SALS

On our very first day in West Virginia we did not have to do much work. Instead we only had to go to an orientation later in the evening where we were given information about the state and the people who would be there to help us with our time spent there, however before we had to attend the orientation we went out to buy groceries for the entire week. We first made a list of everything we would need for the week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and decided we would cook something different each night for dinner, which turned out to be a lot of fun, all of us cooking together. After we bought all the food we would need we went back to our temporary home and put everything away and hung out for the rest of the day until we went next door to the SALS building where we had our orientation. We were introduced to a few people who also help out and we were given a description of what each person’s title and what brought then to SALS. We also got to learn more information about West Virginia in general and the effects that coal mining have had on the state and those who live in it, we also learned about Mountain top removal which has a great effect to the environment because the coal that they are taking out comes from the very top of the mountain rather than from below it. This coal that they are mining out happens to be even dirtier than the original coal that they would extract from the mountains before, and because of these they are destroying the mountains in the area, by completely flattening them. This creates a baron, ugly, wasteland that is becoming a serious problem and is something some are fighting against. The orientation lasted for quite a while but after it was over I had gained a better understanding of what was going on in the area and how horrible it is. Even though it seemed as though the Orientation lasted longer than we may have expected, I did enjoy it because I was glad I could learn so much about the problems within the area, which happened to be issues I had never heard of before. We also got the option to decide what we wanted to do volunteer wise while in WV, which was to help out at the old school in Oak Hill, WV and head back to Beards Fork and play with the kids at the after school program at SALS. After our orientation we decided to head back to our building where we were able to hang out for a little while, while making dinner. We decided to make spaghetti and it was a lot of fun to be able to get more time to hang out with the people in my group and to get to know them even better while making our own meal for the night.