finally.

alright, lets see here.
i probably should have started this thing loooong time ago, buuuut, hey at least i've started it.

well, life as of yet can probably only be described as insane.

here's a little overview of the past... wow three months already?

CTI in denver colorado.
absolutely beautiful. i love love love snow. i lived in marian which is the smaller of the two dorms with onl about 15 other girls, and no visitors! blowout. but i should be moving into walsh [normal dorm] after second round. it was incredible. i met so many amazing people and we did so much. lets see... first NBA game [nuggets vs. warriors] denver aquarium, beautiful downtown denver, we went to boulder which i loved, carrolls and long shots [local bars] kareoke, snow fights, cuddle puddles, and so on. oh not to mention all the training. i.e. cpr, first aid, diversity, disaster, red cross, etc. etc. etc.

i am now a member of the fantastic fire one warriors. my team is incredible, and i am so so so lucky to have them. we dance party and cuddle, and work our asses off on a regular basis. oh, how i adore them. anyhow, when we got our first project we were so stoked! we were stationed in new orleans, working in the musician's village with habitat for humanity and staying at camp hope. amazing. well, we were there about two weeks, and i was absolutely loving it. i love the culture, and working with habitat, and... everything. we were staying at camp hope, which is a gutted out school house that now houses about 800 volunteers at a time. it was hard sharing a room with 16 people, and having horrible bathrooms made out of plywood, and just praying you get hot water in the shower... but i still loved it. we were lucky enough to get real beds! it was great. its insane to think that here we were there almost two years later, and still almost half the previous population is displaced. its really bittersweet down there, because so much of the culture and life has returned, but saint bernard parish [right outside the city] is still a huge wreck. anyhow, the project was going amazingly well, but then i heard i was being deployed to enterprise, alabama. i wasw number one on our team's disaster list, so i had t leave me incredible team and project and head to bama onto a composite team for disaster relieif.

so i guess that leads to where i am currently.
i am on the composite disaster team they call sun 8 [gag. i'm fire all the way.] anyhow. the majority of the team is from the denver campus, but we do have one sacramento person and two perry point kids. then a nother whole team from sacramento came to hrlp out as well. it's been a rollercoaster ride without question. we are staying at the coffee county baptist retreat. its a beautiful house by a lake which we can paddle boat on and such. its lovely. (: it was weird at the beginning to actually be staying in a real house though. we have a fireplace and a dishwasher and a bathtub.....weird! it is hard though staying with 14 girls, and only one bathroom. oy. anyhow. we came right in the middle of the trasition between short term and long term recovery, and because it is a disaster, it is incredibly unorganized. at the beginning we would do things like debris removal, tarping roofs, assesment and scouting, data entry, phone center, etc. we were working with the christ the king, lutheran disaster relief. we recently moved locations, and now we are working out of an old house and all the different short term organizations have come together and we have formed the "Recovery Organization of Coffee County." i think this is a really great experience, but it is definitely frustrating at times. sometimes i feel like my time would be better spent if i were back in new orleans because this is such a self sufficient communtiy, they are already moving into the long term rebuilding phase, and new orleans is still a disaster. i honestly believe this community will be rebuilt within six months, which is incredible, but at the same time sometimes makes me feel like there is no real point for us being here. oh well, we really have helped to make a huge difference in the community and its great; and alabama really isn't that bad, its really beautiful here, and its amazing to experience souther hospitalitly first hand [i thought it was a myth!] hahah. lets seeeee.


beside thaaat.

well, this is silly, but i am pretty stoked about the new things i've learned while being here.
my skills now consist of...

chainlink fencing
tarping
deshingling
fork lift driving
driving that beast flatbed semi [stick shift! hollerrrr]
nailgunning
painting
caulking
baseboarding
chainsawing
roofing
cement mixing
bleacher making
debris removing
assessing
etc.
etc.
etc.

oy, a lot more i'm sure, but i'm pretty content with that so far. (:

anyway. it's been hard because i definitely i miss my family and friends both from home and denver, and.. well all over. but as of yet, i' m pretty content with life at the moment. infact, i think its incredible.

love. love. love.

p.s. sorry i'm a shitty blog poster, this is my first real one...gimme a break. i'll get better. promise. (: