I went to a customer appreciation lunch that Homes for Hope was attending. Homes for Hope is a funding arm of HOPE International which has builders construct a house at cost and the profit from selling the house goes to HOPE. At this event, we were meeting builders and promoting Homes for Hope in an effort to find more builders who would like to become involved with Homes for Hope. This was a cool experience because it helped me practice how I would advocate HOPE to a random person. The first week of work was pretty tiring but I am excited to be working for HOPE and seeing where this summer takes me.

I am living in a house called the Millersville International House (MIH). Year round students from around the world live here as they attend Millersville University which is a couple miles down the road. It is a really cool place because there are people from all over South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 8 other interns are living here this summer also so we all car pool to work in the morning. When we come home from work, one of the international students has prepared dinner for us. It is a pretty comfortable setting and is a couple miles outside of Lancaster which is a really quaint town. I'll write more about MIH and Lancaster later.

As the weekend began, my part-time job also began. This summer I will be mowing lawns throughout Lancaster County to make some money. On Thursday I got the details for the job. Jeff came to me and said, "Do you know how to back a trailer?" I replied honestly, "uhh, no." Then he said, "Do you have any experience running machinery, besides an automobile." I replied honestly, "Uhh, no." He looked pretty nervous. I got a call a couple hours later from a Keystone employee who was going to show me how to use all the equipment. He said that it would probably be easiest if I spent the majority of Friday working with him so I could get used to usually all the equipment. On Thursday night I left the office with my work truck. Who knew that when I got out to Lancaster, I would have a car. I am driving a 2005 Toyota Tacoma Keystone work truck. I went out to the truck on Thursday night to head home and found that my work truck is a manual transmission. I hadn't driven a manual transmission more or less since high school and I was excited to get to drive it again. Friday morning I drove 30 minutes west of Millersville where I am living and met Bryan at a Keystone community where I learned how to drive the commercial riding mower and other equipment. He attempted to teach me how to back the trailer, but that was pretty tough. He left me with his cell number in case I got into trouble on Saturday, but also said, "Just make sure you don't have to back up wherever you go."

Saturday morning I thought I was getting an early jump by driving out to pick up the other work truck and load the mowers onto the trailer at 8:00AM. My first house was 45 minutes further west and of course I had to pull into the driveway and therefore back the trailer out of the first house. I mowed it pretty quick and didn't do too bad backing out. I was thinking, wow this isn't going to be such a bad summer job after all. Then I drove 30 minutes back East to the next house and this is where all hell broke loose. The grass was a foot long and a neighbor came up to me warning me that they had black snakes. She said, "Watch out cause my husband saw a 6-foot black snake hanging out of the tree." I said, "I didn't sign up for this." It took me 2 hours to mow this house because their lawn was over an acre big and it needed a lot of work. It was after 1 in the afternoon and I still had 3 more lawns to go. I drove 3o minutes north to the next lawn and this house was ghetto. It looked like the house was condemned, there was almost more dirt than grass. My spirits took another nose dive. It was now after 4 and I had to drive 30 minutes east back into Lancaster to mow 2 more lawns. The last 2 lawns in Lancaster were pretty small and I finished them pretty fast. By the time I took the equipment back to the storage facility 30 minutes west of my house, it was after 7. I got home around 7:30, making my day about a 12 hour day.

Wow this is going to be one heck of a summer!