Independence Day

Hey again! Sorry for the late update…we’ve been pretty busy here in D.C.! Before I update you, check out this article published today! Orange County Register

Yesterday we drove down to Richmond, which was a pretty long drive, and met with Shari Robinson and her group of home schooled kids. There were quite a few of them there, but younger than we’ve met with so far. I think this is great because if the kids become involved with it, they can carry it with them all through high school. They were very enthusiastic kids, and we are pretty positive this one will stick! They’re partnering with Noah’s children’s hospice in Richmond, which is the only pediatric hospice in the area. This is because the kids are all under 16, for the most part, so can’t volunteer with the adult hospices in Virginia. But, we’re so glad they found a solution in this children’s hospice, especially because it will be paving a new way for DreamCatchers, as we’ve never partnered with a pediatric hospice! The kids were so energetic and excited, so we’re so happy to have found this great group of kids!

The group of kids, at the library meeting in Richmond!

A couple of the excited kids! So full of energy 🙂

After the meeting, we wanted to rush back to D.C. in hopes of missing the traffic that would be coming into the city for the 4th of July. Luckily, we didn’t hit any traffic, but with the long drive, we got back too late to meet or drop in on anyone else. We were pretty bummed, but it just means we’ll have to work twice as hard in the next few days we’re here! Oh, and while we were driving back and forth, I called up a bunch of places we’ll be visiting in the next few weeks to check in. Also, we tried to get in touch with a bunch of newspapers and news stations to get media attention while we’re here, but didn’t have much luck there. They usually direct us to email, so we’ll try that route, as well as dropping in on their headquarters, as we have gotten so good at that lately. 🙂

Happy 4th of July! Today was a great day, helping the Ferriero’s get ready for their annual party, and meeting lots of new people.

Helping Lyn make her famous cake pops!

We stayed at their house until the late afternoon, then met up with Katie’s aunt & uncle and cousin, Julia, to watch fireworks by the Arlington cemetery. It was such a beautiful view, as we sat right next to the river and saw the view of the fireworks between the Washington monument and Lincoln Memorial. These aren’t the best pictures, but it was a fun night!

Fireworks!

Me, Katie, and Julia on the lawn by the river. We were right across from the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial!

Thanks to everyone who’s been following, and I hope you all had a great Independence Day!

Changing Lanes

Since the wind storms were so bad a few days ago, power is still out in many areas of the city including a lot of restaurants, gas stations, tolls and, worst of all, stoplights. It makes getting all around DC hard! Because we need to get all around DC, we faced a lot of detours, fallen trees and crazy drivers. Changing lanes was the least of our worries!

On a better note, today Caitlin and I finally got a rental car! It was a real project, since neither of us is over 21. My Uncle Tim was able to work some magic and helped us out in this area (what a lifesaver). As soon as we left the rental car parking lot, though, we got pulled over by a cop for not having the right stickers…. luckily, he was nice enough to let us return and switch cars without any hassle! After that we went to a cute diner down here for breakfast and discovered true greek yogurt. Yum?

After that we had our first meeting here in DC, which just happened to be with the National Hospice Foundation (no pressure!). It went great, and seems like it will be a fantastic resource for DreamCatchers in the future. They have connections nationwide with about 85% of American hospices. There is even a possibility that they will have space for us in their upcoming volunteer conference where our message will reach a much bigger group of people and, specifically, volunteers.

We finished our day with a drive down the George Washington Memorial Parkway (pretty pretty), and dinner at Olive Garden. Tomorrow, we head down to Richmond to meet with home schooled students. Let’s hope they will have power!

National Treasure

Hello from D.C.! Yesterday we left the wonderful Fisher family and flew here to D.C. We’re staying with the lovely Ferriero’s for a few days here, and it has been so nice visiting with them. They were kind enough to take us to dinner last night at a delicious little Italian restaurant! We got settled in here, and went off to bed to rest up for a day full of exploring.

Today has been very full of getting to know the city and gearing up for our week here. We drove to meet up with Erich Kerekes, another HYSP Scholar who is spending half of his service trip in D.C. working with the Hoby Foundation. He and his friend took us around the city, and we saw much of what the city has to offer. We visited the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam and WWII memorials, the White House and several Smithsonian museums. The heat and humidity here though, is killer. People were packed inside the museums for the A/C, so grabbing lunch at the cafe inside was quite a struggle.

Katie and Erich, at the Smithsonian

Lincoln Memorial!

HYSP Meet-Up in D.C.!

Anyone have any connections here? A meeting with the Prez is our next goal…;)

We walked around until we were all soaked with sweat and we couldn’t take the pain in our feet anymore. Hottest day in a while here, apparently. Just our luck. We headed back to the Ferriero’s to rest our feet and regroup for our busy day tomorrow! Jay’s BBQ is phenomenal, by the way. Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting with the National Hospice Foundation… Fingers crossed!

Accepted

Today we decided to take a day off, being our last day in Raleigh. But, I still wanted to try one last school so we could end with a bang. We started the day playing tennis with Lizzie and Maryanne, which was really fun, but it was getting really hot. It got to 105 degrees here today! Crazy. 

