Joy in hard work

Well I wish I could say this was our first official work day of the leadership team for Gulf South but we have been working since Sunday.There are six of us here now; Colleston and Kristen from Harvard, Bryan from University of Minnesota,Marissa from Swarthmore,and Nicole from University of New Orleans.It is a great team and we work well together.We just got word that Leslie will be joining us tommorrow.We will be glad to have the extra help.It was great today when i was finallyable to get to the computer to read some of the other guys blogs.We all guessed that working here in the summer would be harder but we could only guess how hard....At this point we are still rounding up teachers for the program, assigning courses, setting up sites, a recruitment action plan, etc....The quantity is great but the benefits are greater..There is no question in any of our minds why we are doing what we are doing and for whom-the kids we all want to see return to the city.We are living all together on the same hall in the House of Studies at Xavier University-its plan and small but we're all so tired at the end of the day it doesn't seem to matter.We got in at various times on Saturday and then went on a road trip to the House of Seafood in Bush La for dinner-all you can eat seafood it was obscene!!!The food was amazing!!!!Yesterday we worked in the morning and then went to Wal-Mart in the afternoon.We were up first thing this morning and meet until 11:30, had lunch and then came to the offices of Operation Reach where we are now.There is much pressure to succeed and even surpass the inital expectations and maybe even double our capacity to accommodate up to 600 students!!!Hey if there are any other folks who want to work with middle schoolers for the summer check out the website www.operationreach.org then go to programs and then to Gulf South Youth Action Corps.Well I have arrangements to make for tommorrow-so I'll check in later Oh hey Toni hope you're doing well e-mail me.Thanks again to everyone back on campus who helped make this trip a reality-I couldn't have done it without you!!!!



Lurelia-Post Bacc and crazy