(no subject)
Okay, finally the update I promised a couple weeks ago. I still don't really have words, but the gist of it is that I went to New Orleans to build houses with Habitat for Humanity over spring break, and it's still a big mess down there, and we were only there for three days, and it was a lot of emotional highs and lows, and at the end none of us felt like we'd accomplished all that much. I'd rather fix up the existing houses that can still be salvaged rather than build new ones in the middle of the wreckage. And almost all of the wrecked houses that were searched still have paint on them saying who they were searched by and how many animals and people were found dead inside, and they're all dated from the first couple of weeks of September in 2005. People are living again in some of these houses and they haven't painted over or washed off the paint. That was very hard to see. It was like looking at a car wreck - every time we passed a house I was looking for the paint and hoping to see a "0" in the place of people found dead. Luckily, most of them were zeroes, but we did see a few houses with ones or twos, and most of those had messages on them from friends and family, like "RIP [name of person]" and negative words for FEMA and the government. And speaking of FEMA, many many people are still living in FEMA cans either in trailers or in their front yards. Just the breadth of the destruction and the sight of the few people who still live there was so unsettling. There's talk of going back, this time for a full week, at the end of the semester before summer classes start. I haven't decided whether or not I want to go again, but part of me feels bad for maybe not wanting to go. While I was there I was a little angry at the people who used to live there who weren't coming back to help, because I know if there were more people down there, things would get cleaned up and put back together much faster, but there's hardly anyone down there helping out, and many people who stayed can't afford to fix their own houses, let alone the houses of neighbors who don't live there anymore. But at the same time, I feel like the work I did down there was pretty much useless to people there. Like I said, I would really much rather fix up the existing houses first, rather than build pretty new shoeboxes in the middle of trash. Habitat may be a fantastic organization, but I didn't care to work with it. However, the diverse group of people I went with was amazing, and we all got along really well, and the chance to be with all of them again is kind of tempting. We became closer than siblings on the trip. In fact, there was one African-American lady a bit older than my mom who went on the trip, and she and I hung out quite a bit together checking out the food and the shops in the French Quarter, and when we got back she hugged me and thanked me for being her "adopted daughter" for the trip. It was so touching. Unfortunately, she won't be able to go on the second trip because she's going to be studying abroad this summer in China, but that should be an amazing experience for her, as well.
In the rest of my life since then, I've gone back to work (I had a month off for fundraising and going on the New Orleans trip) and I've had two weeks of school. The first week, Troy and Jennifer were both home on spring break, and I got to hang out with each of them, and on Wednesday of that week Troy and I drove to Detroit to the science museum to see the exhibit Our Bodies: The Universe Within. It was really good, and I think it's definitely a must-see for anyone going into health care. Basically it's a whole exhibit of full cadavers and body parts, all preserved through plastination, and each specimen has a card or a sign describing it and naming different muscles and bones and nerves and vessels and such. I think it's interesting even for non-med and non-science majors, too - Troy thought it was all pretty cool. But I definitely took an academic interest in it, and although I'd worked with cadavers in my anatomy class last spring, and will be again in my physiology class in the fall as far as I know, it was really good review, and there were a lot of things that were really interesting to see. Then this week has pretty much been going back to work and trying to establish better study habits for the rest of the semester. I rocked the house Sunday through Tuesday, but haven't done much since. Ah well. I have tomorrow.
And on the topic of school, I got invited to an honors convocation in Ann Arbor for getting a good GPA last semester, but it's tomorrow and I got scheduled to work during the time period of the ceremony and all. I would call my boss and see if she couldn't trade me shifts with somebody, but I begged off of last Sunday after being scheduled to work, and I'd feel bad doing that two weeks in a row. Plus I really need the hours since I didn't work all last month, and five and a half hours is a big chunk to lose. The only way to make it up would be to take a second shift on Friday, but my ASB group is getting together on Friday afternoon to talk about the trip, and I'm already going to be quite a bit late since I don't get off of work until half-an-hour into the meeting, and then it's like 20 minutes to get to school...I don't know, I probably wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting anyway, so I guess I could take the second shift, but it's really not a big deal to miss the convocation since it's not the first time and probably won't be the last that I'll have been invited to something honoring my academic performance. I am a little bummed out, but I just don't really feel like fighting with it all. I just think of graduating from the honors program at CMU, and that's really the biggest accomplishment I want to be honored for. Everything else is just a golf clap compared to graduation.
Joe and his girlfriend made dinner tonight, and it looks like we're all getting ready to sit down, so I'ma go. Lata.
In the rest of my life since then, I've gone back to work (I had a month off for fundraising and going on the New Orleans trip) and I've had two weeks of school. The first week, Troy and Jennifer were both home on spring break, and I got to hang out with each of them, and on Wednesday of that week Troy and I drove to Detroit to the science museum to see the exhibit Our Bodies: The Universe Within. It was really good, and I think it's definitely a must-see for anyone going into health care. Basically it's a whole exhibit of full cadavers and body parts, all preserved through plastination, and each specimen has a card or a sign describing it and naming different muscles and bones and nerves and vessels and such. I think it's interesting even for non-med and non-science majors, too - Troy thought it was all pretty cool. But I definitely took an academic interest in it, and although I'd worked with cadavers in my anatomy class last spring, and will be again in my physiology class in the fall as far as I know, it was really good review, and there were a lot of things that were really interesting to see. Then this week has pretty much been going back to work and trying to establish better study habits for the rest of the semester. I rocked the house Sunday through Tuesday, but haven't done much since. Ah well. I have tomorrow.
And on the topic of school, I got invited to an honors convocation in Ann Arbor for getting a good GPA last semester, but it's tomorrow and I got scheduled to work during the time period of the ceremony and all. I would call my boss and see if she couldn't trade me shifts with somebody, but I begged off of last Sunday after being scheduled to work, and I'd feel bad doing that two weeks in a row. Plus I really need the hours since I didn't work all last month, and five and a half hours is a big chunk to lose. The only way to make it up would be to take a second shift on Friday, but my ASB group is getting together on Friday afternoon to talk about the trip, and I'm already going to be quite a bit late since I don't get off of work until half-an-hour into the meeting, and then it's like 20 minutes to get to school...I don't know, I probably wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting anyway, so I guess I could take the second shift, but it's really not a big deal to miss the convocation since it's not the first time and probably won't be the last that I'll have been invited to something honoring my academic performance. I am a little bummed out, but I just don't really feel like fighting with it all. I just think of graduating from the honors program at CMU, and that's really the biggest accomplishment I want to be honored for. Everything else is just a golf clap compared to graduation.
Joe and his girlfriend made dinner tonight, and it looks like we're all getting ready to sit down, so I'ma go. Lata.