by Allison Goldstein
Tuesday, August 19th
At 5:00am the US Airways check-in line was so long that we almost missed our flight, but the team and I arrived to Nashville on-time. Wil and Ernesto picked us up and escorted us to the hotel. We checked in, grabbed some lunch and headed to our service site, a local public high school the Nashville School of the Arts (NSA).
NSA is home to an extremely diverse and talented group of 700 students who are admitted through a selective process that focuses on their artistic abilities. Upon entering the school, our ears were immediately inundated with music and song coming from every classroom-- an appropriate atmosphere for the city of Nashville. We found our liaison, Principal boB (yes, that’s how he spells it), in a large office covered head to toe with Superman and Beatles memorabilia. He was just about as memorable a character as they, and began our day with a tour of the school and a description of our project.
Principal boB told us that NSA was a good fit because so much of their funding is used towards the special equipment needed to accommodate students’ talents that little is left for building upkeep. Our task was to paint every hallway in the school and to landscape the front entrance. This meant a LOT of taping and tarping. We decided to dive right in and tarp until dinner time, which was spent at a southern classic--Chili’s, and then get some shut eye!
Wednesday
After a delicious breakfast buffet in the hotel lobby, we headed back to NSA to attack the hallways with more tape and tarp. Because the area being painted was around 20,000 square feet, this consumed most of our time. Despite requests from the students for black hallways with pink stripes, we collaborated with Principal Bob and picked a bright blue, purple and yellow color for each hall. This seemed to appease the masses well enough. At dinnertime, to distract ourselves from tarping, we headed downtown to the Vanderbilt campus for a real southern meal. The corn bread was a little dry, but the BBQ pork melted in my mouth!
Thursday
We changed things up a little by adding some wood cutting and bench building to the prep list. The girls took charge of the power tools and cut all the wood. It was then handed off to me and Tom. We quickly constructed a model mural bench for the volunteers to follow before heading inside to measure the hallways so that we could order paint. We were amazed to discover that we would need almost 100 gallons!
Friday
Spirits were high as we headed into the final day of prep. One car took a detour to Home Depot to pick up paint, mulch and water and then met the team out front of the school to unload the goods. One moving cart had a flat tire, and one only had three good wheels, but after careening and maneuvering around the parking lot we managed to haul everything inside. The day went smoothly until late afternoon when we realized that not only were we hungry, but we had forgotten to unroll the tarp in one entire hallway! Nothing brings a team together like hunger. A few hours later, trying to keep our eyes open while waiting for our food, we reviewed the last minute details of the service day. Back at the hotel we ran through a brief PT practice and then hit the hay.
Saturday
There was a race to the free hotel coffee bar at 5:40am, and we all made it to the cars by 5:45am. After three unsuccessful attempts, we made it to a gas station that was both open and had ice, and finally arrived at NSA shortly after 6:00am. My project was the butterfly garden that would be the centerpiece of the front lawn and cared for by Mr. Turnipseed and his ecology class. I managed to drag my tools out to my project just in time for a last minute PT practice and the arrival of the volunteers.
My volunteers consisted of 10 large men and one petite secretary who knew how to hold her own with a pick axe. We quickly realized that Nashville dirt is basically solid rock and not at all ideal for digging a garden. However, these folks were determined to see it through! They were dripping with sweat after only 15 minutes, but hacked away for hours until the entire 300 square foot plot was tilled. After a wave of creative genius, the flowers were planted in the shape of a butterfly! They were so excited about their garden that they skipped lunch to buy gas for an auger, which was the only tool sturdy enough to dig holes for the fence posts. By the time the last post was in place butterflies were already flocking to the bright flowers!
Everyone was then sent inside to help finish painting and by 3 o’clock they were thoroughly exhausted. We debriefed with our teams, concluding that the day had gone well and everyone felt good about their work. The closing ceremony confirmed that it had been a very successful day, and the volunteers headed home happy while our team headed back inside to discuss the clean-up phase of the day. We finally scrubbed the last of the paint off the floor and could think of nothing better than lying in bed eating pizza for the rest of the night.
Sunday
We were lucky enough to have an entire free day before our flight to Colorado Springs that evening, so we explored downtown Nashville, also known as the “Athens of the South” due to its large number of secondary education institutions. Additionally, Nashville happens to be the home of the only to-scale replica of the Parthenon (http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/) in the USA—quite a site! I discovered that the Greek similarities do not carry over to the city’s dining scene where the real flavor is that of the South. If you love country music, 6-foot tall guitars, and fried green tomatoes, then Nashville is for you! This brief look at the city was a great way to end the trip and keep us wanting to come back for more!
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