West Virginia Observations and Thanks

Howdy y'all! Can you guess where I am?? (Hint: Look at my title).

WEST VIRGINIA!!

My church youth group and I (St. Paul's Narwhals) are here in Oak Hill, WV on a mission trip. So far, it has been tons of fun and really fulfilling. Also, I had no idea how much fun power tools are…

Any who, it's really interesting how we've adapted to living here for the time being. We are currently staying in the Oak Hill United Methodist Community Center. It is a very high quality facility! There are nice, working showers, clean toilets, a big, shiny, stainless steel commercial kitchen, and a gym where we can play all the basketball and frisbee we want! Pretty incredible that we are staying here while there are several hundred people in this city that barely have power, running water, food, and a safe space to dwell in.
I am so blessed to be living in a warm, high quality house back home in a city that conserves its natural beauty. Actually...TWO houses. I live in TWO houses while some people have zero. How can I ever express my thanks for this?

That being said, I am extra thankful that I have the opportunity to design this house. My own, perfect (hopefully…), dream house. Because  a good handful of people don't have that. They don't get a chance to think about their dreams, their perfect home, a perfect life.
So…THANK YOU WISE!

Now to take this post in the direction I originally intended…I was primarily going to write about a very interesting, amazing observation we've all had here. There is NO RECYCLING AND COMPOST in the state of West Virginia. NONE! How crazy is that?? Our whole group finds this is weird that we have to separate all of our food scraps, paper scraps, trash, etc. into different bins, even if in the end we can't end up disposing of our waste in the proper ways.

I hope that the progressive movement/energy that flows through Ithaca can come down to West Virginia. I realize that many of the people here have to focus on meeting their basic needs. That's why third-world countries aren't very environmentally conscious in general. But maybe I can help with that in the future.