quite possibly the hardest i ve ever worked...

well...this is one of those posts that i ve deemed necessary just for the sake of keeping this blog alive...because if i dont post and let things pile up i m just not gonna wanna post later because i have so much i need to write about...haha...yeah...i hope that makes sense...this afternoon is one of those rare occasions where i actually have free time so i m here at a coffee shop called "dough joes"...which to my delight is surprisingly nice...its got that "little house on the prairie" feel to it...not something i d expect to find in pascagoula...it really makes me feel like i m home...let s see...let me try to think about what you all are wondering right now....

our job here at Operation TLC is that we basically staff the whole volunteer center...like literally...we ARE the only staff at the center with the exception of our site supervisor...it has been absolutely crazy...it is basically like a 24 hr a day job...and if you ve never lived at the same place where you work...then...well...DONT...hahah...its hard to get away from the job when you are here...its very hard not to think about work when you walk by the office everytime you goto the kitchen...and in our case...the kitchen serves as part of the office...

my specific position is that i am the volunteer coordinator of Operation TLC, which means that I am in charge of calling and confirming with incoming volunteers and also recruiting new ones...now at first this may sound like an easy job but organizing and just obtaining the info is quite difficult...after a lot of phone and email tag...even when you get a hold of a group...the numbers are never definite...i find myself on the phone or computer quite often or just waiting for people to get back to me...i dunno...it s pretty cool because i was given a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) phone and laptop to use as part of my job...but they recently took the phone back because FEMA is dumb....i guess this job is a little hard for me because i feel like i quit Macys to get out of the office and here i am...in an office all day pretty much...it ll get better once i get stuff down because i ll get to lead the volunteers to a site and work with them...the cool thing about this position is that i am basically the point of contact for the volunteers...so when they get to the center i m the one who greets them and shows them around and stuff...we havent had too many yet but in the next week we ll have almost 100 volunteers at the center so i dont know how crazy that is gonna get...its hard because most of the volunteers arrive on the weekends...and thats what makes it hard to get some free time...it makes going out on weekend nights hard as well...but i think this will be a really rewarding SPIKE(which means our round of deployment) because its definitely pushing all of us...while most if not all teams are out there doing more manual labor type SPIKEs here is our team...RUNNING a volunteer center...this operation is so awesome...its probably the hardest i ve worked or at least the job where i had the most responsibility and other people relying on me and that is something i m gonna have to get used to... the 2 ladies who started it are quite amazing...if you wanna read about the operation goto www.operationtlc.org ...they can use any help they get down here...so if you have some free time/money/furniture/whatever...help out...all of us have so much...we owe it to give back...in whatever way we can...

let s see what else can i say...its pretty cool hearing the southern accent all the time...it really does feel like the "dirty" south...haha...i ve seen much of where the stereotypes come from...the main shop here in pascagoula is the super wal mart...everyone DOES drive pickups here...there ARE a lot of camoflauge shirts here...people DO have mullets...and there really IS southern hospitality...everyone is very courteous and everyone calls people "miss so and so"...like...miss elaine...miss ruth...etc...they say new orleans like "nawlins"...it is quite fascinating...amazing to think of how much culture there is within the US itself...so if you ever here someone say that they have to travel the world to get some culture...you smack them upside the head and remind them that there is culture right here in their very own country too...things that you wouldnt imagine...especially for those of use coming from big cities...

hmmm...well 2 days ago something unexpected came up and i drove 2 hrs each way to new orleans and didnt get back til 3AM in pascagoula...that something was EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY!!!!!!!!! oh my gosh...one of my absolute FAVORITE bands EVER...AJ called me on the 7th and asked me if i was going to the show...and i was like...what show...and then he proceeded to tell me that he thought explosions in the sky was playing in new orleans soon...so being that this was in the middle of the work day...i take time out to look it up and lo and behold...they WERE playing in new orleans....the NEXT day...so now i go into panic mode and try to figure out what i m gonna do...sidenote...i love this band and have never seen them play live because they dont tour that often and the one time i did purchase a ticket to see them in sf...it happened that i was gonna be in china...so yeah...i was seriously considering flying to go see them wherever they were when we had our break here but i guess they just added the new orleans show recently so i was totally totally trying to figure out a way...so i looked up rental cars and when i told my group that i was going...a lot of them wanted to jump on board...so it ended up being a really spontaneous thing where we left at 530 to go pick up people...we had so many stops along the way that i was totally stressing that we werent gonna make it in time to see them...there are so many streets that still dont have street signs...so as you can imagine that plays havoc when driving in a place you dont know at all...but after one last stop at Camp Hope to pick up Abby, we made it to the show and JUST IN TIME...they went up probably 10 minutes after we arrived and i have to say...ONE OF THE BEST SHOWS EVER...for those of you that dont know...explosions in the sky is an instrumental band most known in the mainstream for the fact that basically all the music in the movie "friday night lights" was done by them...but yes...it was such an amazing show...explosions is definitely a band that you FEEL more than you listen to...it was an experience that was just indescribable...i just wish sankyoung could have been there...they played a short set so that was the only thing i wished happened differently...but that made the show short but still...just great...definitely something i ll never forget

while i ve been here...there was actually a tornado warning...it was the same weather pattern as all those tornadoes that killed all those kids in alabama if you keep up to date with the news...we are actually right on the border of alabama...our team leader came up to us that day and said "if you here someone scream TORNADO go into this hallway" hahahha...priceless

i gotta goto waveland, mississippi right now...

pictures coming up soon...