After we ate lunch, Katie and I headed over to NC State to drop in on the Department of Social Work there, since I had been looking through their website and they seem very involved with the community. We got there, and it was closed. Just our luck.

Note the “Closed” sign…lovely.

But I heard voices down the hall, so we went and found a social worker who was more than willing to sit down and meet with us! It was awesome. She seemed super excited, and even assured us that the brochures and information wouldn’t just sit in her office, but she would pass it along to people who were in charge of the social work department. I’m so glad we didn’t give up right away, because talking to her was a great success!

Because it was 105 degrees with a heat index of 117 degrees…we decided to grab some frozen yogurt and call it a day. We headed home, and the Fishers went to go pick up John from the airport, then we headed to a family (plus us) dinner! It was delicious. We’re sad to be leaving this beautiful state and of course the wonderful family that hosted us, but we’re so excited to explore and find even more success in D.C., starting tomorrow!

 

Failure to Launch

Our day was not as successful as we had hoped, hence the title. We decided to venture over to Duke University today, as it is not far from the Fishers’ house at all. After going on a nice bike ride through the park by their house, we started our day. The drive was only about a half an hour to Durham, where Duke is located. We parked, and took the scenic pathway through the beautiful gardens to get to campus.

Once we got to campus, we decided to explore a little bit, to get an idea of where to go. We wandered around looking for a Department of Social Work, as we thought there was one on campus. Instead, we were directed to CAPS, which was a department for counseling and psychology…not exactly what we were looking for, but we thought we’d give it a try. We asked to speak to the head doctor of the department, to see if he could refer us anywhere, or anything, but no luck. He was busy until next week. So we left some brochures and our phone number, and went on our way to find someone else to talk to.

                                      On the beautiful campus!

From there, we decided to get lunch in the quad. It was such a nice day, so we ate outside and enjoyed the campus and what it had to offer.

 

We asked around, looking for the department of social work, but no one seemed to know where it was located. We ended up going to the Duke Medical Center, where we were told to check, and they did not know of a concentrated location where social workers had offices. We asked around the entire hospital, and even called several places trying to find a social worker to talk to. No one would really help us or speak to us, so we decided that we had exhausted that angle. We thought we’d try and find a community service center on campus, so we called the University to see if someone could direct us to a place like that. We talked to someone on the phone who said the Center for Community Service does not facilitate charities forming clubs, but that we would need at Duke student to come to them and ask for support. Again, this was not very successful, but at least we know where to direct my friend from home that goes to Duke and may be interested in starting a club on campus.

After this, we figured we had exhausted pretty much all of our options on the campus, so walked back through the beautiful gardens and headed home.

We came back to the house and emailed a bunch of people, planning for the next four weeks. Now we are just waiting to hear back!

Later, we had a wonderful dinner of lasagna made by Mrs. Fisher, then headed out with Maggie and Maryanne for some stress-relief.

Maggie in action

What an athlete

I liked the helmet

Lookin’ good Maryanne

Good end to a not-so successful day; looking forward to tomorrow, so we can go out with a bang!

Dumb and Dumber

Today was a day of whoopsies. I accidentally flooded the kitchen floor a little bit while pouring myself a glass of water. Then I knocked down the Fishers’ shower curtain. I hope they have good insurance! But really. Katie had her moments too…. she left the car keys at the Verizon store after my phone completely crashed. And had a colorblind moment involving a stoplight. Piece it together… 

                                  What a focused driver.

Anyways, despite our constant mishaps, we were actually pretty busy, which is good, because we were getting lots of stuff done! We headed over to Ravenscroft High School to meet with one of the staff members in charge of community service. He seemed really excited and said he would email the whole sophomore class to see who is interested.  The school seems really dedicated to community service as all students are required to have a certain number of hours per year, so we think it will be a good fit. 

After that, we met with another local hospice called Heartland Hospice that we hope to partner with both Duke University and Ravenscroft. The volunteer coordinator was very ready to get the ball rolling. Another successful meeting there! Yay!

                   What a ham (from Katie).

On the way out we saw some radio and tv stations, so decided to drop in on them. The lady at the front desk offered to contribute through her daughter’s organization that helps local charities. So that was great! Then we went upstairs to the radio station and talked to the guy at the front desk (cute accent) and left information for their HR department. Seemed promising, but its hard to tell when we are only in town for a week. 

We went back to plan, recuperate and have dinner with Margo, a friend from ND who has an internship down here. Good day! Hoping for less humidity down here tomorrow.  Night!

 

The Social Network

Caitlin and I were busy again today! We met with Wake County Hospice in the morning and brought Maggie’s sisters (Lizzy and Maryanne) who will be bringing it to their high school so they could connect with the administration of the hospice. Sounds like it is going to be a huge hit at their school (fingers crossed!). 

Later we focused on connecting to the community. We drove all around Raleigh to different news stations and newspapers explaining dreamcatchers…. a little spur of the moment but effective! Abc 11, a news station here, already got back to us about covering a dream once the club is up and running. The Raleigh News and Observer took our information and hopefully will give us a spot in the online paper. Hopefully the others will get back to us soon.

