Yay, dads.

This doesn't need to be a long post; you all know that dads are great. In my experiences working with kiddos it has become more and more clear what the product of an unstable home life can be. I don't need to remind you that if you have a solid male figure in you're life, you are lucky. I always gravitate to describing my upbringing as pretty normal, both parents still married and stable and whatnot, but we all know that that scenario is not the norm. So if you have a papa that you're proud of, that you look up to, I have two pieces of homework for you: 1. Do like I do and appreciate the rarity of your situation. 2. Call him right now!! :)

Love ya daddy dear!
kt

Ten days already?

I honestly can't say I have a lot to report on this guy. Oink oink weekend feels like it was FOREVER ago...these days are such a blur. I will have to admit, this week has been the first in a long time that I haven't been curious about the internet world every single day. To what can I attribute this lack of interest? Why, friendship bracelet making of course!!! Seriously I have created a monster virus that is sweeping the Boys and Girls Club. I can't stop making bracelets/necklaces/rings/bookmarks (yes bookmarks). It's to a point now where I'll be working in the art room and actually trying to convince the kiddles that yes of COURSE their dad would appreciate a bracelet for father's day! I should probably teach them so we can sit for the entire hour making bracelets, right? I have a problem; I accept this. But I have no interest in overcoming it anytime soon. So I guess this means if you have a hankerin for some jewelry made with love, holler at me.

Holler at me. Yes I said it. And I'm allowed to, wanna know why? Because I feel, in a most peculiar way, like I have been personally invited into the wild world of hood slang by the older group of kids I'm working with separate from the Boys and Girls Club. So there. This hardworking, honest, genuine group of seven 14 and 15 year olds collectively manages to teach me a new slang phrase every time I go out on a project with them. It's funny because I'm not that old, but seriously I can't understand half of what comes out of their mouths the first time. And they're always calling me, "Miss," regardless of what they're saying. "Yeah sure Miss, let's head to Buc-ees for lunch," "Naw Miss I can't say I agree with that," or my favorite from today, "Honestly Miss, I don't care one bit." I'm reallllly trying to push the simple "Katie" on them, but a decade and a half of training is making this request one that's nearly impossible for them to meet. So I've settled for Miss Katie. Fifteen year old kids are calling me Miss Katie. Bagh the south is hilarious. Anywho this group has been wonderful to work with and also, as previously mentioned, provides that out I need from Da Club every once in a while. So it's a positive situation across the board.

Another positive concept: Tomorrow is FRIDAY!!!! We have no real plans this weekend but the beach will most definitely be involved. Okay more later.

kt

SIT DOWN AND COLOR A PICTURE!!!!!!!

Well lookie here it hasn't even been a week since my last post! You're welcome.

Oink oink weekend was exactly how I had imagined it: taking an entire two days to get to and from a town four hours away and making hi-larious and de-licious (and sometimes both!) stops along the way. I saw the world's third largest fire hydrant, naively spent $12 on a baked potato (it would've been worth $10 though), played on a castle park to preemptively burn calories, saw (and considered purchasing) the world's largest gummi bear (but went with a 1/2 pound of lethally mouthwatering fudge instead...), consumed FROG LEGS AND ALLIGATOR!!!!, had iced coffee and "Hummingbird Cake" while enjoying local art at the darlingest coffee shop in eastern Louisiana, ate an original beignet at another adorable Louisiana cafe (to which we were welcomed by the local attention-loving mutt), and, of course, sampled yet another town's version of seafood gumbo. Woofta. I may or may not have kicked my own butt in the gym today as retribution for my decisions over the previous 48 hours, but let me tell they were so very worth it. I must say I do love road tripping. And themed road trips? Go, to, bed! So much fun. Expect pictures (aka evidence) of all of our adventures soon.

Don't let this mislead you in any way, but even if this weekend hadn't been so blastastic I would have still loved the opportunity to get away from this stupid building for two days. So no, nothing's changed. I'm still miserable here. But here's something cool! I am assigned to take the 14 and 15-year-old Summer of Service group on Mondays, so today was my opportunity to get away from the Club and all that it implies (little kids, to name one), and work on a service project with these older-yet-still-young bucks. We went to a nearby bird observatory and build a boardwalk to prevent birders from sinking into the mucky mud after rain storms. Despite the horrific volume of mosquitoes and intense humidity, it was awesome! My group is really a fun bunch. I just remember hating those awkward years of my life so much that it's pleasantly surprising to work with such self-aware and mature little people at that age. And they're FUNNY. Seriously they are already comfortable enough with us to poke fun and even tease a little after only four days. It's cool to see; I'm looking forward to Mondays every week now. (And bonus: Yet another excuse to get away from this building! Woohoo.)

