hi!!! i am finally back, after a very long time...but i have valid excuses, i swear! well at first it was just because i was lazy, but then certain events happened that prevented me from writing. events that will unfold starting now. SOOO we left hands on biloxi with more tears than we ever expected; our last night all of our frustrations and annoyances were washed away when the staff and other long term volunteers brought out balloons and cake and basically made this huge announcment about how much they had appreciated us over the eight weeks and how much we would be missed. by the time it came to give our goodbye speeches we were blubbering pretty badly. leaving mississippi was bittersweet; on one hand i was very glad to be leaving the south (four months of living in the midst of extreme devastation really takes a toll on you, not to mention the heat and humidity) and on the other hand it was incredibly sad to leave the community i came to love and the everyday feeling of making such a huge difference in peoples' lives. but biloxi will always stay in my heart, and i left knowing that i will return eventually.

being back at perry point was amazing, i have to say it was the best transition week so far. being reunited with my housemates felt awesome, and the weather was so perfect. julie (my roomie) spent most of the week sitting on our front porch in the warm sun and the cool breeze (with no humidity - i cannot even express how good this felt) and just hanging out with everyone...seriously i don't know how i got such a good team AND such good housemates, but somehow i did and i love it. but now we get into the part of transition week that happened to not be so great. the date is august 25th. the day before my birthday. julie and i are sitting on the porch enjoying some kozy shak european style rice pudding, just minding our own business, making plans for my birthday. we had the whole day planned out, and let me tell you, it was pretty much going to be the best day ever. little did we know things were about to change. from across the street we see tasia burst out of her house. i call to her to see how things are going. and she calls back, "um i'm going on disaster tomorrow." okay time out. let me explain what "going on disaster" means. so every so often, if there is a major disaster somewhere (hurricane, fire, earthquake, whatever) the red cross calls up americorps and asks for people to respond to said disaster. americorps headquarters has a continuously updated list of all of us members, in a certain order for when we will be called to go. the order is based on how many hours we have and stuff like that and it is always changing. so if you get called you have less then 24 hours usually to pack up and go. usually they just take a few people from each team, and everyone that was called makes up sort of a new composite team type thing. so it's some peoples' dream to be called for disaster, and some people would rather not be. anyway. so tasia tells us she has been called. this sets julie and i off. "WHAT??" we scream. then tasia looks at me and says, "yeah. and you're going too." now i am really shaken up. i am one of those who would rather not be called. not when leaving my team is the last thing i would ever want to do and not when the disaster is a hurricane and i just got back from four months down south and not when we leave for a dream project in a few days. so now i am freaking out, and julie is freaking out too. and just as julie is yelling, "but annie, you can't go, tomorrow's your birthday and we have all those plans," julie's team leader walks up and says, "don't worry julie, you're going too." so now we are all freaking out big time. we do not want to go. i pretty much immediatly start crying. so it turns out that from our team it's me, tasia, tosh, and nate - a very important chunk of our team. and it means that for the first time all year, fire 7 is being split up. "upset" does not come close to describing the mood of our team for the next 24 hours until we got in the vans to go to the airport. as we drove off, all of us in tears, we waved to the rest of our team (and the rest of julie and my house), who also were all crying. it was pretty much the saddest thing EVER and it made us all a little bit scared for graduation. it was kind of funny though, because everyone else was asking us what was wrong with our team, and we had to be like...well....nothing, we really just love each other that much. it was also funny because the "disaster" turned out to be pretty much nothing and after five very long days of sitting in hotel rooms and eating free food, we were reunited with our team.

and now we are in huntington, massachussetts, living and working at camp norwich, the second oldest ymca camp in the country. it is so beautiful here, i can't even tell you. we are in the middle of the woods, right on a lake, and it is amazing. we have been doing trail work, cabin restoration and roofing, and we'll be doing various other things like that. it's awesome, i'm learning how to do things i never thought i would know how to do and i love it. it's also awesome to be with just my team again, kind of like it was back in new york. although we have been facing some challanges; this is really the first project where we are all working together, all day everyday as a team, and we're finding that we are butting heads at work a little more than we ever thought we would. but at the same time we are such a family by now that even when we hate each other we still love each other and that is very obvious at all time. so i think it will be really good for us to have this project and really learn how to not just play well, but work well together. another reason this project is awesome though, is that our sponsors are really involved and pretty much hook us up with everything. not only do we get free ymca plasses, but we are also getting free dinner from a bunch of restaurants in town, and we have gotten to go to a county fair for free, and last night was the icing on the cake. not just the icing actually, the icing and cherry and the whip cream and the chocolate sauce and the caramel sauce and like 50 million other amazing toppings. so we got free tickets to the "big e" with is a huuge fair for all of new england. so um the day that we just happened to get the tickets for, the musical guest just happened to be none other that FOREIGNER. yeah. so um basically we got third row seats and they pretty much rocked the house harder than almost any other band i have ever seen. it was an amazing experience and i seriously have such a new respect for them and will rock out to them in a different way than ever before because of this experience. sersiously. it was amazing. seriously.

anyway that is about all for now, i have to go because we are all taking turns on the laptop at a wireless cafe, because we have no internet at camp. or cell phone service so i am pretty much cut out from the world. but that;s okay. alright love you all!