about a bit

well this girl is back from biloxi, mississippi (i really do know how to write that word but yet i backspace myself through it) after being gone a week which felt so very much like a month. fi'm back into this cave the they call fall. does anyone feel like the sky gets lower in the fall? maybe it's just the stark contrast between being in hot&humid mississippi and being dropped into this rain filled day with whipping wind freezing my nose.
getting back into school was a challenge today. the day seemed so much longer then they did back in biloxi. i was highly unmotivated and highly sick of scoring paces. and it's high time i left for college. or mercy ships. ither one. feeling particulary antsy after my travels..which is to be expected i suppose.
so mississippi. i must say something about that. i just poured eight days of my life into that state. leaving my make-up and skirts and mirrors behind i packed my bags full of t-shirts, baseball hats, sunscreen, a pair tennis shoes and ofcourse two pairs of scrubs. leaving early saturday morning, i traveled altogether TWENTY hours in a 15-passenger van (bless small cars) now i was forced to entertain myself. no more daily life to keep up with, schedules to stay by. my life was on hold until the van stopped moving. which i cannot complain about. my companions were the best of the best (salutes to anna harr, sarah meadows and brittany deck). games abounded. every 15 minutes a new one sprang up. drawing games, finger games, thumb wars, card games, word games and mind games. and when games wore out we talked and braided hair and wrote letters or read books. looking back, the ride home was a great deal more subdued then the ride up. we were clean and energetic going to mississippi and everything smelled....good.
Our accomadation was a presbyterian church much beaten and bruised by the hurricane but still stable enough to house numerous volunteer teams from around the country. i'm not sure how it was still standing after being much abused the waters of the Gulf that lay just beyond the road. the place was made of brick. the three little pigs story proved very true last week. the only structures left standing after katrina blew through were brick! other than those few brick stuctures the area was a picture of absolute destruction. miles and miles. pile after pile. of rubbish and wood and long strips of fabric. no green. no animals. i think i saw two people the entire ride down to Gulf Port and once in Gulf Port. it was eerie. glimpses of what used to be presented themselves in ghostly ways. A rusted, knotted up rollar coaster. the table and chair of mcdonalds sitting serenely on top of a gray pile of jagged wood and debris. an olive garden sign still standing beside a 30-foot tall dusty pile of what must used to be a fine-dining resturant. crumpled cars and flattened houses became a common sight. would a year restore this destuction? five? ten? i was filled with doubt looking at the absoulute devastation.
but we did not help with this area directly. every morning my team and i would rise early and drive forty minutes away to a country home belonging to a certain mr. ray and mrs. dot. a dear old couple who'd been married fifty years (at least) . both as sweet and southern as can be. the week passed slowly by in the best most fulfilling sort of way. i used my body for what it was meant to be used for. straining and pushing and heaving and working under the hot mississippi sun. walking along the ridge of this roof. lining up shingles. hammering nails. laying out tar paper. climbing ladders. cutting shingles (6,12,18 is forever stuck in my mind). sweating through all five tshirts before the week was through. feeling perfectly disgusting when the day's work was through and we all we all packed back inside our (less good- smelling) 15-passenger and headed back to biloxi for a cold shower and dinner (and an early bed time for me.)

:::Sigh::: and am feeling sienna's battle now.
there is so much to tell. i don't feel i could ever tell anybody everything and i want to. even i sit here rereading what i've put down i want to add and insert and revise. but i will not. my mind is racing through this entire entry. i'm glad to think that not all my weeks will be so adventurous. as opposed to sienna's. i do not envy you in that area, sienna. i'm surprised you have not written a novel yet.