Whoa

Hey, look at me...two posts in one week! How exciting for both of us!

Thursday I worked in the Operation Blessing Medical Clinic. I was the only one from my team and all I did was file papers, but it was a nice change and I met some nice people. The medical director, Tom, picked me up from OB and had to do some shopping. We walk into Walmart and he tells me that he loves AmeriCorps and that I can go in and get any snacks I want for my team and he'll put it on the corporate credit card. Whoa! The first time I meet back up with him he looks at my cart and tells me that the team is going to be mad when they see that I had free reign with a credit card and I only got five items. So I had to go back and get some more food for us. Pretty cool, right?

Yesterday and today were National & Global Youth Service Day. Every AmeriCorps NCCC team in the Gulf came together in Gulfport, Mississippi for a huge community meeting. I think I heard there were around 600 of us there from Sacramento, Denver and Perry Point, Maryland. The meeting was kinda interesting. There was a panel discussion on the need and importance of National Service and how vital we are to the Gulf recovery and to the nation in general. Same old stuff we hear all the time pretty much. After that we all went to the Crawfish Festival that was right next door. Reminded me of a county fair but a bit smaller.

Today, my team, along with five other AmeriCorps teams from all over, cleaned up debris from the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Preserve. I picked up styrofoam from the busted hulls of boats for about three hours. Afterward, the park rangers let us go canoeing on this lake/marsh area. It was real windy, so we had little control over where we went, but it was fun. No alligators tho. I am determined to see a live one before I leave this area. I've already seen alligator road kill...that was pretty cool.

A new AmeriCorps team came in today to OB. This team is from Denver. I haven't had a chance to talk to anyone yet, but it will be nice to see different faces and know that they will be there with us the rest of the time we are at OB.

Not much else going on, really. Tomorrow is Earth Day and for an ISP I'm going to plant trees in NO. Not thrilled about getting up early again on my weekend, but I need the ISP hours.

I am now going to update both my personal photo site and the team photo site with pictures. I know I haven't done that in a while, so I apologize. Look, enjoy, comment, whatever! Love and Miss!