Boston to Houston: 1,800 miles for Hurricane Harvey Relief

Now that the trip is over and I'm back in Boston (and back in the cold weather!), the next step for this project is fundraising to cover the costs of the trip. My goal is to reach at least $2000, which is about how much the trip was with gas, overnights, and the rental of the UHaul. If we pass our fundraising goal of $2000, any extra will go towards CCSR for help with future projects. Any little bit will be a big help with reaching our goal! If you are interested in fundraising, here's what you can do: Write a check with your desired payment, to be made out to Medford CCSR (Make sure to note in the memo section that the check is for the Hurricane Harvey Relief Project).   You can mail the check to Medford High School here: Medford High School ATTN: Richard Trotta, CCSR Director 489 Winthrop Street Medford, MA  02155 A big thanks to everyone who made the effort to donate to hurricane relief! 

As I reflect on the time I spent in Houston, with Lady Taylor, and the volunteers, I continue to realize how amazing this opportunity and this experience really was. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting since I had no prior knowledge to where we were going or what the area looked like, but everything was so new for me. We drove through the community where the church was and it was shocking to see how the effects of the hurricane and its devastation were still persisting in the community, which looked socioeconomically to have been fairly weak to begin with. This further struck my chords of compassion and reminded me why I did this project and why it had really been so important for me to travel to Houston and personally see my project to the end.  When we pulled up to the church, we weren't even sure if we had the right place. There was nobody else around, which made us wary as we were in a totally new community that was very far from home. We had no clue what to expe

This morning we made our way to our final destination: Grace Cathedral Church on Mesa Drive where Pastor and Lady Taylor had arranged for us to drop off the goods. For the past 10 weeks since the hurricane, Lady Taylor has been doing amazing work collecting and distributing goods to the surrounding community in need. As we drove to the church, it was eye-opening to pass through the neighborhoods that had been devastated from the hurricane. Even though the hurricane has long been over and media coverage has ended, the damage is persistent. Cleanup is still occurring and it will take a long time for people to regain the same footing that they had before the hurricane. I'm so grateful that I was able to travel down with my donations and see how they would be of benefit. Lady Taylor met us with three volunteers who helped to unload the UHaul. It took about half an hour to unpack everything from the truck and place it inside the church, where Lady Taylor would later sort thr

Once we made it to Houston we found our hotel and settled in. I was lucky to be able to meet up with my friend from the New York Times summer program while I was here. She picked me up and brought me out to dinner at Ninfa's on Navigation where I was able to try some authenitc Tex-Mex cuisine! If you ever find yourself in Houston, make sure you get in a meal at Ninfa's. The mole gelato, amazing!

Tuesday started off a little rocky. We woke up again at 4:45 in preparation to leave at 5am. I don't think I will ever be able to get used to waking up that early! We checked out of the hotel and walked outside into immediate downpour. This wasn't good; it was thunderstorming. All we could do was hope the rain wouldn't get too bad and that we wouldn't lose too much time driving slow with the rain, as it was supposed to be another 14 hour day of driving as it was. Unfortunately, the rain persisted and we had to drive much slower. Visibility was low because the rain was so heavy and it was so dark. It cleared up after about an hour and a half, and at that point we had technically gained an hour since we crossed a time zone! That would play in our favor for sure. The rain probably extended our travel time by about a half hour which wasn't too bad. The rest of the drive was fairly clear, I cut out another four-hour leg after breakfast which brought us to 1:30 where we

The entire trip was scheduled to take three days, leaving Boston Sunday November 5th and returning via JetBlue the evening of Wednesday, November 8th. Sunday was a short day; we were traveling down to Connecticut to pick up more items from a family friend. We would stay over in Connecticut and leave early the next day, at 5am. Monday was a fairly uneventful day. We woke up early as planned and were out the door by 5am, which was a drastic difference from my usual 6:30 school day wakeup time! Luckily, I was able to sleep in the truck while my dad made the first leg of the drive. We split the day up in chunks; he did most of the driving but I was able to squeeze in a four-hour leg in the morning after breakfast. I figured out fast that driving a UHaul is pretty different from driving my car! It took a bit to get used to the height, weight, and width of the truck and how to navigate it without making any sharp turns. Once we were on the highway, we were good to go! Dare I say the time a