Day Three: Kim and Tinley

Kim: For the past two nights, Jacob and I have been sharing the Dacha by ourselves therefore it has always been very quiet.  At night, Jacob is the only one that would make any other noises, otherwise I will think it is a ghost and begin to freak out.  However, Alma decided to wake me up at 7AM and I flipped out.

Tinley: After discovering that turning off the lights at night actually keep the Asian Lady Bugs away from our faces, I had an extremely relaxing night of sleep!

Kim: And because of this, none of the girls made fun of me for living in “The Hilton.”

Tinley: Just kidding, we still do. Kim sucks. I took the small hike up the hill to the farmhouse and had a giant mug of coffee.  Hannah Kersten Pingelton made the first pot of coffee of the day, which was deliciously strong.

Kim: The girls left one cup of coffee for me =) Not really. Lossaaaa. At around 10AM Wildman came in with Priyanka and Hannah and delegated the duties for the day

Tinley: I volunteered to clean the cellar, which was covered in dust and cobwebs. We headed down the steep wooden stairs while jamming out to a playlist of throwbacks that included some Usher and some Weezer.

Kim: When we first went down to the cellar, it was a mess.  There were cobwebs everywhere, mason jars that had little land mines from small animals….Tinley took the charge and ran into the darkest corner of the cellar and started sweeping.  She regretted that decision quickly.

Tinley: While sweeping, a fragment of snakeskin fell from the ceiling onto me. We quickly realized that there were snakes circling around the area, a realization that was confirmed by the presence of a ginormous snakeskin that Kim discovered, and the half eaten carcass of a rat chilling in a jar that Kim found.

Kim:  It is still “winter” so Wildman assured us that all the snakes in the area will be hibernating and we will not encounter any snakes.  However, I then found a plastic bag that had a collection of snakeskins.  Tinley, Hannah and I got really scared and cleaned the cellar in record time, then ran out.

Tinley: Our next task was to complete a 100-piece puzzle of pirate booties. It was easy peasy. We were rewarded with a delicious lunch from Manjiri which I gobbled up immediately and got seconds.

Kim: I got thirds.  Manjiri made a delicious pot of beans and rice.  I can’t believe I can actually say that something vegetarian was delicious.  I can’t wait to eat meat again though.  I plan on going hunting tomorrow.  After lunch we decided to add onto the fun and play more competitive card games.  “BS” was the game of choice.  Manjiri, forever the dark horse of card games, prevailed.

Tinley: Riding on our victory of the first puzzle, we ventured to attempt a 550-piece puzzle of space. Although Amy, Alyssa, Jhaviry, and Jessica lost all hope immediately, we persevered and soon enough, we finished like 5% of the puzzle before abandoning the project.

Kim: Next project was finishing what Jacob didn’t finish.  He called in for back up and took the entire NYU crew down to the Art house to organize all the Hardware.  The group then spent the next 3 hours rearranging and organizing all the tools, screws, nails, random miscellaneous unknown items, etc.

Tinley: Hannah and I were put to the task of reorganizing the wall. Unfortunately, Hannah was suffering from a major allergy attack so we forced her to sit down while I continued on. I found an assortment of vacuum cleaner heads, dreamcatchers, and a machete. All good though. Then we found a revolver.  Wildman had a shotgun. Still good. Apparently Kim went nuts in the basement and had some funky disco party without us.

Kim:  Correction, Alyssa, Manjiri, Lakpa, Jessica, and I were downstairs going through the entire pile of screws and nails and separating them by size.  It sounds horrible but with Lakpa’s dancing and rapping of Nicki Minaj, it turned out to be a dance party.  Jacob came downstairs….saw us….and judged. Hard.

Tinley: We returned to the farm house to grab another pot of coffee, only to be greeted by a massive influx of humans wearing Rutgers and UMBC gear. We quickly guarded our coffee. #NYUProblems.

Kim: Everyone including our new friends were by the Arthouse but dinner time was approaching so we all crawled into our cars to head up into the Farmhouse.  Our car was in the middle of the road facing the wrong direction but the road was too narrow to make a three point turn.  Wildman was already ahead of us and there was a UMBC car that had already passed us, but we didn’t want any of the others to beat us.  Our entire group then jumped into our mini van and I threw the car in reverse and drove everyone all the way up to the farmhouse, in reverse.  We sent a message to the other groups.

Tinley: The message was that we were bat crazy. Soon enough, it was 4:30 and with Alma’s warning that prepping and cooking takes at least two hours, a time that was even more constrained by the fact that there were now forty mouths to fill, I got to work with the help of Priyanka! I decided to make pasta, which at first seemed like an easy endeavor but I was so, so wrong. I threw on some Justin Timberlake and some Alicia Keys, and started chopping up all the vegetables we could find. I dumped a crazy amount of tomato paste and diced tomatoes in a pot, while Priyanka boiled the pasta in the gigantic pots. As dinner time approached and hungry mouths started wandering into the kitchen, the pressure was on! While seasoning the pasta, I may or may not have dumped half a bottle of Oregano, Black Pepper, and Red Pepper. Thankfully a lot of people said they liked how unintentionally spicy it was, which I was super nervous about. A team member who shall remain anonymous said it made her fart a lot. But that’s okay. Judgment free zone. #ABProblems

Kim:  Tinley is right, the pasta was spicy but SOO GOOOD.  However, now with forty mouths to feed I can already feel our entire environment becoming a little bit more cramped.  There was enough pasta for everyone but it was tight.  I went to the fridge and ate leftovers from the day before.  Everything tastes good after a day of work.

Tinley: After dinner we joined the two other schools in the Library to watch an interview of the real Patch Adams. It was pretty interesting to finally hear Patch himself express his views and his beliefs…if only I wasn’t so exhausted from the day already.

Kim:  It was definitely interesting to hear Patch Adams’ beliefs, he has a very radical mind set and he sees a lot of possible change that will make the world a better place.  Maybe not plausible in his lifetime but he believes that he is doing the right thing and take a step towards the right direction for the world.  They do not have a timeline for when the hospital will be up and running but Wildman has high hopes for a new property that recently went onto the market just down the street from Gesundheit that may be a possible future location for a clinic that will open a whole lot sooner than the hospital.

Tinley: We ended the night with some good ol’ reflection, undoubtedly one of my favorite times of the day. We discussed our thoughts and opinions on prevailing topics of social justice. This was pretty cool because since we are getting pretty comfortable with each other, it really felt like a safe place to express myself and think about my actual opinions on topics, as opposed to choosing a safe neutral space. I definitely learned a lot about the backgrounds of my friends and grew to understand and respect their opinions as well. Since we did it in the Art House, Kim got a taste of some Asian Lady Beetle Buggin’.

Kim: and I liked it.