Seananigans

My experienced was a mixed bag.. I think there was too much to comprehend. I can't fathom all the damage that hurricane created. I'm very glad I got the chance to experience going to New Orleans. I just feel weird being back to my daily life here in San Marcos. It's hard going from working closely with a group of people you are around all day, and now back to re-al-ity. I wish I was out there helping. Not just persuing head knowledge at a university.

My heart breaks to all the people out there. But it is filled with pride and other things here. College.. where did most people spend Spring Break? At the beach getting "f***'in wasted". Why? That doesn't sound fun to me at all. Why would you go waste your life away. My friend Ethan put it well. He said he had two choices when choosing where to goto spring break. He could be selfish and go where he originally planned, or selfless and pay to go help others. Maybe that is what it comes down to. Going to the beach to get wasted is all about yourself and what people think will let them have a good time.



But, that is their choice of course. Back to New Orleans. Man, what a place. The city is a beautiful dump. It has such history and vibrancy, as well as the neat architecture, but it is littered with trash and just a general unclean feeling. Lots of people with out homes. Lots of people just trying to make a dolla'. But there is something real and raw about New Orleans. Its hard to describe, you just have to go there.

Something the trip to New Orleans taught me was just my desire to serve-in-action. College teaches you only so much. You can read so many books, and learn so many things, but there is nothing like just getting out there and doing. The work we did was hard, but very rewarding. Working for other people and for no profit. It is interesting, because this will probably be the work I will be doing for a lot of my life it looks like. Seeing that I am going to be a Social Work major, a lot of my work will be for very little profit most likely, and working with / for others in service-type projects.

Also, in perfect timing I've been blessed with a new job working with kids at a developmental center called Calvary Kids Christian Learning Center. I will be working with 3-year-olds in the morning and kindergarten thru 6th grade for the afterschool program. It will be interesting / challenging to work 2 jobs plus going to summer school.

Or, "Nawlins'" in correct proper slang.


Favorite Jason Baker quotes:
"Straight up (out of compton)."
"Your just a big wah, baby, cry face."
"Are we still on the same bridge?" (2 hours later)
"That's intense."
"I'm calling B.S., erroneous on all accounts."



Just got back from a 5-day excursion to New Orleans, Louisiana where we traveled up together with 95 people from Texas State University (in three seperate carpool groups). I drove my car with Sandy, Ryan Hawkins, Mike Campos, and Jenny. One mix tape, eight fruit roll-ups, and nine hours later - we get to New Orleans "The Big Easy".


The Location:
After finding out we wern't staying at the place we were supposed to stay at ("City of Light") we find new accomodations at The Grand Palace hotel right off downtown and just a few blocks from Bourbon Street. The place is pretty run-down, especially the lobby that must have suffered water damage. The parking garage is littered with cars that have been jacked up and everything stolen, and we find out the first night that many of the guy students have to take security shifts in order to make sure we don't get things stolen (like our cars, and personal belongins). So that is pretty reassuring. But the location itself is great being pretty much in downtown, and PLUS the fact that we have rooms with beds and showers and I hear people at other sites had to wait upwards of 3-hours for showers.

The Food:
FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency was kind enough to cook us three home cooked meals a day . Basically, if you didn't eat out, the food that was provided was from FEMA and this ranged from hotdogs, to foot-and-a-half long sausage, to uncooked rice, amoung others. The food actually wasn't that bad, considering they had prepare meals for probably around 3700 students for 3x meals a day. Our group found a place nicknamed "The Hippie Dome" (or 'Made With Love Cafe") where they actually served pretty good food and snacks and we opted to eat lunch there for a modest donation.


The Work:
We split into groups of about 11 people with one group-leader and were assigned job sites to go work on. Every group had a different site (unless the site needed a lot of work and another group would join you), but most groups did very similar work. What this included was taking out all of the furniture, pretty much all the "stuff" inside the house, had to come out. Then we gutted the house which consisted of taking hammers, crowbars, sledgehammers and demolishing all the inside wood and moldy boards that had been water damaged. Pretty intense stuff. We worked Monday-Thursday from about 9-4 every day give-or-take. Our team name was "The Armstrongs" seeing that we were all pretty ripped... that and Louie Armstrong was from there. The work was tough, but definently rewarding.