      Basically we dedicated this day to networking and forming connections (hence the title). Looking forward to tomorrow’s meetings! 

 

Good Will Hunting

Hey y’all! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all of our blog posts are movie titles…you can thank Katie for that fabulous idea. Today’s represents our search for students and people to get involved with DreamCatchers- it could be rewritten “Good Will, Hunting”. As in, we were hunting for good will..obviously. Which definitely applies to our day today, as we were searching for people to speak with about DreamCatchers for most of it!

Busy day in NC today…so here goes a quick recount of our exciting adventures…(:

We woke up, had English muffins (yum, thanks Fisher fam!), and were out for the day. We drove to Chapel Hill to meet with Rocky from Bishop McGuinness High School (which is a little further than we thought, so we met her halfway, right by UNC campus). She seemed very driven and passionate about charity work, and actually had an organization of her own that she had started. She said she would promote DreamCatchers at her school, and let her friends and others know while, with confidence, telling us she would for sure find someone to take on the club. Wooohoooo, success there! (We hope.) We’ll be keeping in touch with her to see how everything turns out.

After that meeting, we walked around UNC. Such a beautiful school! I’m not used to all of the trees and green everywhere- CA doesn’t have much of that. But I love it! I can’t stop saying how beautiful everything is around here.

We ate lunch at the Student Union, and thought of targeting UNC as a possible school for DreamCatchers. We decided to drop in on people, to see how well that would go. We talked to the clubs coordinator, who told us we needed to find a UNC student to start a club (obviously, we knew that- he wasn’t much help!). Oh well, ya win some ya lose some. So, we decided to try the School of Social Work, since I’ve had luck there before. We dropped in, and had the good luck of catching the Dean at a perfect time. We spoke with him, and he seemed totally on board. He took us to the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs in the School, who was SUCH a huge help. She sat down with us, and took the time to understand what we were trying to do. Also, she said she would talk to people later today or tomorrow, to see if they could work something out for using DreamCatchers as a way for Social Work students to fulfill their field hours. So that was a big success- glad we didn’t give up! To see if we could gauge student interest, we decided to stop in to the student newspaper, and ask about a possible article about what we’re trying to do on their campus. They spoke with us, and were actually very supportive and said they’d talk to the editor about writing an article! Sweet. Successful day at UNC, I’d say.

After this, we drove back home (or back to Maggie’s, our home for the week). We had some contacting of other people to do, and planning for tomorrow, so it was good to have some time to plan further. After a while of this, we started getting ready for dinner. The Yusko’s (of the Hesburgh-Yusko Scholarship we have at Notre Dame) were kind enough to invite us over for dinner, as they live nearby. The food was great, and the company even better! We were glad we got to visit with them while in Raleigh.

Anyway, now we’re back and off to bed soon to recoup for another busy day tomorrow. Will keep you updated!

Are We There Yet?

Hello from Raleigh, North Carolina! Today, we woke up at 3am, to get ready and to the airport for our 6am flight. (See picture, that’s us running on about 3 hours of sleep, but ready to go, nonetheless!).

                                            Our Travels Beginning!

Not the best start to the day, but it allowed us to get here pretty earlier to get settled. We’re staying with my roommate from last year, Maggie, and her family. They were so generous to allow us to stay here for a week while we’re here, and even let us borrow their car to get around to the hospices and schools. We are so appreciative!

Anyway, we got settled in, visited with the family, and had a lovely BBQ dinner they made for us. So far, it is looking like we will have quite a few contacts here in NC to meet with about DreamCatchers. Maggie’s two little sisters, Maryanne and Lizzie are interested in possibly starting a club at their high school, which is great. We’ll be meeting with the Hospice of Wake County on Tuesday to talk to them a little about DreamCatchers, and hopefully connect Maryanne and Lizzie with their staff, to help get the club on its feet.

Our shirts turned out great, and we brought one for each of the Fisher family members. (See picture below) Everyone loved ’em! 

We are so grateful to be here, and so excited to start out tomorrow! We’ll be meeting with a student from Bishop McGuinness High School tomorrow, if all goes well.

Not the most eventful day, but they will get more interesting as we go. Thanks for reading, and…

Dream on!

Gone Baby Gone

Hi! Caitlin, here. I have spent most of my last month at home preparing for this trip, and am SO excited to leave tomorrow! I’ve been making various contacts in each city, calling many hospices as well as schools to find interest and set up meetings. Today, I was putting the finishing touches on filling folders for schools and hospices with information they will need to have a successful DreamCatchers program. Since it is summer, it has been harder to get in touch with schools and students, but I think we will be able to manage with what we have so far. The hospices that I have spoken to have been so encouraging and open to our idea of DreamCatchers, which has been really great. I am really looking forward to meeting everyone I have spoken to thus far!

My flight to Milwaukee is at 6:45am tomorrow, so I better get off to bed. Katie and I will be doing some final planning at her house for the next couple of days, before taking off to Raleigh on Sunday morning! I am so excited for this trip and all that the next 6 weeks hold in store for us!

Bye for now!