An eye-opening trip

This trip has been a really gratifying experience for me and well worth the time, money, and preparation. While the work may have been tedious it felt great to know I was part of the effort to get this great city back on its feet. The presentations from Robert Green and Marshall Pierre were extremely enlightening and I learned a lot about specific details of the storm that I never got from watching the news on television - all I wanted to do afterwards was shake their hands because they had some truly inspirational stories to tell. All of the nuisances and complaints that everyone had seemed to go away when these fine men told their stories and we realized that there are much bigger problems in the world.

The beach today was perfectly timed because we were all getting a little tired of planting the cypress trees and needed a little R&R. Walking along the water today it finally hit me that I was on vacation and that I never want to go back to our frigid Livonia winters. All my worries seemed to have been left thousands of miles behind when I'm walking under the bright Louisiana sun.

I really think that this trip is doing great things for our senior class because kids are really starting to branch out of their social circles, if only for a little while. People are really opening up and being themselves and everyone's getting more comfortable with each other - and it's really creating a little bit of family atmosphere within our class which I'm very excited about.

Well it's getting pretty late and we have another packed day ahead of us for tomorrow. It will be tough coming home (especially over 20+ hours) but I guess all good things come to and end at some point. Until next time...

-Matt Kelly