So....yeah I'll leave it at that for now. Maybe the regularity that is soon to befall Sun Three in the upcoming weeks will improve my currently dreary 'tude. Hang in there with me!

Miss ya!
kt

Solid source of dairy?

I have decided that goat cheese should be incorporated into my everyday life. Ignore the fact that a tub of goat cheese costs about what I make in one day on my paycheck; I will make this happen. As should you.

Okay love you!
kt

Another update from Texas!

Well hello again! As I type this I'm wearing my Justin Morneau Twins jersey in hopes that through osmosis it will help them beat Seattle. I have yet to watch a single inning of a game this season (cable? Pshhhh yeah right), but I've been finding myself putting on this jersey more and more these days...I think I have an itch.

Anywho it's been an interesting two weeks. Let me start with what I absolutely loved about the time since my last post: MY SISTER CAME TO VISIT ME!!!!! Yes that's right, this is the longest I've ever gone without seeing a fellow Mraz, and so a reunion, no matter the size, was overdue. We had such a blast. I must admit that I was already supercharged when I picked her up in Houston because it was the first time in almost six months that I got to drive alone in a car! And drive over 65mph? And back up without a ground guide? AND GET COFFEE AT THE PICK UP WINDOW?! It's amazing what becomes "the little things" over time. So just that span of four hours where I could go wherever my heart desired was extremely therapeutic for me. But the fun hadn't even started!

The first night Bets was here we came back to Freeport and she got to meet most of my teammates and Laurie, one of my sponsors from the Boys and Girls Club. Laurie had us all over for a Memorial Day Weekend barbeque so we got to meet her family and some of her in-laws. This lady is a hoot--I really look up to her. She reminds me in some ways of a certain mother of two blonde-haired kids I know.... So we got to enjoy a dock, some burgers, good conversation, CRABBING, some lawn games, etc. etc. etc...all the stuff that goes along with a bbq. Then we were off the the hotel where...drumroll please...A QUEEN-SIZED BED ALL TO MYSELF WAS WAITING FOR ME!!! Agh again it's the little things. But I couldn't spread out wide enough. This was a fair call from the cot I've been resting my head on at night these last few weeks.

The next day we set off for Galveston, TX. It's known to be far more beach-y (aka tourist-y) than Freeport and it was only and hour or so away, so it worked out nicely. So we bummed around all day at the beach, napped, ate a delicious yet extremely bizarre dinner that involved multiple strangers engaging us in awkward conversations, and then bar hopped around Seawall Blvd that overlooks the gulf. I can't get over how great it was to just go out on TWO peoples' agendas in a CAR and not have to worry about van curfews and all the other mumbo jumbo that goes along with this program. (Can you tell what the rest of my last two weeks has been like? Lol) So we had a blast, as we always do.

What day are we to now? Monday? Oh, the day we learned how to SURF?! Haha oh yeah now I remember. We spent two hours on Monday morning being taught how to surf by a charismatic sage by the name of Brian, and let me tell you we don't really suck! We actually picked up on it really quick. I'm confident that the next time I'm at the ocean I'll be able to rent a board and give it another go...I'll be riding tubes in no time. Following the lesson (which, may I add, went longer than we paid for because we were so much fun) we grabbed some grub then morphed back into beach bums. A shower, followed by the purchase of oversized hats, followed by a daiquiri, followed by a delicious dinner ending in a gorgeous sunset, and then a stop at our new favorite Galveston coffeeshop, Mod, later, we were pooped. We had a good night's rest and then set off for Houston the next morning. Betsy got to see where her clinical will be starting in August (a REALLY pretty area!) and we scoped out the area for what she can have for entertainment while she's there. Then it was time to say goodbye. It stank but it always does. Really if I had spent that weekend with any of my friends it would have been spectacular...just getting away from NCCC for a few days was unbelievable. But having my sees be the one to entertain me brought it to an entirely new level...I'm extremely lucky to have such a remarkable friend for a sister. :)

But despite the Powers of Betsy, my living situation right now is still pret-ty rough. Living here at the club is not the party I tried to fool myself (and all of you, ha ha!) into thinking it would be. Let's be realistic with ourselves. Having to pack up every morning and pretend that you don't, in fact, live in the exact building where kindergarteners chronically pee on the walls during the day is crappy. Waking up to sixteen mosquitoes going gang-style True Blood on me is frustrating. Being the first to the bathroom in the morning and flipping on the light only to be met with a group of oddly familial cockroaches is ridiculous (were they just conversing?).

But the deeper issue in all of this is my lack of control of the situation. In joining AmeriCorps it was understood that I had to relinquish most of the control I had over my circumstances. And so sleeping on an air mattress in a random church for a month was nothin. Having to allot at least 90 minutes round trip for YMCA visits, alright. What's that? I didn't get any of the spinach AGAIN? AND WE'RE DOING TAXES FOR TWO MONTHS?!??! AGH! But it's been fine. It has all been reasonable and fine and most of all...EXPECTED. But this living situation feels like a new low for AmeriCorps and it's really stressing me out. And you all know that I'm not a wimp. So this is the real deal. My team is resilient, but we all feel the same way. Now there's a sliver of hope that we get to move to another Boys and Girls Club building, so I'm really trying to rack up good karma the next couple of days to help that tip in my favor. Let me know if you need any good deeds committed anytime soon.

And despite our living situation I will say that the Boys and Girls Club as a project itself is...okay-to-legitimate. (Haha sorry I'm such a downer!) It'll definitely pick up once summer officially starts, because not only with the club be on a more consistent routine, but our other project will begin as well. Along with working at the club we're also going to be Team Leaders for the next five weeks, working with 14-17 year olds on two service projects a week. They'll be like a mini-AmeriCorps NCCC. So while the projects feels pretty unstructured and confusing right now, I'm feeling positively about things picking up next week.

Well okay, more updates later. To come: Maire, Cody, and Katie's OINK OINK WEEKEND through the bayou!

Miss you all, love you
Katie

I saw a washed-up shark AND jellyfish today!

Alright I promised. Hello there again! Sorry it’s been so long. I feel generally caught up with most of you to a point where I want to be, so good job staying in touch.

So. I find myself in the unfortunate-looking beach town of Freeport, Texas, where I will be residing for the next nine weeks. My home is now an entire Boys and Girls Club building, where from the hours of 7:30am to 6pm I have to make believe I did not, in fact, sleep next to that floor-to-ceiling shelf of Legos in the corner of the little people playroom. My bedroom is wherever I decide to set up my cot for the night, and is also the gymnasium. If I want. I can actually sleep wherever the heck I want in the building because guess what, I literally live at work. I’ll keep you posted about how things are going on the job, but let me tell you I’m pretty sure I’ll be more stoked to talk about the BEACH that’s a FIVE MINUTE DRIVE FROM HERE! Maybe it’s the summer daze laze, maybe it’s the fourth round (aka fourth quarter, fourth year, etc) instinct in knowing that I’ve finished all my extra AmeriCorps stuff, maybe it’s the FRICKEN BEACH ITSELF, but I’m really feeling the pull of relaxation this round. So...get excited.

Want to know how I got from filing taxes in north Texas to here? What the heck I’ve been up to the last two months? Well sure I’d love to inform you! In the last few weeks of Round Two in Texas, our team was given a list of projects that were coming up for Round Three. Unlike the other three rounds, third round on the Denver campus is a shuffle round, so we individual Corps Members get to choose which project we specifically want and then get put on a team of new Corps Members from our unit who wanted the project too. It’s about the most insightful concept I’ve seen AmeriCorps NCCC throw at me yet. Regardless of your personal opinions of the people you get put on a team with, you’re at least guaranteed a group of twelve people who actually WANT to be where you are, a notion that I’ve come to appreciate the implications of more and more when it comes to group dynamics. Anyway, two of the five projects offered for Round Three were in New Orleans, and I knew with absolute certainty that I wanted one of those. My gravitation toward Nola had continued to grow throughout Round Two and I hoped that getting back to that tragic old gal of a city for Round Three would head me in the right direction for getting a job there when this is over. (Spoiler alert: I was right.)

So I left Burkburnett, Texas knowing that, 1: Next round I’d be off to New Orleans again to work for the New Orleans Are Habitat for Humanity...again, and 2: I would greatly appreciate it if I never had to live in north Texas again.

Transition week happened, that highly-intense, overly dramatic stretch of days where you suddenly find yourself passive-aggressively arguing with friends from other teams that your team is the best, or if not the best then at least better than theirs; where you sit through agonizingly long meetings that only with a good book of Sudokus in your hand can you see to the end; where you probably drink a lit-tle more than usual but who cares, you’re rekindling with friends from other teams; etc., etc., etc. So that standard rite of passage happened. Then it was back to beautiful Nawlins with my fresh new team and fresh new team leader, Sarah!

For your sake I’ll just give an overview of the eight-week spike back in New Orleans, even though the entire experience deserves its own blog:

1. As opposed to Round One, where all 12 of us stayed together on one work site the entire time, this round we split up every week to a different work site almost each time.

