My New Look

Work Look

Bar Look

Casual Look

Its definitely a differen't look, I am probably going to be letting it go back to how it was, assuming it will go back.

Working on Houses

The first week has come to an end and it has been a good week. We have been building houses for some Katrina victims in Pascagula, MS. I have built brick/sand walk ways to the houses and then spackled dry wall and everything else that is involved with dry walling houses. I am getting a very nice tan now and the weather is gorgeous (mid and high 70's). The humidity started getting stronger today, but it still feels nice. The only bad thing about this week is that i have poison ivy all over my arms and its starting to spread to my chest, sides, and leg.

Tomorrow all the AmeriCorps in the Gulf Coast is going to a large symposiom in Baton Ruge, Luisiana. We have two classes during the day, i am taking Go AmeriGreen and an info session on becoming a Team Leader. My team was selected by the much higher ups to go on stage at the very end of the day and stand in front of everyone to recite the AmeriCorps Pledge. Well I am going to go and see 10,000 B.C. or possibly go to the beach I am not sure yet. I will talk to y'all later.

First Couple Days of SPIKE

We left Friday morning to head head down south. We spent Friday night in Knoxville, TN at a Days Inn, which was surprisingly really crappy. Saturday morning we left real early headed down through Georgia and then went west to Mississippi. On the way through Georgia we ran drove through a snow storm and it was freezing. But once we got to Mississippi the weather was quite nice, I hung out for a bit that night but then just went to bed. Sunday morning i slept in till about 10:30am. My team went to Biloxi, Mississippi for the day but myself and Phil decided to stay back and relax. I took a leisurely breakfast and started talking to some people from Denver and we decided to go to the beach which is only about 1/2 mile away and the water is reasonably warm for this time of year. So I spent most of the day at the beach with a couple of the Denver teams while my team was seeing other people from Perry Point in Biloxi. Today (Monday) my team drove around Waveland, MS which got the very worst of the hurricane and the place is looking better but there are still plots of land where stairs lead to nothing and there are drive ways that lead to just fields of grass. After Waveland we drove to New Orleans to see the destruction there as well. We drove through the Lower and Higher 9th Ward which is where the flooding hurt them the most. (I don't know if you knew already, but New Orleans didn't get get by the hurricane. For them the levees just broke and they were flooded for an extremely long time which hurt them horribly because everything became rotten and destroyed. After the Ward's we drove through the French Quarter and ate at that one famous French coffee/donut restaurant. We drove back so we could get back in time for dinner at 6:00pm. Tomorrow will be our paper work day and site orientation, our actual work won't start till Wednesday. Well I have to go and have a team meeting, I will tell you more about my living situation next time i write something.

Oh and here is a picture of my house mates back at the point. Two of them aren't there because they didn't show up for our house picture.

This Week

Hola Everyone. Today was the final class day of the Wildland Fire Fighting program, we took the final exam and all we have left is our mock fire tomorrow in the woods. We will be pretending there is a wild fire and will be fighting it like we would on a real fire. I think its going to be a really fun last day. And we will be getting our Red Wing Fire boots tomorrow, we already have the hardhats and gloves. Some people got all of their line gear and fire gear but i didn't, i was too far south on my spike to get issued it right now.

Friday we will be leaving to our spike which has been moved to Mississippi but thats all we really know now and even that isn't 100%. Once i know more about the project i will definitely tell y'all.

For those of you who haven't heard i got my second tattoo this last weekend. A couple of us in the house have been wanting one for awhile so we decided to go and get it. I really like it and am happy how it turned out.

Here is what it means

The Eagle:Patriotism and my Eagle Scout for Boyscouts.

Water: I love everything that has to do with water any where

Circle/Color: The two circles are for a group of friends at NMT. The color is in memory of a friend that died last year.

Rain Drops: A drop for each of my family

Talk to yall later and there will definitely be less posts once i am on spike since i won't have as much access to the internet. But i will be journaling so i remember everything. I will be updating my pictures on picassa today or tomorrow so if you want to see more pics they will be up there.