Additional Info......

Additional things to share -

The family that will be purchasing the Habitat home that we are building are true survivors. They were home when the storm hit and filled their home with 7 feet of water. The mother, father, teenage son and elderly grandmother had to swim to safety in the mucky, sea water that swept through their home. They lost everything except for a small number of pictures that were on the wall high enough not to be swept away. As Ria mentioned in the last blog we have the chance to work with them shoulder-to-shoulder and it's a great opportunity for all of us.

We also have the opportunity to work with a number of Americorps' members. In order to qualify for the Americorps' program, individuals must be between 18 and 24. These dynamic young people give 10 months in service to America to work on various projects. The organization is federally-funded and structured such that the country breaks into 3 parts - eastern, western and central. Lately, much of their focus (across the entire organization) has been on the Gulf Region - however in different times they tend to focus on projects in their particular region. They receive housing, food and a modest stipend for their service. We have about 15-20 Americorps' members on our work site.

Our Camp Coastal work teams have been helping a wide variety of families. Many of these people have been living in tough conditions for the last 20 months. We'll share some of these stories in future blogs.

Funny aside - I went for a 4 mile run after work today. When running on the side of the road back home I occasionally see an unfortunate roadkill victim. Down here all of the 'victims' seem to be frogs. In a short half-mile stretch I came across 6 paper thin frogs. YUCK!!

Funny story!! Three of our volunteers went to Wal-Mart to get some things. Two of them finished first and sat (with their purchases) on the floor inside the store opposite the cash registers. They hadn't been able to shower after a hard day of work yet and were exhausted. A nice guy walks up to them and says - "I know what's it's like. Things will get better." Then he empathically gives them a $5 bill. Before they could protest or correct his undestanding (that they, in fact, were not homeless) he had left. The whole group has been enjoying this story.

Funny story #2!! During our orientation to Camp Coastal on Sunday night we were told many things about the camp. A few of the funniest:

> There are two dogs at the camp - small pups named Milo and Hosea. Adorable!!!
> There are two cats - Pumpkin and Miss May (one of our former volunteers would love this!)
> They also claim that two armadillos reside here. None of our volunteers have seen these creatures yet, but we are all interested.
> In the middle of the orientation we had to sing a children's song to reiterate an important camp rule. When we return, make it a point to ask a volunteer in person about this song and its purpose. Very interesting!! :)

Final note for this blog - One of the things that really amazes me personally about this entire experience is the incredible team work being displayed on a daily basis. We are working together shoulder-to-shoulder doing work that most of us have never done and doing it successfully. During the course of working we're getting to know each other better and acquiring new friends. In many cases we're working with fellow employees that we would have never had a chance to really get to know because of the diversity of positions within SEI and the growing size of our employee population. SEI deserves a lot of credit for making opportunities like this available.

As always - we welcome questions. Thx for checking out the blog! Keep coming back!!

- Robb