New Orleans...second time around

I've been scolded because i haven't updated this sucker in a while so here it goes. The past month has been a whirl wind of traveling, business and saying goodbyes and hello's. We made our fourth and final trip (thank. goodness.) up I-95 from Gainesville to Maryland at the beginning of the month to head out for mid-year break. I made my appearance where necessary..Hudson and Chautauqua. It was a really relaxing week..an opportunity to clear my mind and regroup. Those 12 days flew by and before i knew it i was back in Perry Point doin' the same 'ol stuff. It was a week of very mixed emotions...not wanting to be in MD and kind of not wanting to come back to New Orleans..I took up breathing exercises and motivational reading...(what has my life come to?...yikes) After silly job fair in DC, a day of trash pick up in Baltimore and a directors brief the team found ourselves, once again, packed to the gills in trusty Mable en route to New Orleans. We stayed over in town outside of Charlotte, which was really out of the way but that's irrelevant now..The team finally made it to Chalmette, LA last Sunday not knowing what a crazy week we had ahead of us. 

Chalmette is in St. Bernard Parish which is a neighbor to New Orleans Parish. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to get to the city. We are living in bunk rooms in a church and basically found out how spoiled we have been for the past two rounds...now we actually have to share the place with other people. geez.  Our actual project is working with the St. Bernard Parish Gov. helping rebuild Camp Hope. Camp Hope was one of the first volunteer housing sites built after Katrina. There have been two Camp Hope locations which were funded and basically run by Habitat for Humanity...this is no longer the case. Habitat is no longer funding the new Camp so the Parish stepped in and is taking over. The new location needs a lot of work which is why we are here. 

That's our main project...which we have yet to really get started...

Last week we found ourselves leading about 1,000 Lutheran youth (and there annoying parents) in trash pickup and cemetery painting. Every three years there is a ginormous conference for Lutherans ( or something) This year they packed up from all over the country (mainly the Midwest) and came down to the city and were basically a pain in the butt. Our project was painting in 4 different cemeteries and trash pick up around the Parish...

Let me explain..because of the location of New Orleans people cannot be buried underground. So, the cemeteries consist of giant above ground tombs. When Katrina hit the water level around where we were working was about 25 feet (to the top of a standard utility pole) when that happens...things tend to want to float...and they did. Coffins floated out of their tombs...tombs floated out of their cemeteries and it was really a hot mess...(In the cemetery i was working at there were coffins that were found 20 miles away.) Its basically the last thing anyone would think about when a disaster like that happens but we came in and (tried) to save to day. During the three days we worked we used about 30 gallons of latex paint (all white) and only finished painting about 20 tombs. Its going to take a lot more work to finish it but to even get the ball rolling was a big help. The high schoolers complained and so did the parents. And it seems to be the case that the sun never shines in the Midwest (i thought it was just Ohio) and bees don't exist. It was an exhausting week but everyone was very appreciative of the work we were doing. (oh, and no one got swept away when the torrential down pour occurred or when the two water spouts [tornados?] touched ground...phew)

It's crazy to be back here again...but i am pretty excited about this round. Our sponsor, Crystal, is great and the project should be fun. Cross your fingers about hurricane season...i forget my life jacket at home. 

check out those vests.

conrad loves GPSing road signs!

this is what we work with everyday...what an expensive little bugger

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our doublewide and Mable = heaven.

see, we work. in the pouring rain while getting attacked by mosquitos

the wild conrad does work.

roof frame of a bird blind (not for hunting..) we built. thank you.

conrad and crystal love nature walks.

gator.

gator.

badger 4.1 loves the days inn and route-95

Street Signs Are Complex.

Day 21 of Round 2: We have gotten into a groove in terms of our new project...finally. Our sponsor, John,  is awesome. He is an AmeriCorps NCCC alumni...so he knows the drill. We are working with the Public Works department of Gainesville helping them take inventory of their street signs = we walk around all day with fancy GPS systems recording every sign we see. Now, for those who arent so hip to the signs...there is a lot more to say, the average STOP sign than you think. For example...the material: is it engineer grade? or prismatic material?..both having different reflectivity... (so drivers can see them at night..) There are many different sizes of signs...24x24?..9x30?.. And the poles they are stuck to? Yep, is it 10ft or 12ft? U-channel or square? So...all of that junk has to be recorded and we are the suckers that got the job. It's actually not that bad, we get to spend the entire day outside - allowing me the perfect opportunity to work on my super sweet suntan and who doesn't love a good 6mile walk everyday? Apparently Gainesville loves their weekends because they recently moved to 4day/10 hour work weeks meaning on Friday's we will be working with the Nature Department...i think tomorrow we are building a roof for a bird viewing house? We'll see how that goes. 

