Thank you!

Thank you to all who sent letters/cards to me recently! I got a bunch from Ashland, including my wonderful 5th grade girls and awesome friends from Fuse. It was a nice surprise and gave me a boost of happiness when I needed it most. I promise I will try to write back soon! I also hear that I received one from Emily at home, and it's being forwarded to me now, so I look forward to it!

Composite Team

f I didn't mention before, I got accepted onto a composite team for 4 weeks working with the Saint Bernard Project. They solely rebuild homes, mainly in Saint Bernard Parish and some in Orleans Parish. So I leave my own wonderful Badger 7 team for a month and then come back. I am the only one on the composite team who was already in New Orleans, so the rest of them spent the past weekend driving down here.

So I'm with the composite team in our awesome digs less than a mile from Camp Hope. The team jumped out of the vans, ate some dinner, and we headed for a brief orientation, cause that's the way we roll. :) Tomorrow we start some intense training. Normally training with the Saint Bernard Project is two weeks, but we're doing it in one, as they really need us to be ready in one week when they have a huge number of volunteers to lead. So far as I know, we're mainly in the phase of doing insulation, drywall hanging and mudding for most of the 50 houses under construction. Maybe some mold remediation too. We'll see!

Exhausted, as always, but had a good weekend. We did ISP time at the Los Islenos Festival, and I talked to cute old guys about oyster recipes and the best types of crawfish to eat. We got tons of free food. I ate Canary Island shrimp, alligator sausage, raw oysters, grilled oysters, sno-cones, funnel cakes, and a few other items. And yes, I felt sick after eating all of that. Also got the 15-passenger van stuck in the mud and enjoyed a Louisiana storm. Unfortunately it's freezing now, after several days of 70-degree weather and getting a sunburn.

Yesterday I planted a very large cactus that we named Betsy. I texted dad to let him know that I was working hard, sweat dripping off my nose, and drinking lemonade. I just need a tool belt and a stubby chewed-up pencil behind my ear.

We've worked on a lot of projects and I have plenty of photos to post so I can explain them, but I'm too tired right now!!!

Want to sponsor a park bench?

I will have to post the info later, but is anyone interested in sponsoring a park bench? We have ceiling tiles here at Camp Hope, and for $40 you get a ceiling tile, which we can decorate for you, and it leaves your mark here. That $ goes towards building a park bench. 3 ceiling tiles = 1 park bench. We are building these benches ourselves, and let me tell you, they are incredible. They're thick, sturdy wooden benches, about 10 feet long, and in the shape of different plants and animals. We have volunteers coming in constantly from art institutes and the like. They draw a design on the wood, and we cut it out and build it, then install them in parks we're cleaning up. I have a few photos of the ones already made, which, again, I'll have to post at a later date. If you're interested in this, let me know. I'll make sure to get info. on how to do it and what you'd like your ceiling tile to look like.

Updates from New Orleans

Dont' have time to post photos right now, but if you have facebook, some of my teammates are uploading photos there and i'm tagged in a few. check those out for now until i can get some on here...

As usual, I am absolutely exhausted. I want to write so much more, all about the amazing stuff happening here, but I've only got a few minutes.

Before I forget, the previous address I posted for New Orleans is correct, you can send stuff here if you like!

So we arrived early evening on Sunday at Camp Hope in Saint Bernard Parish, on the outskirts of the 9th ward. Saint Bernard parish was deemed 100% unlivable after Hurricane Katrina. There is a lot of work to do! Much of the county was sitting under 15+ feet of salty, polluted water for 2 weeks, so there's lots of mold and flora and fauna dead and not growing back, and all kinds of problems. My project, which we are running by ourselves, is called Serve Green. We are building communal spaces, beautifying the area, and basically making this place a community that homeowners will want to be a part of once again.

Monday we jumped right in and planted hundreds of trees in a swampy area where the Battle of New Orleans took place. I saw two otters while I was there!!!!

Today a couple team members and I led a group of 17 volunteers doing mold remediation. All construction jobs must pass a mold test before they're allowed to build, and with all that nasty water sitting around 5 years ago, any houses left standing need major mold removal...

(ps keep in mind that yes, it's been 5 years, but you wouldn't believe how much stuff looks just like it did 5 years ago. there's just so much work and more damage than you realize. the salt water and pollution killed everything, so that we have to do soil tests and mold tests and all kinds of research before any project can begin)

I also applied for a composite team. It's a team for the Saint Bernard Project (an organization) and they solely build homes here. This team was open to anyone from the Perry Point campus, so it was kind of competitive. I got a spot on the team! What this means is that I and 8 other people will leave our current teams for 1 month and work for Saint Bernard Project, then go back to our teams. So essentially I am joining a new team for a short time. There are many pros and cons with this. The cons are that I will definitely miss my team, and our team project is already so incredibly awesome and I will miss a lot of the planning and some of the projects for it. The positives are that this is solely construction, which is what I most wanted to learn. It's also a wonderful program, a new and exciting experience, and I will be only a few minutes away from my old team! (Other people on the composite team are traveling from many states away) So I can still sometimes see them and hang out with them (I won't be living in the same place).

