Update on Work & on Holiday Weekend

So, it's been nothing if not an eventful few weeks since I last wrote. We've completed the majority of our project here in Winnie, TX; have bonded more and gotten to know each other better as a team; have faced some challenges and conflicts; and have been finding ways to satisfy our individual time needs despite the group living/working situation.

Regarding work, it's been challenging in a number of ways. With free reign of essentially 2/3 of a county, one in which a very small population of people is spread across a wide area, we've had to do some creative thinking in our approach to visiting residences to conduct needs assessments. We send people scouting out areas before we canvass, for the most part, noting down population concentrations (meaning streets that actually have >1 house on them). To address the large percentage (50-75%) of time where people aren't home, we've developed an info sheet to leave at houses and a system for tracking everywhere we've been, both on maps and via an address spreadsheet tracker. To communicate with the large non-English-speaking population, we've developed all of our resources, and scripts for ourselves, in Spanish.

It can be difficult, since while we're collecting a lot of information about the county (which houses look abandoned, which are lived-in yet need help, which have already been repaired through FEMA help or insurance), it can be difficult to gauge the actual impact we're having. I know our sponsoring organization, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is incredibly appreciative of the work we're doing, and that it's invaluable both to them and to other organizations with which they correspond in the county, but I can't help but be glad that we'll be moving on to a new project. This has been meaningful and challenging, which is great for expanding our horizons and growing in both team and work facility and agency. Yet I'm really excited, now, for our next project, in which we'll actually be doing some reconstruction of homes damaged by hurricanes. Not only that, but we'll have a volunteer supervisor and lots of direction. It was great having agency at this last project with SVDP, and hopefully after a more highly-directed project we'll be able to appreciate such agency even more.

For Thanksgiving, while I did miss what turned out to be a really heartwarming-looking celebration with 8/11 of my team members, I instead met up with 6 other team leaders in New Orleans for a long (Wed night-Sun afternoon) holiday weekend. Since the weather was rainy, we spent a[n unfortunate] majority of our time on Bourbon Street, eating in restaurants and drinking in (and outside of, given local drinking laws!) bars. It was a lot of fun, and we had a great Thanksgiving Day dinner, a fake engagement party for a friend, and some funny and embarassing stories that aren't to be shared here.

Now, with just one work week left in Winnie, TX, we've finished all areas to canvass around Chambers County. Next week we have yet to wrap up loose ends, compile all of our collected data, and present and hand that off to the St. Vincent de Paul permanent employees. It's exciting, foreseeing a successful end to our first project as a team--especially one where its success was so dependent upon our own efforts in developing resources and tools, and setting & carrying out our own priorities.

We'll be leaving Winnie, TX on Sunday, Dec. 14th, and traveling back to Sacramento until Thurs. the 18th. I'll be in Sacramento from the 19th until the 22nd, when I'll fly to Colorado Springs until the 31st, and then to LA until Jan 4th, when I'll return to Sac-town.