Our housing is actually quite spacious. We are living in a double wide in a park called Boulware Springs...there is 15 miles of trail behind our house and a natural spring with turtles. Gainesville gets all of their water from natural springs and it was one of the main reasons the University of Florida built their campus here. The spring that is behind our house is nasty so, no swimming but one of the weekends we are down here John is going to take us to some springs that we can swim in and float on. One of the trails from our house leads to a pretty radical places called Payne's Prairie...which is a wildlife preserve. On Monday we went an walked the trail hoping to get a glimpse of wild horses, alligators, bison and many birds. The only thing we spotted was a ton of giant stinky alligators..and baby alligators! Everyone escaped with all of their limbs. (i'll post some pictures) The only downfall to our housing is that we had to bring all of our own furniture = cots. I hate cots. Cots hate humans. I got an early birthday present though!..a fabulous air mattress! (thanks mom & dad) 

So far things are going pretty well! This is a great project and we are pretty bummed we are only here for the month of June. Gainesville has a lot to offer in terms of history and things to do. I'm definitely looking forward to taking advantage of that and just have a good time! (John is pretty big into making sure we have fun too so, it shouldn't be a problem!) 

Peace&Love

this is the uh...only good thing that came from being in Kissimmee...

Psych.

I am here writing this in Perry Point after a wonderful weekend spent at home. Why am i in Perry Point? Well...it all started when we went to our first day of work for the Nature Conservancy and they informed us that we were unable to work until further notice...Why you ask? Legal junk...more or less. We soon found out that the legal junk could not be resolved so we packed up. Said peace out to Chucky and started our journey back to Maryland. Yep. Another two days in our trusty van..(recently named Mable..because apparently that's the thing to do, name the team van) Luckily for me i was able to get dropped off at the airport on Thursday and headed home! 

It was really great to get away and have a short break from everything! I had a hard time returning but here i am...back with the team...minus three. There was flooding in W. Virginia so, a team of 16 headed out there today to do disaster relief for around 2weeks. Three of the sixteen were two of badger 4's corps members and our team leader. We're down to 5 and it's a riot. We found out today that the 5 of us will be heading BACK to Florida (yep..go ahead, laugh) tomorrow or Thursday to work with for the city of Gainesville. We will be doing GPS data collecting around the city..also known as geocaching. People do that stuff as a recreational activity. We are doing it for our job. It should be interesting...we don't really know much more...except for there's the possibility of tubing down a river. 

We were warned from the start that being a part of NCCC is all about being flexible...and here was our biggest test of that. Sometimes it's frustrating not knowing exactly what we will be doing and when we will start working again but things happen and we just gotta go with the flow. yo.

Chucky the Alligator is our neighbor...

We made it Florida on Friday. It's hot. We left Maryland on Thursday and began our 2 day excursion. I've spent more time in that van than i ever want to...and it's only the second round. We spent a night in S.Carolina in the middle of nowhere only to show up to our new housing..which just so happens to be...in the middle of nowhere. For our directors brief(part of pre-round prep) we showed a really nice picture of what was THOUGHT to be our house...come to find out its the offices of the Nature Conservancy. Silly us...for the next 6weeks we will living in a double wide...which is actually bigger than our last house. Hearing the reaction of the team when we drove up was priceless though. We met Dan..who works for the Nature Conservancy (who we now work for) and he showed us around and let us know that the only things we needed to watch out for were...ahem..: every single type of poisonous snake in the USofA, poisonous spiders, bobcats, ticks, scorpions, the two gators that live in lake in our front yard (Chucky and Chica...they are only 10ft & 12ft - no biggie), ferrel hogs (there is a hog catcher living in a FEMA trailer)...and well i'm pretty sure the list went on but i my attention span is pretty minimal these days. I don't know what i feel more comfortable with, that speech or the "if you hear gun shots..hit the deck" speech by our last sponsor. Oh AmeriCorps. 

We live and will be working on the Nature Conservancy's Disney Wilderness Preserve. No, we aren't working for Disney... The preserve was established in 1992 as an offsite mitigation project to basically make up for all of the damage that occurred to the wetlands when the Walt Disney Resorts and various other sites were developed. There is a law in florida that when someone wants to develop over wetlands they either have to find another location to move the wetlands or find and preserve existing wetlands. Our orientation is on Monday but when talking with the sponsor during transition we found out that we will be doing a lot of herbicide treatment to invasive species, different species removal and relocation (in terms of plants such as maidencane, saltbush, cordgrass...yea i don't know what those are yet) and trail widening/restoring. No one on the team has really done this type of environmental work before so it should be a pretty educational experience for all of us. One of the coolest things about this round is that we only work four days a week...3day weekends will be glorious (Cocoa Beach is only an hour) 

We have only been here for a couple of days and have already come to realize that our entertainment is minimal....Yesterday we took a walk to the office which only took us two hours (from our house)..but we saw a turtle and some wild turkeys!  The walk also allowed us to refill our water bottles because well..drinking sulfur water isn't very legit..which is what is spit out to us from the showers and the faucets. We have a volleyball net. And a frisbee. And while we thought there was wireless in the office...it proved to not work yesterday so i am sitting at a Panera about 20 minutes away from home typing this. This round will definitely be interesting. We have a chance to actually spend some time with each other since we had a difficult time doing that in New Orleans. SPF70 will most likely become my new best friend since i already got fried. I am definitely excited to get started and am hoping to really make the most of my experience here and am looking forward to maintaining a positive attitude. constantly. hah. PEACE&LOVE!