The first thing I noticed about the people of Hurley, Virginia was that they were happy. I was expecting to go to the region and witness extreme poverty, and people in need of my help. After further examination, it is true that Hurley was obviously more impoverished region then I had ever seen, but you would never know it from talking to the people there. They were truly happy with their lives and although they were happy that we were there and accepting of help that we could give, they were in no way needy. All the people seemed content and optimistic, and it took some deeper conversations to learn about any problems that they were dealing with. For example, I was working on putting insulation and dry wall in a warehouse, and the man in charge of helping us was named Jim. Jim was so happy to work with us and so patient with out lack of construction knowledge. After a couple of days I began to realize that Jim could not possibly be getting paid for this work, and I wondered how he actually made a living. When I asked him what his job was, he informed me that he didn’t work and he just helped out as much as he could at the community center. I was so impressed with the tightness of the community and the willingness of all of its neighbors to help out as much as they could.
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