2. Also as opposed to Round One, we lived in an actual Habitat for Humanity house. (Woohoo!) Yes, twelve people, one bathroom. But whatever we liked it.

3. Our house was wayyyyyyyyyyy...out in St. Bernard Parish, which led to a ridiculous commute but inevitably a new perspective to New Orleans, since the community we lived in was not the community we were speciifically serving.

4. After four weeks of work, violence hit an all-time high in New Orleans and AmeriCorps NCCC headquarters shut down our projects for a week, deeming our work sites too unsafe to work at. An entire week. With far less than a day’s notice we had to pack up our belongings and move out of the Habitat house (because guess what, there would no longer be a Habitat project if “they don’t shape up” and move around our work sites to safer locations) to a communal camp with all the other NCCC teams down there at the time. The move equated to ten minutes away from our original house. Ten minutes. Seriously, politics. Anyway it was sort of fun because not only were we reunited with some other Denver teams, we also got to make friends with Corps Members from other campuses in Maryland and Mississippi. So despite the frustration of feeling as though we were letting down our sponsor, it ended up being an okay deal. When it came time for a team vote on whether or not we should move back to the house, the proximity to downtown swayed our votes to actually stay put right there at good ol’ Camp Hope. (RIP...we just heard it shut down last week.)

5. BUT no less than a day after we returned to work with Habitat (where nothing had actually changed at all...surprising...), my purse got stolen off a work site. I wrote an email to a friend about it last week, and I know this seems lazy but it was the first time I actually put it into typed words and I’m just going to paste the email here. It explains my attitude the best:

A huge first happened to me a month ago...my purse got stolen. Right off my worksite. The very same kids whose neighborhood I'm trying to improve were bored and decided to make their day more interesting by seeing if they could sneak under a house that had...no exaggeration...40 volunteers busily going about their business. It was nuts! The biggest blow was my first child, that big black camera that I LOVE and bring everywhere to document what my life in AmeriCorps is like. I was so worked up about losing that that it didn't occur to me till 30 minutes later that my iPod touch was in there too. Ugh. Ironic that literally the two nicest things I own are the things I use most frequently and thus keep in my purse. Damn. I also had my cashless wallet in there so not only did the kids wind up empty-handed in that department, but they opened up a massive process of replacing my stolen cards and IDs. It's the weirdest feeling to walk around with nothing proving that you are who you say you are. And they didn't care that I still kept my first bus pass from Sweden in there. Or my Coe ID. Or memorabilia from other places I've been. Ugh it was just shitty. It definitely challenged my worldview, but I was pleased when I discovered that even in such a vulnerable position my heart still went out to those kids. They couldn't have been any older than 12...not young enough to be excused for their actions but not old enough to be labeled as bad apples. They're just kids. They're bored. And their community has taught them that regardless of what they WANT to do with their lives, they're just going to end up like the other Ninth Warders and never leave and eventually make a living in the streets just like all the other generations before them. So why not get some practice with breaking the rules? They have nothing better to do anyway. After school programs are laughably nonexistent in New Orleans, their probably single parent (most likely mother) has to work her ass off just to make ends meet, and the older boys who inevitably become their idols are doing far worse than purse stealing. So even though I'm obviously upset to some extent at these three boys, I'm more passionately emotional about how failed they've been by their community.

6. Coincidently, this experience also helped solidify my need to spend another year in New Orleans. (For revenge, ha ha!...just kidding) It’s such a tragic city, and I absolutely love it for that exact reason. I began the interview process to work with a different AmeriCorps branch called State and National while I was down there...one position I have in mind is with the same Habitat affiliate I’ve been working with throughout AmeriCorps. It’s nice that they already know me and are familiar with my capabilities, ya dee ya dee yada. There are other opportunities for State and National in New Orleans that I’m looking into also. But consider this my public service announcement that I’m moving to New Orleans for a year, woohoo!

7. I went to Jazzfest while I was there, which is arguably the second biggest event the city puts on after Mardi Gras, and saw Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, and a bunch of local New Orleans bands for an entire day! With Jayson Schmelzer as a special guest! What a blast!

8. And finally I really really disgustingly fell in love with my shuffle team. They gave me a lot to live up to for this fourth and final round with the original Sun Three.

And...now I’m here. In the Gulf of Mexico. I’m already sunburned from laying out on the beach for too long today. It’s going to be a great round.

More later!
kt

SLACKER

Okay. So...I realize I have A LOT to catch readers up on. Sorry. I'm not going to post quite yet, but this is a disclaimer that there WILL BE POSTS TO COME SHORTLY!!!! Okay talk to you soon :)