Our group finished 2 complete work sites and a half day at a church spent cutting down a giant oak tree that had partially fallen over.

The first guy we worked with was named "Crazy" Carl who grew up in Nawlins' and didn't know what he was going to do next. He had just gotten over kemotherapy for bladder-cancer and wasn't able to do much. Crazy Carl talked up a storm. He pretty much talked all day long about anything and everything. Ethan said he was one of those guys who "knows a little about everything, but not much about a lot". But he was a good guy and it was great to be able to be of service to him.

The second lady we worked with was named Gale and the interesting story behind this is how we came to work for her. We needed another job site, so me and Ethan went to the area to find someone on the list. Well this lady was standing at the tent waiting to be put on the list (apparently there was a long list), and we told the tents-people we wanted a large site, and the lady said she had a large house (boy did she), so we offered to take her house on. Total God thing. Perfect timing. So that was really neat to see that happen.

Both Carl and Gale were the most amazing pack-rats. They had stuff EVERYWHERE. I thought that was funny.

This post will be updated with more about the people and probably another post just on my personal experience. I wanted to have kind of a base overview for people who didn't go, or just folks who wanted a recap.

Thinking. It amazes me how much time we (I) spend thinking. I remember a friend a had in one of my philosophy classes (when I was in school) who asked the question, "What would your thoughts for ONE DAY look like if they were all typed out onto a single piece of paper. WOW! What a thought! There is a seemingly endless series of thoughts that seems to go through my mind. Never resting on any one thing. I think my paper would float to so many things and be all over the place, i don't know about you.

Anyways, no one teaches us HOW to think for ourselves. Especially not public school. They may teach us how to memorize, but never how to think.

One question: In the seemingly endless series of thoughts we have, how do we find/know ourselves?

Yea you know me...



Spike Lee spoke at our campus this last Wednesday (March 1st) and I thought he had an awesome message! For those who didn't get to see him talk (or did, and just want a recap) here is what he had to say...

Spike Lee dressed in casual wear with white jeans that were slightly baggy, a gold and blue stripped shirt, and sported what looked like a blingin' diamond earring. Spike came before the audience of Texas State students not dressed to impress, but as an average person (who makes award-winning, nationally famous movies)! He came delivering a message of courage to follow our dreams. Also going into some detail about many issues he sees in American culture today--specifically the message the media portrays about the "hip-hop" culture.

Spike started off the night telling about his own story at college. Spike went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he was for quite awhile, undecided about what he wanted to do with his life. It wasn't until he was a junior in college when he had a professor who encouraged him to use the raw footage he had filmed during his summer and turn it into a story, that Spike knew he wanted to persue being a filmmaker as his career.

Spike was at the era when there were virtually no black filmmakers in the business, and very few, if any, movies exposing the African American culture. So Spike made it HIS MISSION to "put more stories on the screen [about this] - not positive or negative, just truthful".

Sparing many of the details of the story, Spike then attended film school at New York University and every many setbacks he finally broke through into the industry.

For the sake of time, and the short-attention span of the readers I'm just going to share some of the highlights of the night.
1) "If you can do what you love, it's not a job anymore"
-> Spike talked about finding out what you love to do and having the courage to go after it. He said SO many people go to jobs every day that they HATE, simply because they have to pay bills and provide for their family. I liked this because it encouraged me to follow my dreams despite hardships and setbacks.

2) He spoke against the way hip-hop is portraying itself through the media. With all the rap videos and songs talking about "bitches and ho's" and the ideas that this thug/pimp/gangsta lifestyle is something to be valued. He went into some detail with this, and I think he made some really great points. That lifestyle and that portrayal of that lifesytle as something good is very harmful to our society.

3) He's making a documentary called 'When the Levee Broke' about the devastation in New Orleans caused by the hurricanes, and many of the problems that have been faced from that. Should be very interesting.

Overall, Spike Lee brought a really pertinent message that I hope you guys got to hear.