life and New Orleans

Life;

The word is redefined everyday, and today may just be the day that I have a chance to spell it out.

I’ve been a bit too tied up with calc 2 nightmares to write anything recently. To start off, I got back from spring break a few weeks ago. By far this was my best spring break to date. In case the memo didn’t get delivered, I went with alternative breaks working with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuilt this devestated area. I kind of signed up for this on a whim taking into consideration:

A) I didn’t want to run off to some obscure place just to drink and make money disappear
B) Going back to Gaylord for Winter Break classes would lead to snowboarding and probably another 4-5 months of limited mobility after messing up my bad knee.

That said it was a bit of a stretch, but it ended up being a good decision. For the sake of time savings I’ll have you imagine your spring break consisting of:

A) signing a contract saying you won’t drink all week
B) drive 1100 miles each way in a van
C) live in makeshift/temporary housing
D) Get up for work well before 8am each day.

A far cry from the american ideal of spring break extravegance? Yup.

But consider it: While lots of people get home from spring break with little to show for it but a maxed out visa, I arrived back in Ypsi sore, sleep deprived, and with a whole new take on humanity.

In the bad column, a good chunk of my idealistic nature died observing the political apathy surrounding the tens of thousands of displaced citizens whose lives have been destroyed by the most catastrophic piece of bungled engineering in US history. In the right hand column though, I got to spend the week with a group that was way better than I expected. I won’t go all day into the details of how great a group I was blessed with, but suffice to say we worked together, cooked for each other, looked out for each other, and had a great time without a single drop of the sweet nectar. I could go on all day about it but the basics are:

1) Great people exist and you never know when you’ll find them.
2) The apathy and incompetance of national government is at best staggering and at worst deadly.
3) You can’t let the bad things keep you down
4) New Orleans needs help

I suppose there’s much more but that’s presumably why the future exists.

Nite.