31 August 2013

It took less than three days.

I arrived late Tuesday. My first day of work isn't till next Tuesday, and yet, I found myself at a NRCS field office yesterday in Luling, enjoying a meeting with the First People's Conservation Committee. This includes area tribal leaders, some current and retired NRCS employees, and Kris and Dick, the pastors from First Presbyterian Church of Bayou Blue who are launching the Wetlands Theological Education Project. I'm here in New Orleans for a year to support all of these things (and more)!

It's kind of surreal being here this week, the eighth anniversary of Katrina's devastating landfall. The hurricane definitely changed the story around here, and is just part of nearly every conversation, even in a very subtle way. While Sandy was nowhere near as devastating as Katrina, I feel some small connection to this place through that experience, mostly in thinking about environments and how the landscape contributed to the failures along the east coast and the gulf coast. I'm working primarily with wetlands, which are absolutely critical to environmental stability-- a haven for biodiversity, a crucial wildlife habitat, a sort of sponge in times of deluge... also, they're beautiful. Just stunning.

I'll save the gigantic lessons on wetlands ecology and local environmental problems for another day. I learned at the meeting about the constant loss of homeland, heritage and livelihoods down bayou from New Orleans. It's very sad, but there are a lot of really great people involved in trying to stop, and hopefully reverse, these losses. There is so much great work being done. Just a few of the things we talked about--
  • working on size regulations for soft shell crab farming
  • prescribed burning programs in the wetlands (to encourage regrowth)
  • native plantings, including the Sand Live Oak, a tree that hardly grows in that area anymore
  • water quality protection without sacrificing storm surge protection
  • mapping projects to show land ownership and land changes
They called me a "technical person" on this team. It's so exciting that my education and interests mean something to this project. I am so excited to get to work on Tuesday.

The only trouble with working "down bayou" is that a lot more people speak French and Creole, which I do not have any sort of foundation for. I've decided my goal is to learn enough French to be able to start spelling things correctly, and to be able to read signs without feeling like I'm embarrassing myself. In the meeting today, French snuck in and out of the conversation. While I'm nervous about totally lacking these skills, it's really cool to see the unique culture of this place.

I wanted to share Dick's blessing over our lunch--
"Remind us that life is a gift, and a responsibility, and that it can be a joy. Amen."

28 August 2013

1551 miles later

  • Left Stony Point at 5AM on Monday.
    • Pro: I might arrive early to my cousin's and be able to visit a while before I sleep!
    • Con: I didn't get to bed on Sunday night till 11PM.
  • Dropped Katie off at Newark Airport.
    • Pro: One last hour with my beloved Katie before she went to Chinook, MT!
    • Con: I had to say goodbye to Katie.  
    • Pro: I didn't have to feel bad when that Jack Johnson song I like played.
  • Stopped at Wawa in Phillipsburg to enjoy both Wawa and having my gas pumped for me one last time.
    • Pro: WAWA.
    • Con: I was so discombobulated by the time of day and early onset exhaustion that I don't think I got to truly enjoy the experience.
  • Stayed in Kentucky with my wonderful cousin Bekea and her awesome family.
    • Pro: THEY ARE AWESOME.
    • Pro: They know what it's like to do that drive so they prepared a light dinner which was delicious and perfect!
    • Pro: Ainsley is wonderful, smart, helpful, sunny company.
    • Pro: Eben is hilarious.
    • Pro: Bronwen's smile. Oh my goodness. So contagious.
    • Pro: Bekea and Dan are awesome people who I don't get to see much in person.
    • Pro: Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Stout
    • Con: I had to leave.
  • Crossed into Central time in southern Kentucky.
    • Pro: This is when it hit me, that all of this is really happening.
    • Con: This is when it hit me, that all of this is really happening.
  • Waffle House for lunch.
    • Pro: hash browns, scattered
  • Waffle House for dinner.
    • Pro: grits
    • Pro: I have no shame. Yes I did just have Waffle House two meals in a row. I don't care what you think.
    • Con: I stopped in rural Mississippi for this one, and couldn't understand a word they were saying to me.
  • Hit the Louisiana border on I-59 just before 10 PM Eastern time.
    • Pro: SO CLOSE!
    • Pro: SO EXCITING!
    • Con: My heart started racing.
  • Arrived to my new home about 9:30 Central time. 
    • Pro: Done driving!
    • Pro: I'M HERE!!
    • Con: Aforementioned racing heart finally slows down and I crashed HARD.
Google Maps, which usually serves me very well, is a lying liar. I was promised two days of 11 hours of driving, but instead had 14 hours on Monday and almost 14 hours yesterday. I did not take three hours worth of stops! I didn't. It started to feel like this, which actually happened when I backed up my hard drive before leaving home:

 photo minutes_zpsf1c4f38f.jpg

It was mostly just frustrating to me because I love roadtrips and adventures, but I had no time to stop and smell the geography. It's difficult to really get to know a new place from the interstate. It was neat to see the overall landscape change, but frustrating that I really had to just. keep. going. 

Because I arrived well after dark, I have few impressions of my new place, but I can tell you that our house has an awesome front porch and seven other cool ladies, that I have no clue how to pronounce anything around here, that it smelled like low tide at home as I drove through the wetlands approaching Lake Pontchartrain, and that I'm pretty excited to settle in and get started down here.

26 August 2013

I heard the nightbirds picking up the song!

Hebrews 12:1-2


Right now, I think every cricket in Stony Point has been added to my cloud. There are also a few YAV, YAVA (Young Adult Volunteer Alum), and staff who are kind enough to skip sleeping and see us off because they are not driving anywhere today.

Heading out to drop Katie at Newark Airport before continuing on to my cousin Bekea and her family in Kentucky tonight. I should arrive in New Orleans late tomorrow.

My cloud of witnesses is so great and so beautiful. Thanks for being part of it.

24 August 2013

We shall overcome.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. We listened to part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and spent some time in reflection. The worship team used pictures from the march in the slideshow between the lyrics of tonight's songs. Powerful stuff. It kept coming up, how far we've come, and how far we have yet to go, and how we are a part of this grand overarching movement of peace and justice.

Today we also discussed community and relationships and housing and culture shock. One of the cool things about the YAV program is the intentional community aspect-- the eight of us NOLA ladies are not just living together, but striving to foster a very intentional faith-based, collaborative community. We all have different jobs, but will be sharing space and a meager food budget, and community service projects and Bible studies and retreats and our lives and works with each other.

In our discussions about our community today, we were encouraged to really focus on the intentional community this year, which might mean distancing ourselves a little bit from other relationships. I brought up with my team that I need to be clear: I am pretty committed to Mike, but I am also committed to my intentional community in New Orleans. The reason this works isn't just because he's already seen me through a community that absorbed a great deal of my time and energy, but because he is kind and understanding and supportive of basically everything I do. He knows I call when I can, and while it's really hard sometimes, I think we do a pretty good job of communicating and making this work across the country. Goodness, he's already been in Arizona for more than a year.

So this lead to another big reflection that I kind of struggled with this summer: my life is so easy. I am a middle class white girl, engaged to a middle class white boy. Granted, he has some non-white ethnicities to his heritage, but they don't really show and his name is Hennessey. Regardless, people can see my ring, and once they get past how weird I am and that it's got a piece of petrified wood instead of a diamond, they can celebrate this very seemingly normal arrangement. I do not struggle with my promise to marry Mike. He's awesome and I'm excited. I struggle that I'm so privileged that it's generally accepted. A good friend of mine came out this summer, and I'm overjoyed that he feels safe and comfortable enough to share this minor personal detail-- truly, this is not the most interesting thing about him. But I'm so sad that he feels it is a big part of his identity, because I think that comes from having to fight to be himself, to be with the man he loves. It's not fully accepted.

It breaks my heart that there are so many people out there in the same situation. Are we not all created in God's image? I don't understand why the world can't just accept each other as we all are. Don't tell me because it's in the Bible, because the Bible was written by humans, and humans are not perfect. Humans are the worst. Humans screw up a lot of things, like loving and accepting each other.

Thankfully, when I expressed this frustration about my own privilege to other YAV's in my small group and my site group, they credited my position but celebrated that I am fortunate, and aware of my many blessings. Earlier in (dis)orientation, we talked about being people of privilege, and overcoming that by using the power for good. We've come so far since Dr. King gave that awesome speech, but we have so far to go. I like to think that I'm a small part of it (even though my work is primarily with natural resources), and am hopeful that this year of service supports a greater good that I can feel proud to be part of.

/end rant. My life is awesome.

(This is probably a good time to remind you that this blog is full of my thoughts and opinions which may or may not reflect those of PC(USA) and the YAV program.)

22 August 2013

allergic to anxiety

I am alive and well at Stony Point Presbyterian Center. It is lovely here. It's a pleasant campus with older but well maintained facilities, incredible food service featuring many fresh vegetables grown on site, and an intentional interfaith community that focuses on peace and justice. Orientation (or disorientation, as we're calling it) has been keeping me incredibly busy so far, but is treating me just fine.

I went about 22 years assuming I was extroverted. I like people, and while I've grown increasingly shy in my adult life, I generally like visiting with people. I'm friendly, I think. A friend brought a Myers-Briggs test to the bar during grad school, and that was when I was first presented with the idea that being an introvert doesn't mean I dislike all humans (though if we're talking about geography, that's another story), just that I generally gain my energy from time away from them. It's so true! So (dis)orientation has been a little exhausting, aside from the busy schedule. I have, however, been able to spend a little time with my summer roommate, Catherine, and my ever beloved Katie, as they orient for their YAV sites, and I finally got to sit down with my entire New Orleans team for the first time today. There are eight of us living together in NOLA. That's a lot of women in one home.Thankfully, I've been talking to these girls a little bit for a few months now. Of the eight of us, four are from New Jersey. One even went to my college at the same time as me (but we didn't meet until this week). It seems we all have various things in common, and it was a comfortable gathering. I like them all.

Today's seminars were on conflict, stress and self care. We spent some time in small groups discussing stress-- our triggers, our tells (signs), our tools (recovery strategies). I acknowledged that I tend to work pretty well under some stress, and that I generally spread myself pretty thin, pretty effectively. I don't tend to be an overly anxious or stressed person, but it does creep up on me once in a while. Last week I had my first real physical response to stress, that literally crept up on me from my feet to my face: hives.

 photo DSCF8030_zpse1571944.jpg
Here is my leg after two doses of Benadryl!

There was nothing different about my environment or diet. I was just stressed out of my brain, trying to say goodbye to people who are important to me, watching good friends go through difficult things, trying to tie up a million loose ends at my job, thinking about packing, dealing with a thousand other internal and external things... ugh. My hands and feet started itching Thursday evening, and by Friday dinner, it was literally creeping up my neck and onto my face.

So I spent the weekend bombed out on benadryl.

Thank goodness I'm not generally anxious or stressed or high blood pressured, because last week might have killed me.

Anyway. In our small group, we talked about high-stress situations, and I talked about my time in Mexico, and how I hit my stress limits when showering was literally my only alone time-- I was even sharing a bed with one of my research cooperators. That was just too much.

When I arrived at Stony Point and got to my room, I found two very nice girls, including one of my NOLA people, and two beds. It appeared that I was expected to share a full bed with a stranger.

The hives returned by dinner.

Long story short, I took another benadryl and acquired a roll away bed (that feels very hammock-like, which was one of the better sleeping arrangements in Mexico, but I digress), and my room is a happy little introverted place (all three of us!). I'm managing to find snippets of alone time, including this entire evening, and I even attended a Quaker meeting this morning (alone together!). I have a hard time navigating new situations with lots of new people, especially so many leaders and type-A personalities, but overall this is a kind, patient crowd or missionaries who mostly understand that I really don't want to hug when I meet them for the first time. And, after this week, I'll really just get to focus in on my crew of eight and my wetlands.

