One hell of a ride...

Graduated from AmeriCorps NCCC today!

In the last ten months...

I have slept in 14 different rooms.

Lived in 4 different "houses."

Drove in a 15 passenger van for over 10,000 miles.

Lived with 11 other people.

Worked with 4 organizations.

Had 223 bug bites.

Traveled through or lived in 10 states.

And made life long friends.

I am anxious to get home to my beloved city, friends, and family! But, as I knew it would, it all ended so quickly. I have a ton of newly acquired skills and a million memories and inside jokes. And I want to end my LAST blog posting about AmeriCorps with this:

To my Ameri-family:

I love every one of you and I will surely go through withdrawls of not making meals for 12 people or sharing two bathrooms. I will miss the company and conversation and the comfort to talk about ANYTHING (oh, you know...) with you. Today was not goodbye, but only temporary distance until we can all meet up again. I will keep in touch and I hope you do the same. As much as they will try, my family and friends will not be able to truly understand the experience we all just had. I am so thankful for the last year and I owe it to the people I spent 24/7 with. I will miss you!! And I love you!

Home next week! And don't worry, I will be there awhile. :)

Back in NOLA

We are almost done! My team and I will leave for Denver in a week and two days. Time has flown by! I will be back in San Diego in less than a month. My official last day with AmeriCorps is on July 27th, but my mom and I are road tripping it back home from Denver and plan on stopping where we want for however long we want, so there isn't an exact date for when I arrive in San Diego - sometime around August 3-4...probably. It is bittersweet though. I MISS the crap out of home and cannot wait for ocean sunsets, mexican food, a soft bed, and seeing all the wonderful PEOPLE! But this has been an incredible and life changing experience. I am pretty sure with all the people I have met I can road trip across the US and not even have to stay in a hotel. These are life long friends and I am so happy to have shared this experience with them. I am not sure what I am going to do with myself without a house full of twelve people, sleeping in bunk beds, nursing bug bites and cuts, wearing my steel toe boots and uniform, and driving a 12 passenger van... But I am sure everyone at home will be able to fill my time. :) And now I can satisfy my travel addiction for pretty cheap around the US!

For now though... I am back in NOLA, working and sweating. Here are some pictures of this round...

SOOOOOO Pretty. I WANT TO LIVE HERE!

Sarah, Aaron, Alex and I hanging out by the river

Trying to save the Salvage Store from flooding.

New Orleans from the Ferry

Sarah and Amanda building a lean-to

Round 4 - Almost Done!

Well round 4 started off a little different than we all thought it was going to... We were told that we were to go to Corinth (pronounced core-inth), Mississippi to respond to a flood disaster. We got all suited up in our respirators, gloves, boots, and coveralls. Overall we mucked out 20 apartments and about 15 houses. Gross, Gross work. But it was cool to do something different! Our sponsors were awesome, we ate dinner at a different church every night and had all of our meals prepared for us. They even did our laundry every 2-3 days! We were definitely spoiled. Our housing was an arena...which was pretty cool. Of course being the South, boys and girls had to be separated. So us eight ladies lived on one side while the four boys were separated by a thin little curtain you could see through! We had a cable and a DVD player too. We thought we were going to be there longer than we were, but it ended up only being 2 weeks.

Here are some pictures from the mucking:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kristycoleman86/Round4Mississippi#

NOW we really are on our final stretch! Only 4.5 weeks left before we head back to Denver. We are back in New Orleans, living 4 houses down from where we were first round. The heat and humidity is really getting to all of us.. I have countless bug bites and I might melt before this is over. It is in the 90's, but with humidity it feels like 105-110 degrees. Miserable! We are with Water 3, so all of our friends are just a few houses down. Most of the work is pretty similar to first round, a little more building things because we are working more with DeCon. (This is the team of people that go in and salvage materials to sell from the damaged houses.) But nothing too overly exciting in New Orleans. Still an awesome city, but it is slowing sucking the life out of us with this weather! There are thunderstorms almost every afternoon too... Not sure how that is even possible, but here we are.

Nikki and I in all of our sweaty glory!

I miss everyone and I will see you all soooo soon and I am stoked to be back in Cali! And don't worry, I won't leave again for a while! (minus my travel addiction that will probably pull me away for a week or two - but that can't be avoided!)

Love you all!

Fourth Round is just around the corner!

Wow, I can't believe we are leaving on our fourth and final project in AmeriCorps, which was supposed to be in New Orleans...BUT

My team is getting deployed on Monday to go on Disaster relief in Corinth, Mississippi! It is a teeny, tiny town on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. Population is about 14,000 people and the total square miles is 30.... So picture 2 Santee's worth of land, but one fifth of the people... TINY! It is VERY conservative and religious, only on movie theater, a coca-cola museum, and a civil war interpretive center! Should be interesting...We are there a minimum of three weeks, but we could be there up to six weeks. Good thing I have my air mattress! We are living in a Red Cross shelter with other volunteers. Our main job will be to muck out houses that have major flood damage. We have to wear respirators and jumpsuits. Sexy!

