On one of my last days in Ishinomaki, I found myself biking through the streets back to base camp. I saw a boy pumping air into a girl’s bike tire. I saw a man repainting a short wall in front of his home. I saw another couple attaching shiny new letters to the front of their home. And I knew Ishinomaki was going to be ok. A very tragic disaster hit them, but we were picking up the pieces. A lot of progress has been made since 3\/11. These small glimpses of hope made me very happy. <\/p>\n
While volunteering we had several opportunities to extend deployment. I almost did it twice, but ultimately came home once my week was up. I wasn’t equipped to stay longer than a week- lack of food and clothes. 2 days after my return was my birthday and Dan and I were going to celebrate. <\/p>\n
But I did decide to return, and so did my team mate Aska. <\/p>\n
On July 29th I will return to Ishinomaki, and I did not list a return date. I will most likely stay about a month or so. What is interesting is that this time I won’t be staying at the gutted textile factory- international volunteers will be sleeping 5 to a tent near the university. The work is different. I’m not sure how I feel about that, until I remember that I knew nothing about my first trip, and this change in lodging and work will keep the experience new and different.<\/p>\n
Ishinomaki has made a place forever in my heart. It reminded me that I can get dirty and work hard. I can make friends with people and form bonds. We worked hard, but we also had a great time. I have volunteered my whole life- coaching sports teams, collecting cans and donations, organizing fun runs- but I’ve never done such hard physical labor. It made me feel great about myself.<\/p>\n
Anxiously awaiting my July 29th deployment, in which I’ve been promoted to co lead a new team with my team mate Aska.<\/p>\n
Until next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On one of my last days in Ishinomaki, I found myself biking through the streets back to base camp. I saw a boy pumping air into a girl’s bike tire. I saw a man repainting a short wall in front of his home. I saw another couple attaching shiny new letters to the front of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,48,81],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ishinomaki","tag-tokyo","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}