This will certainly be a year of growth and learning in many ways, and I'm sure my limits will be tested on occasion. Hopefully this new allergy to anxiety will not persist, or at least, that I'll be able to keep my stress to more manageable levels. I'm excited for the opportunity, at least.

19 August 2013

a day in the life

7:19 AM: woke up.
7:21 AM: bowl of Cheerios
7:23 AM: Packing Crisis #1-- which soil books do I bring to New Orleans with me?
7:31 AM: Packing Crisis #2-- I found a small pile of laundry that wasn't washed yet.
7:31 AM: Packing Crisis #3-- I remembered I hadn't finished unpacking my car from Johnsonburg yet.
8:06 AM: Decide to stop unpacking for a moment to start writing this nonsense down.
8:21 AM: Thank goodness Fred, the soil scientist I've been working with, takes me seriously. "Ok. You'll probably want to take the Field Guide for Describing Soils because that'll help keep your describing skills sharp. Can't think of what else to bring. I'd say the Soils of NJ but I don't want it to make you homesick. But that's an interesting read anytime!"
8:37 AM: Clothes in dryer, going to get oil changed and stop by the bank. And get a bagel. This is my last day in NJ for a while.
9:31 AM: Got home from errands to find that Mom has taken a half day to provide moral support/distract the little dog while I pack!
9:37 AM: Announce that I will start packing.
9:55 AM: Actually begin packing.
9:56 AM: Pick up little dog instead of packing.
9:59 AM: Actually actually really start packing. I decided to break this up into parts: a small suitcase for orientation week, then a big suitcase for all the other stuff.
10:13 AM: I packed for the week. I deserve a break. Looking up directions to where I'm going.
10:51 AM: I know where I'm going! And will go to three new states in the next 10 days!
10:52 AM: I'm thirsty.
10:57 AM: I'm hungry.
11:00 AM: Ate some string cheese. Because I'm awesome.
11:04 AM: Thinking about finishing packing.
11:17 AM: Dancing with the little dog? I mean, I'm aiming to leave around 1 to visit the ocean and pick up Katie. I've got time still?
11:19 AM: OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH WHERE ARE ALL OF MY SHOES WHERE ARE MY SHOES WHERE ARE MY SHOES
11:20 AM: They were in my duffel bag from camp still. I wonder if I forgot to unpack anything else? Ha ha.
11:27 AM: Actually seriously begin packing.
11:49 AM: BOOM. Done. Seriously. Except for books, but that doesn't count. That will be the hardest part.
12:03 PM: Picked out a sufficient amount of books.
12:04 PM: Winding down. Time for my everything bagel!
12:24 PM: Going to actually move those bags into my car. In a minute.
12:25 PM: OK OK OK  I'm going!
12:26 PM: After I let the little dog inside.
12:45 PM: Car is packed and I am casually finishing my bagel and hanging out with my mom.
12:51 PM: PILLOWS OH MY GOODNESS I ALMOST FORGOT PILLOWS!
12:55 PM: I am heading out. Stopping at church to drop off a certain wedding reservation form at church because I promised Janet Mike that I would. Going over the bridge to pick up Katie to ensure that I dip my feet in the ocean one more time. Then heading to Stony Point, NY for a week of orientation before I depart for New Orleans, via Kentucky.

Thank you everyone for your love and encouragement.


18 August 2013

Oh where, where have I gone?

I did a bad job of sharing my adventures this summer.
  • Mission trip: Rhode Island.
  • Camp: hectic, but I think I was exactly where I was supposed to be this summer.
  • NRCS field work: awesome. Lots of stellar field experience. I just love soil.
  • Promised Mike that I'd marry him. I feel bad that this is a bullet point on a list right now, because it's kind of a bigger deal than that.
  • aaaaaaaaaaaand tomorrow I leave for a week of orientation in Stony Point, NY and then I leave for New Orleans for a year.

I will write more soon, I suppose. I am just exhausted at the moment. Many adventures to come. I am very fortunate. My life is pretty great.