Our last week a the Denver Children's Home was awesome. Very sad to say goodbye to the kids and you all know how well I hold up when tears are involved. Some of the kids were so upset, they were physically shaking. AWFUL! But we had such a good time there with them and I am so happy I got to know all the kids and staff there.

Our second and final drum circle performance went sooo well at the community meeting! There was a ton of people and we got crazy cheers!

More to come next week when we get to our disaster site! - Should be there by Wednesday...

Miss you all and only a few more months until I'm home!

It's Been Awhile...

Things are going pretty great here. I find myself bored frequently at work, but I LOVE hanging out with the kids when we get the chance. We are practicing to perform a drum circle! I know, it is shocking that I can keep a beat! We will perform it for the kids next Friday and then for the whole corps on May 12th! That is about 250 people! Pretty nerve-racking, but it should be soooo awesome. Someone should be recording it, so hopefully I can show it to you guys. :) Other than drum circle practices though, we really don't do much of anything.. It is kind of like being back in middle school sometimes. Yesterday I re-learned about WWI, last week was volcanoes, you get the picture.

This morning we had to participate in Global Youth Service Day and we went to Red Rocks to pick up trash and do some trail maintenence. It was FREEZING and snowing... We had to wear our rain gear. Sexy. Bright yellow is such an improvement to the normal uniform. But after we were finished, there was a drum circle! They were sooo awesome. We went on stage and played maracas and things. Now I can say I performed on the Red Rocks stage with an actual audience! In case you don't know what Red Rocks Ampitheatre is... it is a famous concert venue built into the mountain. Gorgeous.

Soooooo I found out about fourth round....NEW ORLEANS. meh. We are working with Rebuilding Together, again. But hey, we may be in the purple house this time, instead of the green one.. WoooHoo! Not. It is going to be disgustingly hot and humid and I am not looking forward to it. They are predicting 5 hurricanes over a category 3 while we are there. We might get to do some disaster work, which would be a pretty cool experience. Of course I don't want people to be hurt but maybe a disaster scare...? So we can set up the shelter, but nothing actually happens...? We leave Denver on May 17th. So a few more weeks in this spastic weather city. I can't believe how fast this is all going.. We will be done before you know it and I will be back in Sunny San Diego basking in the sun on the beach. Can't. Wait. But of course I will enjoy my last few months in the Corps. Hopefully the New Orleans humidity will just melt the pounds right off my body or just leave me with SWEET tan lines. Steel-toed boots and shorts. Oh yeah, baby. Get ready!

I will try to update this more often, but I get so tired after work!

Miss and Love you all!

Denver Children's Home

We started our project here one week ago and I LOVE IT. It is so much fun hanging out with the kids and I can't believe it is "work." We work pretty great hours too. 9-3:30. Most of the kids come from a traumatic background and we don't learn too much about those stories unless the kids open up to us. But we spent most of last week observing classes and just getting familiar with the kids. They range from about 11 to 18 years-old. Maybe 2/3 boys. Some of them are just so darn adorable, you just want to take them home with you. Most of our interactions with them make you forget that they have very deep issues and act like normal, happy kids. Other times...we are definitely reminded of that. The teachers at DCH are really incredible people and are super welcoming to us. It is going to be so hard leaving the kids at the end of the project, but I think we are going to get so much out of these next two months.

It has been a pretty big adjustment to life in the Dorms. Everyone is so spread out and I don't see people very much if I don't go into their rooms. Can get a little lonely. Tonight was interesting... We were ALMOST done with cooking dinner when the fire alarm went off. It is the most piercing noise I have ever heard in my life. 7 firetrucks came and it turns out a motor overheated and started smoking and coming out the vents. Nothing major, but quite an ordeal at 7p.

The weather has been a little ridiculous. We had 70 degree weather in the middle of last week, snow day Friday, hot today, and supposed to snow again tomorrow evening thru Wednesday night. Crazy. We are supposed to go to Boulder this weekend too! Hopefully we don't get snowed out again!

Denver Children's Home or DCH - oldest non-profit in Denver.

Transition Week

This has been a pretty great week back in Denver seeing all of my friends and hanging out in this awesome city!

Monday: Debrief on CAP in Tulsa. Went well, not overly exciting there... Played Trampoline Dodgeball and holy crap was that a freaking blast!! Giant Trampolines, soo soo fun!

Tuesday: Unit Time - Roller Skating! I pretty much organized it, so that was awesome. And we got our new Shuffle Round teams. Went downtown to a comedy show and that was pretty cool, except we were out until 3am! So tired...

Lovely ladies and I at the Rink. (Megan, Catie, Nicole, and Shannon)

Wednesday: Life After AmeriCorps day. Waste. Of. Time.

Thursday: Tried to give blood. Freaking out about it.. Went down there and got my finger pricked and my iron was at 36% and it needed to be at least 38%. Lame. So worked up for nothing and the prick hurt!

Today: Hanging out. Last weekend in Denver for most of the teams and we are going to a St. Patty's Day parade tomorrow downtown. That will be lots of fun and I can't wait.

Project starts Monday! And here is a a link to a video about the Denver Children's Home if you're interested....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYEEsDLGCow

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited!