Not every school in the United States has a fall break. However, I am very thankful Park University offers this much needed break and opportunity to grow.
The week, which was held Oct. 13-19, was definitely needed with the work load I have this semester. However, I did find an opportunity to spend this break in a different way than many students might.
Earlier this semester, I saw the flyers at Copley Hall about the Alternative Fall Break trips organized by the Study Abroad Program at Park. One flyer was for a trip to the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky and the other for Costa Rica.
I signed up for the mountain one, for the only reason that I haven’t traveled much in the east part of the country, so it would an experience.
The trip promised some social services to help the community and learn about coal mining in that part of the country.
With two vans, seven students, two chaperones and two days of driving, we arrived at the town of Harlan, Ky. A man named Dave welcomed us at a religious school . We stayed at the school in a little house where nuns used to live.
Dave taught us about how people are living in this part of the country. While we drove throughout the area, I could see small houses, trailers and dogs attached to trees by metal chains. The downtown area is deserted now with most of the businesses closed. The only ones open were antique stores or those that sell mechanic appliances.
More surprisingly, we saw tires piled up in areas including playgrounds and even a pile of tires burning by a house while driving to the mountains.
We took a picture of this pile of burning tires and during the week we made a flyer and some posters to help prevent this from happening again. We posted them by areas where this might happen and even some in stores.
I am an international student from France and even though I have been a student in this country for two years now, there are still some parts of this culture I am not familiar with. The communities living in Kentucky are just part of it.
I am surprised, and especially sad, that in 2014 there are still people living in these conditions, far away from any town and having to drive miles to most necessities.
We drove through different neighborhoods and in order to get to the smaller houses it require driving off the main road. I know they were inhabited because of the presence of the car – most of the time a very old pick-up type of truck.
The main town had nothing but fast food places such as McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut and a Wal-Mart.
The movie “Harlan County, Kentucky” taught me a lot about the communities around this place of the country.
During the 1900s, they started doing coal-mining work in the mountains and everyone would work in the mines.
They built towns, created a community and allowed immigrants to come work in the coal mines.
Our group visited the Coal Mine Museum and later that day, we actually went inside Portal 31, where thousands of workers used to come on a daily basis.
We also met retired coal mine workers, who told us all about their work in the mines.
One of them told me he had to work lying on his back – because the roof was low – as he tried to dig out the roof.
At McDonalds, whenever I saw someone wearing a blue uniform with bright orange stripes, I knew they were coming back from the mines. The black stains helped to confirm that.
Now that the coal mining has changed, many of the residents of Harlan have left.
On our last day, we went to a community center. There was a large mix of children and adults – but most of the adults were senior citizens.
Country music was played and the elders didn’t hesitate to grab my hand and teach me the steps of different country dances. While I couldn’t quite figure out some of the steps, I still had fun dancing with lots of different people that night.
During this week, I am glad I learned so much about this part of America. When I came to the United States to be a student, I promised myself I would take each opportunity offered to me in order create a never-ending learning experience.
However, I was expecting to do more community service and outreach on this trip. Our group was supposed to help a family weatherize their house. Unfortunately, after driving over an hour in the mountains roads, we were very surprised to find the house with no one inside but dogs. The people we were supposed to help were incarcerated on this day. This was disappointing.
Despite this letdown, I would still definitely recommend anyone to be part of the Alternative Fall/Spring Break experiences. This is only for a week and you learn to live within a group and you help the community.
Alternative Spring Break 2015 will be in Guatemala and you can already sign up. For more information contact Angela Markley Peterson, director of Global Education and Study Abroad, at 816-584-6510 or at [email protected].