Sandy Recovery

This has been a big week. Claire and Brandon came for a visit with some other BYU art students. It was so fun to see them and have a little reminder of home. They introduced us to some really good vegan foods and gave us the scoop on the New York art scene, so now we know which art museums are most worth seeing. Love those two.

We had a Nor'easter sweep through to bring us a few inches of snow mid-week. I did not enjoy walking home in it, but it did make campus look very pretty.

Another highlight was our visit to the Discovering Columbus exhibit. At Columbus Circle (the southwest corner of Central Park) there is a statue of Columbus that has been turned into an installation art piece by Tatzu Nishi. After climbing up 6 flights of stairs you come into a living room with that statue in the middle. It was definitely an escape from normal, and we're glad we got to see it for the short time it's here.

What the statue normally looks like. 

How we got to see it.

Then Saturday, I went with the Manhattan Stake to Rockaway for some hurricane clean-up. If you're not familiar with New York, Rockaway is basically a sandbar off of Brooklyn. When the hurricane hit, it took the brunt of the storm surges, and was completely flooded. Blocks of homes burned down, and the rest are dealing with flooded basements, and mountains of sand in their garages and yards.

We spent the whole day hauling ruined furniture, removing soggy drywall, and shoveling sand out to the street where garbage and construction trucks were constantly going back and forth to clear it all away. These people have suffered a lot, and they're still without power and hot water because of all the downed lines, but they were so appreciative of the help. It felt great to get dirty and so very tired working hard to help them return their lives to normal. Of course I wish it had never happened to them, but it was the most fulfilling day I've had in a long time.

All of these pictures are courtesy of my awesome visiting teacher, Michelle, who I worked with most of the day:

The mountain of sand at the beach end of the street. New Yorkers have such a good sense of humor. 

The rail and bench are a portion of the boardwalk that washed 5 houses up the street. 

Most of the beach front homes had structural damage like this. I'm crossing my fingers that everyone had insurance. 

This is one of the mountains of sand from someone's garage. You can see how mangled the power lines are too.