Vocational Day - 1

Tuesday 28th April

Chris - spent the day with the Cray Youth Services in New Castle who provide a wide range of suports for young people. He spent time with Social Workers, Psychologists and managed to hang out with some kids.

Callum - began his day at 0640am when he headed down to Pittsburgh for a site meeting. He spent some time wandering about site including a tour from the site Principle. In the afternoon he was a Ecles Architecture after which he went to the recently finished New Castle High School with the architect.

Eric - was with Craig Russo of Taylor Engineering. He was shown various structures around New Castle discussing the main areas of repairs and letting of new work. Not an exact match to his current role but interesting for him none the less.

Roger - spent time with both New Castle State and City Policing gaining an insite into American Policing. He was provided an overview of some of the information gathering systems available and sampled how localised Policing operations worked.

Dry Town - Grove City

The kiltie team with Jenn at the Coffee Grove........great coffee, nice buns!!

It appears to date that any Town north of Butler is a 'Dry Town', in the sense that they don't have pubs and the restaurants are not licensed. Grove City has recently opened its first and only licensed premises in anticipation of our arrival.
We were given a tour of the town in our Kilts which caused a 'stir' with the local residents including the local coffee grove where our photo with the owner, Jen made headline news the following day.

Next stop was a visiting tour of the local Chambers of Commerce with Lisa Pritchard. She outlines the work involved during the successful regeneration of downtown Grove City. We were all impressed by the sense of Community spirit which was required during this regeneration. This tour also made local headline news and our picture can be found in the Chamber of Commerce website - www.oldetowngrovecity.com

Wednesday - Frist Transfer Day

Wednesday....time to leave New Castle and move on to Grove City......before we do we are taken to the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle.... we were shown round the two houses which make up the Institute by Kim, the Director......an interesting tour , and a bit of culture after the first vocational day.

reneir devido's stone emporium and warehouse.

there are currently four of us posting things at once, so the timing is all over the place.

the following took place on monday the 27th.

We were scheduled to spend a day visiting lots of businesses around the New Castle area and the first stop at some ungodly hour of the morning was Reneir Devido's Limestone Factory.

Reneir primarily deals in limestone, which is cnc'd into a myriad of forms for all aspects of the building trade. Being a man who primarily deals in stone, it was not surprising to see it heavily used on the frontage of the building. there were also some shifty characters hanging about there at the time.

The factory was quite quiet when we visited, but there was some machining going on.

Reneir was also foolish enough to let us loose with an air chisel on a bit of limestone, although we couldn't quite match the refinement of the masons who were working next to us.

Bears in the wood

On Thursday evening, Chris, Callum, Roger and Eric decided to burn-off some calories cycling. We cycled along the river Allegany in some glorious Scottish weather, 40* and raining. Our 65 year old host 'dared' us to swim in Sandy Creek. After a quick dram, 3 bears were seen to take the plung scaring the local wildlife away.

Presentation - Monday 27 April

After a day of rest were were thrown in at the deep end.....three vocational visits and two presentations.......the first was lunchtime at New Castle club.....the team scrubbed up well in their suits......Jim did his job as team leader and chose an appropriate tie.....

Lunch went well and the Scottish photo album was well received......presentation time came and the Power Point failed to work....we tried to switch to our own laptop and the projector decided it had had enough and stopped functioning.....time to ad lib, and the guys did their best and wowed the audience with their wit and charm.....

In the evening we went to the meeting and New Willmington Rotary Club......we used our own laptop and the thecnology worked perfectly......the presentation was well received, and some of the New Castle members who came with us in the evening saw it how it was meant to be...

Team photo with Mike Boyle, the President of New Willmington

mines and start your motors gentlemen!

Following our lunchtime presentation on monday 27th april, we were taken to the Wapalm mines a huge complex making use of the vast limestone mines now disused. The mines are now used for storage as they provide excellent security with cheap and efficient temperature and moisture control. Files and paper information for the state and private companies are kept there as are a variety of weird and wonderful things. We saw a vault with all of Paul Simon's tour equipment and record collection, piles and piles of original film material from warner brothers and disney and tonnes and tonnes of dried milk! Eric and Chris have decided to explore old mines across Scotland with 'money for old rope!' being the cry!

After being underground the group were then taken to the Beaverun a huge race track complex

The racetrack provides training as well as races and gokarting, Roger and Callum were in their element but frustratedly didn't get a shotty on anything!