I am still super excited about going to New Orleans. I don't know if I mentioned it last time, but we are going to be staying in the Ninth Ward, which is in the right near downtown, and one of the parts that got hit the hardest (mind you this is what I have been told, and I haven't really fact checked). But CTI (Corps Training Institute) is carrying on like normal, getting us ready to face the world in a civilized manner. We have different roles on the team that we will be taking on. I am a Peer Helper on the team. I will be one of two confidantes for the team. We spent a day training for the position, and again, it was a nice review of my Communication Studies degree, but it was all pretty pertinent to the position, and I think I will enjoy and do well at my position. Other things that seem to be the norm here is me getting hurt. Like I mentioned, I wiped out on the stairs the other day, I have run into a fair amount of walls just walking around, and find a new bruise nearly daily. The sad part is, we haven't even gotten to the manual labor where injury is much more likely than during days and days of training. Wish me luck in New Orleans. We have also been carrying on with the 5 am PT, and this may be hard to believe, but I get a little hyper sometimes at 5:30 in the morning. I actually really enjoy being there. Its pretty neat being able to watch a sunrise too, I am used to sunsets. Which I also get to see a lot of. It has not rained since that first week when I arrived, so the sunsets have been beautiful, however, some WI lovin'--the sunsets at Lakeview Dr can't be beat.

Today we had another service project. We headed down to a wildlife reserve (that actually reminded me a little bit of the backwaters of the Wisconsin River [or at least a glance of them, since we were surrounded by fields]). We spent the day planting, protecting, and watering over 200 trees. It was a lot of fun, we just paired up, and so I got to spend the day just chatting with my teammate, because it was pretty easy work planting the trees. In the afternoon we set up the irrigation system, but it didn't quite reach all of the trees, so some of us (me included in the us) had to fill buckets from the river and water the trees by hand. I will be so strong by the end of the year, everyone watch out.
Now, I have the weekend off, but I will be spending some time doing ISP's in downtown Sac, so I was not able to go along on the camping trip to Yosemite that a bunch of my friends are doing. I will survive.
And again, to end on a happy note, I leave for New Orleans in 10 days!!!!