What Does It Mean To Miss New Orleans?

The official Badger picture of the SuperBadgers aka Badger 7. The Members are: (from left) Aaron, me, (standing) Buck, Katie, Stephanie, Connor, (lower row) Abby, Autumn, Maaj, Jade, and Brenton, our fearless leader.

Much has transpired since my last blog post, so i guess right now is as good time as any to get you all up to speed. There has been blood, sweat, and tears, but most of all, laughter (i.e. the having a good time kind).

So, when I last wrote, we were on our baby Spike in Hockessin, Delaware. Brenton, our Team Leader, decided on that first night to reveal where we would be going for our first full spike. We all recieved a text message containing letters, that, when unscrambled, would reveal where our project location was. After we had gathered each others' message from our phones, we tried to unscramble them, but to no avail. In addition, the rules to the game were vague- we could have all the the letters, not enough, or some letters more than once. Undoubtedly, we were pretty confused and dumbfounded. After spending the majority of the night working on the unsolvable puzzle, Brenton, slowly gave us hints until we discovered that the message read: Camp Hope New Orleans.

With that tribulation over, we were giddy with excitement. Personally, this was just what I wanted. New Orleans has been dear to my heart ever since some hurricane kicked the crap out of it nearly 5 years ago. So, for most of us, while we worked the rest of the days on baby Spike, we had less than a week to look forward to New Orleans. We did score some Girl Scout Cookies the last day, for which we were all excited, and nearly devoured all of them in one sitting.

Returning from baby Spike, we threw ourselves into the last week of CTI (aka training), which essentially was our prep week for new orleans. We had to complete a Director's Brief, which ultimately was a 20 minute presentation describing what we will be doing on our Spike. Also, at the end of the week, we would be officially inducted as AmeriCorps members, with a lot of pizaaz.

However, a word that we had been hearing at lot during CTI came into play- flexibility. On Monday, our TL Brenton called our Sponsor to find out a little more onj what we would be doing for Camp Hope. Well, let's just say what we thought were going to be doing was not were were going to do. This revelation was not only news to Brenton, but to all of the Project Office staff at the Point.

What we were going to be doing was even better than before. Rather than working in a warehouse as originally thought, we were going to be working at an (almost) brand-new project, one that was in fact started by an NCCC from the Pacific Region only a few months ago. It is called the Serve Green Initiative, and we were to be Serve Green Initiative after we arrived in St. Bernard. We would be developing our own projects, and leading 80-100 volunteers on those projects each week. This was (and is) a prospect that excited all of us.