MONDAY: BANKS

My name is James Eubanks Ramson and I am a freshman at the University of Memphis. I chose to take part in this alternative spring break trip, because I believe it will be a new experience for me. I have been blessed with so many things in my life, and I would like to show my appreciation by giving my back to communities. I hope that not only will I enjoy this trip, but I will also learn something new from this experience.
The Morning

It was rough waking up at 7am on spring break, but today was the big day! This was the day that we would finally get details on what we would be doing. We traveled all the way from Memphis, Tennessee to do this, so I was really pumped and ready to get started.

I was the first to get up and get ready, so I waited patiently as the rest of my group members straggled along from their couple of hours of sleep. It had been long night the day before, so this was just one of the consequences that I knew they would suffer. In reality, I should have been tired along with them, but I was excitedly anticipating what today’s day would bring. After finally waiting about thirty minutes, everyone was ready and we prepared to head off to our first destination.

The First Destination

We finally reached our first destination, the Five Star Senior Center around 8:30am. Here we met the man who would helping and assigning a lot of the jobs that we would be doing, Carl. He was a kind elderly man who seemed real passionate about the job that he did. He told us that the five star center was created for elderly people who were physically disabled and didn’t have family to support them. This was a sad, but it was a reason that made me want help even more. After talking to Carl in a brief meeting about all we would be doing, Angie and Leslie split us up into two different groups. Apparently, we had two different sites we would be helping. One group would be helping Ms. Stuart, an elderly retired beautician, and the other group would be helping Star Trek’s biggest fan, Ms.Helen. I was assigned to the group helping Ms.Helen. Happy to finally be given a task, I was ready to head off to Ms.Helen’s home and face my challenge.

Arriving at Ms.Helen’s Home

Anticipation was leaping out of my chest as we walked up to the entrance of Ms.Helen’s home. We were finally going to see what we traveled so far to do. Hauling equipment in my hands and walking up the stairs, I was last to enter the house. What I saw when I walked in the home words can’t describe. The challenge that I expected to have had increased ten times. The odor alone of the house was a challenge that was going to take a lot of work, and literally after a couple of minutes in the home, I was back outside gasping for a breath of fresh air. I had no idea the situation I had gotten myself into, but regardless I knew I was up for the challenge.

Deciding that I was ready to confront the task at hand again, I reentered the home to see a tiny elderly women with a head full of silver hair staring at me. I stood their waiting for a greeting of some type, but instead when she spoke, she looked at everyone and asked, “Are any of you Star Trek fans?” There was an awkward silence and no one responded. Finally she said after awaiting an answer, “ Well, glad we got that out of the way!” We all laughed, she really was a big Star Trek fan.

Facing the Challenge

The process of cleaning this home was going to take us easily two days. That meant that we would have to really buckle down and get to doing some hard work. I personally took on the lucky task of doing yard work, while all the girls worked on the inside of the house. I use the word lucky with sarcasm, because doing yard work was not as fun or easy as I thought it would be. Most of my time spent working consisted of me cleaning up dog feces, raking leaves, sweeping and throwing away old tree branches, which got tiring real quick. However, I understood the reason for me doing this and pushed on to complete the task.
Ending the Day

We finally finished up our hard day of work around 4:00pm. It had been seven long hours, but we got a lot of cleaning done and the house was looking much better. Our task wasn’t complete yet, but when we came back the next day we were sure we would finish. Tired and ready to go back to the church, everyone said our farewells to Ms. Helen and got in the van.