This past weekend I participated in Into the Streets, a day of volunteering around Tompkins County. My group was assigned to the YMCA outdoor education centre. There were a variety of projects for us to do and my group began to work on completing a small hut made out of grape vines while other groups did organization, collected firewood and performed other similar tasks. Our goal was to make the hut more watertight by weaving in new vines. We worked together for most of the afternoon until we used up the pile of vines we had been given to use. After we ran out of vines, some of us went into the woods and after being shown how, began to collect more vines. The vines grew upwards, high into the trees and needed to be pulled down. It was hard work and required teamwork from the other volunteers to get the vines. In between, I got to swing on the vines which was a lot of fun. We then as the entire group of volunteers went out to help clear a field that will eventually be for playing in for the campers who come in the summer.

Overall the experience was quite fun (despite requiring a reasonable amount of physical effort) and a good teamwork exercise. It was very cool to see how much we accomplished in four hours and that we helped improve a resource for the community.