TOnys Posting!

Wow, I am ever so sorry that this is my first time blogging since I have been back here in NOLa. It has been absolutely crzy, with so much hard work and just a rollercoaster of emotions. Well I will just give an update of things since I seen most of you at the meting back on June 15th. Well three days after that meeting, I received word that the job that I had lined up for the summer had fell through, so this was June 17th at 11 a.m. when I found this information out, and I was bummed for about an hour, but then a weird thought popped into my mind to try and see if I can work for Gulfsouth even though the program had started. Well on June 19th I was on a plane back to Nola after I had left only 2 weeks before. It was crazy trying to come up with the money for it, but I borrowed from a lot of people and I am here and I am so glad that I made it to work for this incredible organization. We had a rigorous training schedule the first week, that included incredible meetings with people who have vbery distinguished backgrounds, some of the things that I have learned about the hurrican and the state of things are absolutely incredible. We met with the councilman at larger Oliver Thomas and he definitely inspired my life to pursue more leadership positions. Other than that we met with many professors who definitely brightened my life in the speeches that they gave. When camp started I bonded with these students automatically, they are so precious and smart at that. It is just very hard with having to be the cool teacher but also the strict disciplinarian, and it has been oh so emotional for me, because I am seeing so many kids that are innocent and young, but very affected by the world and what it means to be an African American, and especially one after Hurrican Katrina. These children have experienced things I could never imagine, and if we judged by lifes experiences they would be more mature than many of us instructors. The other day during the lesson, we broke into a deep discussion about hurricane Katrina and what they saw, and some of their stories just gave me chills. I am definitely feeling a calling to be a social worker in the future, but also I know that I have got to be more involved with the youth of NEw Orleans during the recovery. These children latch on to me, and they know when I am tired hapy and sad, they are affected by all of my emotions, that is why this experience is somewhat draining because I am trying to always be happy but I also want to be a strong figure to these children at the same time. They really respect me, maybe because I am the only black male at this site, but still I feel I can affect these kids, but most of all they are teaching me so much about my life, happiness, and the environment thats around. I deal so much with negative comments where the kids say they feel hopeless about the area they are in, they dont believe the government will ever care, or that the violence will stop. I, everyday try to be a voice of reason that lets them know that as long as they stay strong and keep involved with the community and their school work they will create the change. Overall, I promise to blog more about my experience here so keep checking, but I did want to give some credit to Operation Reach for their care in theis situation. The staff for operation reach has been so supportive of all of us, they put us up in dorms where we have our own rooms, we are well fed, and I must repeat that one we are well fed. We have a lack of supplies for the kids, but we are being FLEXIBLE with all of that. SO I just wanted to give people back home feedback on how great this experience has been.