Spike 1 coming to an end

I apologize for my lack of blogging this past week...we worked another 6 day week and I am actually volunteering at 7am tomorrow morning too, so I am really working 13/14 days! I am utterly exhausted as our first spike is coming to an end. It's really bittersweet, just like everything else related to my life and AmeriCorps lately, it seems to be the theme lately! I am loving being a site supervisor and working with the St. Bernard Project, but it is so time consuming and such hard work that there is no real down time to relax at all, which is really starting to wear me down. Monday-Friday this week we had the most amazing volunteers ever. They were a church group from Pennsylvania, 5 women and 2 men in their 40's and 50's who are the hardest working volunteers I have ever met! They were up for any challenge and really wanted to get the house done while they were here. They were also really fun and liked to joke around with us, which was a perfect balance between work and fun every day. They even brought Joe, Eric and I each a bag full of delicious treats because they quickly realized how much we like to snack...or how much I like to snack and didn't wanna leave the boys out haha. On our last day with them, we brought them to get Sno Balls because they had never had them like our previous group of volunteers, and they loved them too!

I am telling you, the sno ball industry has AmeriCorps (or maybe just yours truly) to thank for keeping them in business ;) 

As a team activity one night this week, we decorated cupcakes based on something we learned or how we were feeling this past week. My cupcake was a picture of me (with blonde hair because the sun is making it so light!) with the texturing hopper, and getting big muscles, because mannnn that thing is a workout! 

It was a fun activity, and delicious! I also got to eat 3, because my teammates who didn't want to eat their donated them to me :) (Have you noticed a theme of everyone realizing how much I love food down here?!) 

I had a capping (corps ambassador program) event, kind of like recruiting at Chalmette High School the other day, which was an experience. 

I had forgotten how difficult it is for high schoolers to actually show that they are interested in their future or "nerdy" things like AmeriCorps, even if they walk by 15 times, staring at the flyers, they are too embarassed/afraid to come up and talk to us or take one! It was still a fun event and I got to make a sweet AmeriSlide Show, which was awesome, because y'all know how much I love pictures :) We talked to a few kids who were really interested, and gave flyers to some others who probably weren't, or were just too young to think about life after high school just yet, but overall it was a good day. 

So last night we worked the Daniel Tosh comedy show, which was really fun and hilarious, the only downside was that it didn't even start until 10:30pm! We got back home around 2am, went to bed and had to get up at 6:45 for today's full day of work....oh man, I was so exhausted today there was a portion of time where my words were all jumbled together and I didn't even make any sense! Our volunteers were a group of 8 youth group members from a Lutheran church in Alabama, so they were mostly 15 years old and it was really fun to have some youngsters on the worksite for once. I am glad that they had lots of energy, because I sure didn't! They even knew how to do flooring, which was awesome because I don't think I would have made any sense if I had to teach them how to do it! We also got to see the Vanderhoff family (they are the owners of the house we are working on) all day, because they were painting some of the rooms, so it was really neat to spend more time with them and work alongside them, especially because today was our last day site supervising at their house :( Next week I will be doing sanding and mudding with Eric at a new site, and Joe will be doing texturing at a different house as well (I was originally supposed to be where Joe is, but he was kind enough to switch with me so I wouldn't have to be along/kill my arms with that machine!) 

Also, here is a picture of me and Drew, sporting our newly purchased St. Bernard Project t-shirts--I wanted the purple one, but they didn't have my size :(