Anyway, both projects are amazing. I'm doing serious work, learning so much, and influencing hundreds of volunteers at the same time. It's kind of like we're site supervisors...

As a media rep, we already have a couple things that were just handed to us:
1. The current Serve Green has a weekly column in a local newspaper, which we will take over. That's aMAZing!
2. One of my volunteers today said she has her own radio show at Long Island University and she will talk about the Americorps program on her show.

I took a quick tour of the ninth ward today, saw the absolute devastation...I have photos, but no time to post right now.

I'm sorry my thoughts are so scrambled right now. I'm completely covered in crusted mud from yesterday and paint from today, and I have to be up at 6am tomorrow. Hopefully within the next week I'll actually have the time and energy to go into the city itself and have a meal or something along those lines.

Again, I'm exhausted every day, but this job is so incredibly rewarding. I'm so happy I'm here! Please pray for me and my team(s).

More later!....

address

i'm not 100% positive, but i think you can send packages to this address while i'm in New Orleans:

Stephanie Miller - Americorps NCCC
CAMP HOPE
1914 Aycock Street
Arabi, Louisiana 70032

that is the physical address of the camp, i don't know yet if they want us to send mail somewhere else. probably i should just not even post this now and wait until tomorrow when i can get an exact answer, but oh well.

pretty excited to get started!! staying in a hotel in Knoxville for the night, then NO tomorrow...

a few photos

This is the girls from my original pod - Brenton was my TL then as well. From left: Brenton, me, Claudia, Rhiannon, Abby, Melissa, Jeana.

Katie, working on a flooring project

Our fearless leader, Brenton, who is not too happy with me taking his picture (but it was necessary for our brochure!!)

Buck, probably the most motivated person on our team, taking a nap after a long day.

Me pretending to do some electrical work.

The whole team! This is our badger pose. Yes, we look intimidating.
From left, first row: Aaron, Peter, Abby, Autumn, Maaj, Jade, Brenton.
Second row: Buck, Katie, Me, Connor

So we are gearing up for our trip to New Orleans, but there's a whole lot of administrative stuff to do. We have to make a presentation to the region director detailing our project, our goals, and how we will accomplish those goals, among other things. We are doing some research on New Orleans, trying to learn as much about it as possible, as that is also a requirement for every project: we need to know the people we're helping.

Anyway, our project has changed a bit. We are still staying at Camp Hope (camp 3, btw) but we are no longer doing warehouse work or running the camp. We're doing something called Serve Green, which I have no idea what it is, and neither does my TL, and neither does his supervisor. Which makes it kind of hard to work on our director's brief when we don't know much of anything about our organization. What we DO know is that it will be awesome! We'll be going to many different locations, working directly with people, doing many different types of projects. Although the warehouse would have been cool, I'm looking forward to getting out there and meeting people. Also, we will be living in military tents for at least the first month of our time there. We will have outdoor bathrooms and showers, and wi-fi as well! I think it's going to be pretty awesome...

Gotta run!

some reflections

Tonight we watched a 1 1/2 hour documentary about New Orleans. It was made by a couple living in the 9th ward, who stayed in their home during the hurricane. It was pretty eye-opening, and I think it sobered us all up a bit about what we're getting ourselves into. We are all excited to do service work, and we are also excited to experience the culture and atmosphere of New Orleans. We're just taking it a little more seriously now. And it's much easier to appreciate what we have here. Right now at the girl scout camp, we have hot running water, plenty of food and it's easy to have good hygiene. We have wi-fi!!! This place is a ritzy hotel compared to our home in 9H in Perry Point, but it's a palace compared to what other people have.

Although I'm sad that I'm out of the loop in all things pop culture and politics in the world right now, I'm also very thankful for the simplicity of life. I get up, work hard, get to see how much we accomplished, spend a little time with the team, go to bed, and do the same thing the next day.

We are already signed up for volunteer work at Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, and Habitat for Humanity. These are all projects we will complete on weekends and sometimes on week nights, as part of our ISP hours. I'm thinking I want to sign up for as many Habitat projects as possible, because I can see already that construction is my favorite thing to do. I'm definitely excited to acquire more skills in this trade. :)

Well it's late and we're all tired. I'll try to post more when I can...