Days 6/7: The Jumpee police and a little trip to Perryville

Well, we have a lot to talk about! First of all, yesterday, I got up extra early so I could do my jumpees early and get them out of the way, as I knew I was going have quite the busy day. As I was doing my jumpees, two things happened. The first thing that happened was a transformer blew like 20ft away from me! It was freaky. The runner who was next to me and I jumped about 25ft in the air. haha, it must have been a site. haha I continued with my jumpees when the second thing happened. I found myself wanting go home and crawl back in bed, this was about 150 jumpees in. And then, do you know who arrived? THE JUMPEE POLICE! haha They said I was going to go to jumpee jail if I did not finish my last 50. I did not believe them, so I started to walk for home, thinking I would finish up the last 50 today.  But then the jumpee police came back, they forced me to finish my jumpees, because they knew I would not want to do them today. But let me tell you, I have learned my lesson. I never want to see the jumpee police again!

Then I went to work for a millisecond before I headed off to Heifer Ranch. The Boss thought it would be a good idea for me to get the full Heifer experience, and I can't say I disagreed. So, off to Perryville I went. 45min later I arrived, and began my 24hr journey. I met up with the 25 new volunteers and two teachers (here from Austin to check out Heifer Ranch for a potential field trip) and a couple of experienced volunteers who kept us in line. They took us around our future homes for the evening, which they called Global Village 1(GV1). They had an area for each of the areas of the world that Heifer works in: Guatemala, Thailand, Appalachia, Zimbabwe, the slums, and refugee camps.  All groups were assigned a pregnant mother (me for my group)(and we had to carry around a water balloon for our whole stay) and a person with a disability. (Also we named our baby Noodle) haha
I was put in the refugee camp with 4 others and part of our experience was that we were given no resources (water, wood or food) and because we were 'displaced' from our country we were unable to verbally communicate with any of the other sites. This made things a bit challenging, but that would most likely be how it would actually be if we were refugees.

I think I had a little bit of a different experience than most because I was there with so many like minded people, no one wanted to see anyone go hungry, so everyone decided to pool the resources (wood, carrots, rice, potatoes, eggs, onions, a little oil, a little pepper and water) and make a huge stew. Usually that is not how it goes down. People hoard their resources and barter for other things they want. But I ended up with a really great group of people. :D

When we got up in the morning (or for some of us got out of sleeping bags, not really woke up because we never really went to sleep) we had breakfast and we all had a few chores to do. The refugee camp had the pretty cool task of making bricks that will actually be use around the Ranch. 5parts clay, 1part cement, 1 part sand and some water. After chores we all did a skit of our experiences and and a wrap up talk. And then I was able to take these little gems for your reading enjoyment. This is either Briggs or Straghtin(?) one of the two water buffalo that reside at the Heifer Ranch! <3
        So on that note I am 1400 jumpees deep. That means I have 13600 to go! Shout out to my most recent donor! And a big shout out to the great staff at the Heifer ranch that let me tag along last night! Thanks for all the support everyone! And sorry this is so long!