Week 12 (October 19 - October 25)

Monday morning a group of us traveled to a senior citizen apartment complex and worked with a local food bank to distribute non perishable food items to the residents. It was nice to have a change in schedule and assist the community of Louisville in a different way. After lunch, I spent the remainder of the day making phone calls at United Way fro the long term recovery program.
Tuesday was another day full of phone calls! My goodness my phone skills are close to perfection by now! After work, my team and I went out to dinner for my teammate Tarah’s 21 birthday. Tarah really likes pasta so we took her to the Old Spaghetti Factory. The factory has a trolley car right in the middle of it where you can actually have your dinner! Seeing the trolley car made me miss the trolleys at home!!

Wednesday I stayed home from work. Over the past few days I had developed a really bad cough. I think the cough started after working Saturday at the home that was hit really hard during the storm. While working, my respirator didn’t feel like it was tight and I kept coughing. In addition to that home, the next day of work I spent crouched over in front of a crawlspace where my teammates passed me bags full of moldy insulation. The two days combined definitely made for a good reason for a cough and congested sinuses!! For dinner my team and I went out to dinner with a few of the MUW volunteers to Spinelli’s. Goodness I’m going to miss that restaurant!! At the end of the meal our site supervisor surprised us with fried Oreos for dessert. Fried Oreos are a wonderful creation let me tell you! Pizza, diet coke, and fried Oreos! Talk about a meal fit for a heart attack!

Thursday was our last day working in Louisville, Kentucky with Metro United Way. We spent half of the day cleaning up one last home before we spent the remainder of the day cleaning up our housing facility and packing our lovely red bags! For dinner, our site supervisors Kelly and Mary took us to a BBQ restaurant in Highlands where they wined and dined us and surprised us with MUW goody bags! Each one of us got a “Live United” white t-shirt, and a bag full of random “survival kit” necessities. Last day!! Mary and Kelly were wonderful site supervisors. They genuinely cared about our safety and well being while we volunteered in Kentucky. They worked hard to make our Kentucky experience enjoyable and memorable. Little do they know that Louisville is by far my favorite place so far!

Early Friday morning we stuffed our red bags in the van, and piled in to begin the journey back to Vicksburg. Each one of us was anxious for our own reasons to return to Vicksburg. Many of us couldn’t wait to take hot showers and sleep in actual beds, while some us were looking forward to seeing significant others and rekindle friendships that we had made prior to going on disaster. The 12 hour drive seemed to take forever! By the time we turned onto Confederate Avenue the majority of the team was on the edge of their seats squealing and cheering with excitement to be back in Vicksburg. It was beyond nice to see everyone back on campus! I hadn’t seen most of them for 8 weeks! In a way it felt like the first round flew by but in another way it really did feel like it had been a long time since I had seen everyone. Once the whole corps arrived on campus, the River unit had to move out of their old rooms and into their new rooms. Talk about a long day! Going from a few hours of sleep, to a 12 hour car ride, and then spending the rest of the day moving makes for one very long day!! Thankfully I got lucky and only had to move over one building and I managed to still live with my initial roommate Stacey from Michigan!

Saturday was a national service day called Make a Difference Day. The whole corps traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to partake in the day of service. My team was going to prepare the lunch for the whole corps until we were transferred to a different project. The team and I ended up traveling to a part of the community where a Christian group provides a weekly tutoring program for the local children. They want to expand the program and add an outdoor playground along with additional building but the land is not suitable for building on at the current time. In order to assist them with their goal, my team and I spent the morning clearing the vacant lot of trees, debris, and plenty of old beer bottles. While cleaning I found an assortment of colorful geckos and a handful of small snakes! I literally felt like I was a little girl playing around in the mud! Later on after dinner, the majority of the corps who were of age decided to go out to the local bar to celebrate being back in Vicksburg. It was neat seeing everyone together and having fun!

Sunday I spent most of the day catching up on sleep, catching up with friends and relaxing. It was nice to have a hot shower and sleep in a comfy bed!! I didn’t realize just how much I could miss both of those things in just a three week span of time.