Thought I'd do a real quick post while I have a minute or two this afternoon. I'm waiting for the Break Away staff to come in so that we can finish up binders for our last two conferences this summer. The first, where we were working on disaster relief in New Orleans, went incredibly well. Here's a picture of one of the morning groups at their direct service - gutting a house (2 years post-Katrina, mind you) in their tyvek suits. They were such troopers - it was incredibly humid and pretty darn hot there. It reminded me of those wrestlers trying to lose all their water weight to get into a lower category by running stairs in plastic sacks. I hope this isn't just some rogue practice that happened at Mt. Harmon Jr. High and I've just exposed the underbelly of Price Utah.

Tuesday we head to San Diego to tackle the second Alternative Break Citizenship schools. We'll be focusing on border and immigration issues. Then we'll come back to Atlanta and two days later start our third and final conference here, focusing on refugee resettlement. It has been a real learning summer for the staff. Our issues are all tied together - working with displaced people and all the troubles that surround such. I've learned so much (just to name a few things - 80% of New Orleans was under water; it wasn't the hurricane, it was the levee breach; over 50% of undocumented workers in the US pay taxes; there is one 5 mile area of Atlanta where 170 nations are represented) and continue to love this work because of exposure to this type of information and the faces that accompany such statistics.

My staff is awesome this summer - Samantha is our Programs Director that started in January, Molly left in April on maternity leave, and then two interns - Jillian and Chris - came in and have worked their tails off. We are proving to be a very cohesive team and have been very focused on trying to make our work "brilliant". All of them also really love Martin, and I've posted another picture to show why. It's been great to see some of you so far this summer, but I'm looking forward to the winter breather and our holidays together again. Hopefully more again soon!