Rochester Carefest

Yesterday, we participated in Rochester Carefest for the second year in a row. Rochester Carefest was put together for the first time last year by someone in a local church. It is a day where many people (I think there were 1700 or so this year) from churches all over the community volunteer in the city. You are assigned a certain location and you work from 8-4:30 to help clean up the community. Last year, Brandon and I washed windows and cleaned up lockers at an elementary school with 40 other people. This year, we were assigned to flood control (i.e. picking up trash along the river). However, when we woke up yesterday morning, there was thunder and it was pouring, so we were assigned to painting at another elementary school. Dave and Lesley volunteered with us this year and we had so much fun with them. They are both great painters and they were so patient with me since I was a novice painter. Needless to say, I won't be disappointed at all if I never have to pick up another paint brush or roller...painting is just not my thing! We did get a lot accomplished though and by mid morning I think all of the volunteers at the site had almost all of the hallways painted. Somehow I managed to get paint all over me...I think I was doing something wrong!

By 11:30, it was completely dry outside and the sun was shinning, so the people that were assigned to be track picker-uppers went ahead to the original meeting spot. We were assigned a part of the river and all of us plus another man, picked up a ton of trash from 12:30-4:00. It was quite a workout since the rocks along the river hide the trash very well. I don't know how many squats we all must have done or how many cigarette buds we picked up, but we definitely made a difference by picking up at least 8 bags worth of trash. Some of the interesting things we found were: a huge dead fish that Brandon picked up, a car antenna, a boat gas pump, an audio tape, a cable cord. It was extremely hot outside (near 90's with humidity) so by the time it was 4, we were all pretty worn out. After driving Dave and Lesley back to their house, Brandon fell asleep in the car on our way home!

Later, we picked up pizza and ice cream and headed back to Dave and Lesley's new house. We ate dinner outside and then played Sequence until we were all exhausted. Lesley and I are very good partners at that game and once, Brandon realized that he needed to pick up a card after he discarded on each turn, he and David did much better! It was a great day and we are really glad that Dave and Lesley will be staying here for residency.

Brandon and Lesley paintingDavid doing a great job at paintingOne of the hallways that we paintedBrandon using the antenna he found to fish for trashMy orange prison gloves!Lesley found a cable cord

Lesley and David

The four of us in behind one of our big trash piles at the end of the day

Brandon sleeping in the car after our long day of working