the most amazinggg trip.
So here you go.
Saturday & Sunday:
The bus ride down, definintely was long. and yet extremely fun. On bus too (Bus too stay true!) We played hour long games of egyptian rat screw, sung, played those dumb bus games Ms Jayna made up, watched movies, and we all didn't go to bed till around 3am.. but then we all woke up at like 6am, because nobody was really that comfortable to fall asleep. The next day we stopped in Tuscaloosa, AL to get breakfast.. Ryan's is this buffet shin dig. So it was kind of nice to eat real food and not chips. cookies, or candy. Except they had the weirdest breakfast food haha. The beef patties, weren't sausage... they were truly mini hamburgers. They had full potatoes. Their eggs were watery. And they had bread pudding at 8am haha. Maybe it's just a southern thing? After that, we sat in the parking lot for a bit, while the drivers figured out the fastest way to get there. SO, we played with a bouncy ball, played frisbee, made bubbles, played in the sprinklers, you know.. the typical things haha. We also stopped that day for lunch... and you could either stop at BK or Church's Chicken. Now my first thought was "alrightttt, Church's because we don't have them in Maryland." but then I realized it's located at a truck stop for one. And two, BK looked way better haha. But regardless, I stuck at church's. and My personal chicken sandwich was fine.. but Ria got this 2 wing deal or something like that.. and we definitely saw what looked like the chicken's brain, fried. Again, Southern thing maybe? you be the judge haha.
After about 3 more hours, we drove through mississippi, and went to the coast of louisiana.
Needless to say, we were EXTREMELY happy to A, get off the bus. B, play in the sand. and C, WATERRRR. It was awesome. Except the gulf of Mexico feels like a giant kiddy pool, in the sense that it's extremely shallow and really warm.
After the Gulf of Mexico, we went to the Wall Memorial. I dont know if any of you have seen my pictures from last year, but we saw the wall last year. It's the chance for people to come by and leave their thoughts, names, etc. We didn't sign it last year though, because nobody had a sharpie.. but we did this year.
If you go there today, and look at the place it says "tinker" on the left side, you can see "C-Ville Goes Coastal" outlined with all of our names in it.
So once we got back going, it took about 15 minutes to get to Camp Coastal.
It was actually really nice. well not nice, but not bad.
We took up cabins like 3-7? There were about 13 people in each of them. Fitting our huge dufflebags and all of us in was quite the challenge to keep the place organized.. in fact, we didn't haha. It got pretty bad. One night, Matt R. soaked Dave's bed in water.. so Dave picked up the frisbee under his pillow and threw it on Matt's bed.. but what he didn't realize was that there was water in it.. so inadvertantly, he got matt back haha. It's funny if you were there anyway. Also the guys stuck dirty wet socks under Cabin 3's doorway so they'd step on them.. and they freaked out it was pretty funny haha. I was in Cabin 5. HOLLER.
Before all the fun and stuff could happen, we had to wait around to be oriented into camp. It was about as fun as it sounds right now haha. Jackie came by and told us the rules, which were pretty self explanitory, and she says "um" a lot.So for a good hour and a half, we sat on the boardwalk outside of our cabins and played Catch phrase, cards, Mad Gab, and we had a whole circle going of throwing a football, juggling a soccer ball, and throwing a pizza frisbee haha. That really didn't change at all throughout the week. The camp had an activity tent which had a TV and what not, but we all found other ways to stay occupied. We had our first Debriefing meeting, which took like 3 hours.. and all of us weren't even really thinking about that, we were thinking about FOOOD. But we all got families, mine was Peter, Colin, Max, Ms. Linda, Mr. Jim, Cassi, Emily, Courtney, Erin, Leanne, Casey, Evan, and Matt H. or as well now call ourselves "the sicknasty funkle fried-picklesteins." (that was our last name haha) Finally we ate pizza.. mm so good haha.
Monday:
First day of work. Every morning, Katie, Lisa, and I would wake up at 6 and go eat breakfast. I really hate eating breakfast, but I figured I had to. Everyday we'd run into Ms Peggy on the walk up to the dining tent too.. I miss that. We met at the fire pit in the morning to get our work groups and what not.
Some groups did Framing, Painting, Flooring, etc. But mine, we did Siding. (Side or Die brah.) In our crew, we had Matt R, Dave, Jeff Woods, Teresa, Risa, Leanne, Ms Marty, Ms Rebecca, Amanda, Erin, and myself. On the way to our site, we had to pass by this church..
Now you're probably thinking, okay so yeah it obviously looks bad.. but what's so wrong with it. Well it went like this. The foundation was on the left side of the road.. and the church was in a ditch on the right side of the road. The water was so strong it swept the church to the other side of the road. The minute we got to our worksite, we were greeted by this cute black lab, Buddy. We then split up around different parts of the house and learned how to side from Ms Marty.. then began to work. What we failed to realize was that the group prior to us, fuckkkked up big time. The whole back they had done, was unlevel to the left and ride side of the house. So basically, we had to take down all the work they had done, before we could start. It took about 4 hours to take it all down. We met Mr Sherman (home owner) and he said, "God bless all the volunteers for coming, but they're screwing my house up more than they're fixing it." That told us he had no faith in us, and was somewhat discouraging. But we dealt with it.So we got back to camp, and all of us were trying to get a shower.. and thank god they had office showers, or some of us wouldn't have showered that week. They only had 2 other showers, but that helped. I think the longest shower I took was like 4 minutes long haha.
Tuesday:
We pretty much had the same day we did Monday. Wake up at 6, run into Ms Peggy, eat breakfast, went to work, and that summed it up basically. Oh and I should mention, BUDDY THREW UP. It was disgustinggggg. It smelled like a dead animal. That pretty much made the whole front of the house smell. We all were a little turned off by buddy after that haha. So after we washed off the porch, we continued to work. I guess the only true different thing was that we went out for dinner.
I'm convinced that it is the best cajun food place ever. Oh! and did I mention...
Yup, alligator. Not only that, but fried Pickles, fried mushrooms, fried crawfish and other fried seafood too.. they had a lot of fried seafood. You know, I don't think I've ever eaten more fried food before. I had a fried shimp Po-Boy.. oh man so good. You have to have one before you die, it's delicious. That night we also had amazingggg Gumbo, and really good Zesty Mozerella sticks.. mmm. haha. The people there loved us, we had so much fun.
Outside, they gave us beads.. Also we taught them some of our songs haha. Like the great big moose song and the gator story. It was always a party with us.
Wednesday:
Wednesday was a pretty basic day.. the whole morning routine and work. I guess the most exciting thing that happened was that Matt R, and myself finished siding the whole right side of the back of the house.. alone, it was just us two. I mean, how cool is that!? That night we had sloppy Joes from Camp coastal.. they weren't that great haha. We also met a bunch of people from a big group that was from all over the place. There were a couple of girls from DC that were cool and the other 2 were from New York and Cali. Later that night, Cassi and I went to eat our Famous Amos cookies with Milk. We got into this whole developed conversation about what a "cracker" and what a "cookie" is.. and we talked about animal crackers for a while. Then we talked about shows like warped tour and virgin fest. We ran into these two guys in the tent.. I think their names are Craig and Justin? something like that. Anywho, they're from Michigan and were eating Mac'n'Beef from the Dollar General. All four of us got into huge conversation about mac 'n' beef. It was quite entertaining haha. Cassi and I decided we'd then refer to them as Mac and Beef for the rest of the time we were at Camp coastal. They seemed to think we were really weird haha.
Thursday:
Thursday we did the morning routine, but earlier. We were only working a half day that day (in order to go to new orleans). So we ended up getting up at 5:45 and everybody else had to be up by 6. We left camp for work at like 7am. We left our work site at like 1130. We drove to new orleans and went through the lower ninth ward. We all were trying not to be disrespectful, but 80% of us were Exhausted and had a hard time staying awake. It's hard to realize that it's been two years, and there's still all this demolition that needs to be done, and that there's all these ruins left.
They're also filiming a movie.. Ms Linda said they called it "Black Water Transit" or something like that.We saw the set of the movie, and she asked. Keep a look out for it I guess. SO we finally went into the city..
See that stripper? yeah she was dirrrrty haha. She took a picture with Gino which we all still laugh about. It was great.
You know, the pictures really speak for themselves haha. It was a greatttt time. That night, we at dinner at Michauls. Oh man, It was the best time. Delicious food, music, it was greattt. Whatever exhaustion we felt prior to it, it didn't matter. After we ate, we danced all night. It was like a school dance, but better haha.
We took the camp coastal staff. They had never had so much fun, and I'm pretty sure neither had we. Especially when they played Sweet home alabama. Jeff also did his rendition of "Hot cross Buns" which went a little something like this, "Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns, Hot cross buns buns buns buns." It was hilarious haha. We had the greatest time. And Tyler met us! Tyler is a 17 year old from Michigan, who woke up one day and decided he wanted to come down and help, so he got in his car and drove down alone.. and has been in Mississippi since the beginning of the summer. He's the cutest person ever.. just his personality man. He's so funny haha. He had fun too.
Friday:
Friday.. was good and bad all at the same time. We (our group) finished the sides of the house we had been working on all week.. the front, and the back. We also swept out all the wire, wood, trash, dirt, etc that was on the inside of Mr Sherman's house so he could move back in and sleep there. The trailor messes with his head and he NEEDED to get out of it. We had about $4000 left at the end of our trip.. And so we got to buy our home owners gifts. Mr Sherman had mentioned that he wanted to put a porch swing up, so we bought him one.. Also Ms Marilyn, his wife, bought us watermelon.. she was sucha sweetheart. And we bought Buddy gifts too. All week he had been running around with this dirty, gross, deflated ball. So we bought him a new ball and 2 new bones. The cutest thing was when he ran around with both the ball and the bone in his mouth at the same time. We also washed him haha. We got them a welcome mat too for their home. Before we could reveal the home to them, Jeff broke the swing haha.
We were all dying of laughter after that haha. It made our day. So after we put up the swing again, we showed them the house.. and Ms Marilyn cried. That basically made us all cry. They were so happy, even Sherman was happy. It was probably the greatest feeling in the world to know that they could move back in and that they were so happy. We finished working and left and went off back to camp. We also went to the beach for debriefing and to swim. We spent most of the night there.. and it was gorgeous!
And there were so many hermit crabs it was crazy haha. That was a good night. We then went back to camp and played music till 3am because nobody works on saturday. We easily had the most musically talented group of the 250 volunteer there that week. We also probably had the most fun haha. All week we had church groups telling us they would pray for us because they felt we were not doing this for god and were unchurch like. To be honest, we probably got more work done than them, and had more fun. We also put Camp coastal on the map in Mississippi. We were on the news in Mississippi and that was awesome. It was nice to see the difference we were making.
Saturday:
okay so by Saturday, we couldn't believe the week was over. We can't believe we were leaving. That morning we got probably the worse news we couldve. Risa's dad died.. and that hit us all pretty hard. Most of us spent the morning crying and upset about it. So finally we realized we had to clean up and we had to finish up.
It sucked to leave. None of us wanted to, we all were willing to stay for the rest of the summer if we could. So even though we weren't staying, we left our sign.
You know, to go up on the sign post at the front of camp coastal. That way, as cheesy as this sounds, a bit of us would always be there.
Sunday:
We could have not asked for a better homecoming. The parents bought us breakfast, made us a banner, and the WJZ news crew was there to interview us and how we spent our week. If you go to their website and look for catonsville goes coastal, you'll see it. Even though everybody was really happy to be home, we already had a family. CatonsvilleGoesCoastal2007<3