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Biloxi, United States
30° 23' N 88° 53' W
May 23, 2008 04:41
Distance 0km

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The Final Assignment!

Text written in: English

It’s coming quickly, our last day in Biloxi. And now it’s official. We are leaving. It will be very sad to leave Biloxi. I love the work here and the people here. Hands On is an awesome program, and Biloxi is beautiful (and imagine what it will be like once it is fully rebuilt!). The only thing that is keeping me from being completely depressed that I’m leaving is… my next project.

 

We will be working for Hope Has A Face. In New Orleans, Louisiana! We’ll be living in the Lower 9^th Ward, and working for about 30 days (out of a 100 day project). They are building 100 homes in 100 days. Or so is the goal.

 

So I’ll be doing construction in New Orleans. The only way this could be better is if it was longer. I am so completely excited for this project. Exactly what I wanted.

 

We had a focus group today; Amanda and I represented our team and met with the director of NCCC and a bunch of other team reps. People were complaining about the lack of variety in their projects. A lot of teams have had multiple gulf construction projects. I don’t know why they’re complaining; that would be awesome. But clearly we lucked out with two regional projects, one in beautiful Oregon. And two completely non-construction projects, and one only partly construction (some of my teammates are doing education/green space/base management right now). I pretty much realized how blessed we were to get the projects we had, and I am finally pretty content with how my AmeriCorps year has turned out so far.

 

The house we’ve been working on is looking really good. We finished the flooring completely (tile and fake wood), the trim and baseboard is done (except for some random trim going around the top of three closets in the main room. And all touch-up painting is done in all three bedrooms. We even moved in all of the stuff that has been in storage in the POD outside (furniture and other random belongings). It is getting there, but there is still so much to do! We are pouring in concrete tomorrow at 7am; so we have to go to work earlier than normal. But it’s totally worth it, to get some more work done. I have a recruiting event in the middle of the day, and transportation is tight (Hands On leased all of their vehicles and in the past week has returned them all, leaving us with 5 different worksites and only one van-our govvy van. Poor planning on their part. It just means Jenny has to act as chauffeur a lot.) It should be a good time, even though it will be a long day. Though most of my days are long. But worth it.

 

Our next project might call for 6 day work weeks. That would be slightly unfortunate, but then we definitely wouldn’t be short for hours. Also, we’re working with three other teams. I don’t know them yet, but we’ll find out later tonight. We’ll all be working together, so it’ll be nice to have a mix of people. Though I love my teammates. Amanda and Jen are going back to Sacramento to do “Summer of Service,” where they will lead teenagers doing service. And Adam might be doing the GLT (Gulf Liaison Team), which consists of about 8-10 people organizing things and checking up on all of the gulf teams. Which would bring our team # for our last project down to 8. The only good thing about Amanda and Jen leaving is that then we’d have 9 people in a 12 passenger van on the four day road trip back to Sac. (Adam would ride back with us even if he does GLT).

 

I’m going to Memphis this weekend (Memorial Day) and maybe hitting Alabama on the way back. I’m going with two teammates (Seth and Amanda), KC from Hands On, and Dylan who is a random volunteer here. I’m pretty excited. It’s a 6 hour drive, but totally worth it to cross some states off my list!! Tennessee here I come!!

 

That’s enough of an update for now.