Week 21

My big sisters and I.

Back in Mississippi, the home I missed over the holiday. Christmas was very nice and relaxing with the fam, but now I’m refreshed and ready for work and routine once again. In the past whenever I’ve had a few weeks off of school for Christmas break, I still have to work a job or two for all but a couple of days. This was the first year since I started work at the age of 15 that I spent 2 weeks with nothing I had to do, and nowhere I had to be. It was cool, but a little more boring than I expected.

I rode the bus back to Vicksburg at the end of my KY vacation, which took about 16 hours. It was slightly stressful, sort of smelly, and more than a little strange, but all-in-all, uneventful, which is what I was hoping for. I’ve been back a week now, and nothing too exciting to report. Trainings and lectures on what sorts of things to do after this program, and how to go about doing them. Lots of focus on MLK Jr., and even a cool ceremony on Friday, which included speakers who were involved in the civil rights movement and some who knew Dr. King personally.

On Monday, everyone from our campus will be working on various community service projects around Vicksburg in honor of MLK day, so I’m looking forward to that. My group will be working with a community service center whose focus is on child care. We’ll be painting and doing various beautification tasks at the center, and I’ve been told it’s a possibility that us trained sawyers may get to put our chainsaw skills to the test. Good thing we had a refresher course this week.

There was a talent show last night on campus that I participated in. It went really well, and the show was really fun. We have a lot of very talented and creative people here, so it’s fun to get together and entertain one another. The night before last we had a Pajammin session for a few hours, which translates into having a bunch of people who play musical instruments at varying skill levels get together and jam in our pajamas. It’s awesome to be around so many interesting people who like to do more than just watch TV.

My team will be leaving for our project in Virginia next Wednesday. I recently found out that our housing is in so remote a location for the 5 weeks we’re there that we probably won’t be able to get cell phone reception, let alone internet. There are of course cafes and things with internet, but we’ll have to cross an expensive toll bridge to get there, so I’m not sure we’ll be doing that every week. All this to say that I’ll write updates as often as I can, but it may not be every week.

To you Hotwork people, I just want to say that I’m sorry I didn’t come by while in KY over Christmas, but look for me in June J

Take care,

  k

Me & Ellie