Leaving Miami

Hello dear friends!
I'm writing from Miami for the last time. I am sorry that my posts have been so infrequent, but we have been living in a house without power since we came back from Georgia. :( I can only imagine what it was like for those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Luckily we have a gas stove, so we have been able to cook meals for dinner, but living on PB&J sandwiches for a week and a half for lunch has gotten a little old. So has no air conditioning, no lights, no hot showers and no laundry facilities. :) it has been pretty trying for our team, but we have done well.

Let me tell you a funny story:

Two nights ago at 3am, one of my roommates, Meredith, woke up suddenly. She put her hand to the floor and felt water. Her first thought was that one of our other roommates, Whitney, had spilled her water bottle during the night. Then she realized that the water was pretty deep and it was in the entire room. Whitney, Jen and I woke up shortly after her and we all realized that our room was flooded. We could hear water running somewhere in the house, but we had no idea where it was coming from. My three roommates got up and went exploring. I was a little slower--I kept focusing on the fact that it as 3 in the morning and I wanted to sleep! :)
Once they got into the living room, they realized that the entire house had 2 1/2 inches of water in it due to the water main on one of our toilets mysteriously breaking at some point during the night. Luckily, it was CLEAN water. We spent the following 2 hours brushing and moping the water out of our front door. We also had to remove everything that we had on the floor that had become sopping wet: air mattresses, sleeping bags, backpacks, clothing, computers, cameras, books... all that we owned in the house. Everything ended up on the front lawn. Around 5:30, our sleep deprived bodies couldn't handle anymore and we all went back to sleep--some people on the front lawn, some on the couch, some in the van. We woke up again around 8 am and continued the clean up process by pulling together all our wet clothes so that we could take them to a laundry mat. As our house is right next door to a school, you can imagine the questioning looks that we received as parents dropped off their children and teachers came to work. Some people thought that we were having a yard sale--it pretty much looked like it. :)

We are leaving Miami tomorrow and driving back to Charleston where we will be working until Christmas break. Our next project is with Eagle harbor Home for Boys. The boys are either neglected or abandoned. We are not sure what we will be doing there, but we are looking forward to going back to base to have some personal space. Living quarters here have been very tight and we all are excited about having our own rooms again.

That's all for now. Once I get back to Charleston I hope to post some pictures from my adventures here. There are some good ones. :)

Grace and Peace.