MOVE Trip 2013: CRST Reservation, South Dakota

As most of you know, I've been avoiding this post for a while. I'm not totally sure why--I think it's just that I still don't know how to put this experience into words strong enough for anyone who wasn't there to understand the meaning. But that's the incredible thing about extended service trips with MOVE in the first place: nobody can ever fully understand it except for the people who were there with you at the time. That goes for every trip, every year. Even groups that go to the same place year after year do not have the same experience as the last group.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, MOVE is Saint Michael's College's volunteer program, and it stands for Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts. MOVE has tons of programs that run on a regular basis throughout the year, from weekly events throughout the local community to extended service trips both domestically and internationally. Last year, as a first-year student, I went to Beaumont, Texas over my winter break and spent a week at the Big Thicket National Preserve, where my group learned about biodiversity and environmental protection and helped plant trees and take care of the preserve. For my second MOVE trip, which I got home from about three weeks ago now, I did something drastically different. I joined ten others from Saint Mike's for a trip out to South Dakota and into the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, to the town of La Plant. We volunteered to work with a non-profit group called Simply Smiles, and spent the week staying in their community center. Our group was a "guinea pig group" for MOVE, as last year was the first time MOVE ever went out to the reservation and it was a group made up entirely of student leaders who had led other MOVE trips in the past. This year was the first time this trip was open to all students to apply for. Luckily, we were pretty much the best group in the history of MOVE trips (please don't let the bias in this sentence make you be skeptical about the rest of this post...)

Here we are arriving in South Dakota, prepared for the Big Red Bus to take us to the reservation! None of these photos are mine--as I said before, I barely took any pictures. This was taken by Josh Dufresne, a Simply Smiles staff member. The rest of the photos are by Carlos Sian, a member of the MOVE group...although I'm sure some were from the kids playing with his camera!

The reservation belongs to the Lakota people, whose roots trace back through generations to this land. As my group entered the reservation, the Simply Smiles staff reminded us that we were no longer in South Dakota or "in America" as we knew it. We were guests in someone else's place, and had to be respectful of that. Simply Smiles had been welcomed into the La Plant community a few years ago, and they were given the community center to work out of. They had been honored to gain the trust and respect of the people in the community, and paid it back with an equal amount of trust and respect. The reason for Simply Smiles' presence on the reservation is because it is an area of extreme poverty, with little infrastructure to help people survive. La Plant is a very isolated area, and people often have to fend for themselves.

The Community Center, looking on from the back entrance.

Some of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen were in South Dakota...and I live in Vermont, so I know sunsets!

Simply Smiles is "dedicated to building bright futures while improving the daily lives of impoverished children." It sounds like a general mission statement, but what it means is that it's taking on a lot of work and tackling several issues at once. That's why it's important to move slowly but steadily, and to make sure things are done correctly. The organization has had some success with their ongoing program in Oaxaca, Mexico, where they began. The CRST project is the first domestic project taken on by Simply Smiles, and they're the only outside group with a presence on the reservation.

So that's a lot of talking, but it's good to have some context before I launch into the whole story. We did a lot throughout our week on the reservation, but the best and most important thing we did by far was make connections. Despite everything else--the hardships, the poverty, the lack of resources or anything material--the best thing we could do for this community is show the people there that they are not alone. We ran a summer camp for the children in the community and spent time playing with them, laughing with them, and just getting to know them. The philosophy of Simply Smiles is that if we made one person smile each day, we were succeeding. Because when faced with so much struggle, it's difficult to smile.

Not only did we spend time with the kids, but we also got to know many adults and elders within La Plant as well. We helped Simply Smiles host a few community gatherings throughout the week, including bingo night, waffle breakfasts, and bison buger barbecues. As we sat down to eat with the elders, they would tell us about life in La Plant or teach us about Lakota culture. One of the highlights of the week was when Steve, a prominent member of the community, led a drumming ceremony for our group and told us about the meaning behind each of the songs they played. It was really great to see some of the younger boys learning how to use the drum, showing pride in their heritage and carrying on some magnificent traditions around our bonfire. We were all really happy to be included in the community, and to have been greeted with such a warm welcome.

 

 

During the mornings, when we were not holding summer camp, we'd work on projects that needed to be done around the community center or within the town. We helped finish renovating the kitchen of the community center, a project that had been started by previous volunteer groups, and some of us helped start a community garden.

Measuring and cutting wood for the kitchen.

I wasn't involved in this project as I was helping out in the kitchen, but many hours (and memories!) were put into the garden.

Some of the more artistic people in the group worked hard all week on the sign for the garden!

Sometimes we had projects that had not been expected by anyone, including getting vehicles unstuck from the mud.

One major goal for Simply Smiles on the reservation is to help provide adequate housing for everyone in the community. The climate in South Dakota allows for extreme weather, with incredibly hot temperatures in the later summer months and winter temperatures that can reach negative 50 degrees. The wind is incredibly strong when it rolls over the plains--I've never experienced anything like it. I can't imagine what that wind is like in the winter. And many people on the reservation live in homes that simply cannot protect them enough from this weather.

When it rains, the dry ground becomes what the locals call "gumbo": heavy, clumpy mud that sticks to your shoes. This kind of soil isn't very productive for agriculture...or walking...

So, as part of our project for the week, we helped set up for what would be the first Simply Smiles-facilitated home construction project on the CRST reservation. These affordably-priced homes were designed by the people living on the reservation, who know better than anyone else the exact issues to consider when building them. The community members also help build the homes, and by involving everyone in each project, people begin to come together and support each other.

 Although our week was too short for us to see the construction for the new home begin, it was really great to know that we were helping to prepare the area where it would be built. This included helping our friend Steve move everything out of his current home and begin taking it down so that the new house could be built in its place. I've been following Simply Smiles on Facebook, and the foundation has been completed. I can't wait to see pictures of the whole thing when it's done. It is one big step in a series of thousands of smaller steps to help build up this community, both literally and figuratively.

It took all of us for a project of this size! This is another photo by Josh.

How many volunteers does it take to move a doghouse?

I could spend hours talking about this one week of my life. I could go into much further detail about these incredible kids; the older community members who I had the pleasure of meeting; the amazing resilience of this one small community; Simply Smiles as a group; my wonderful MOVE group who have become great friends and are possibly the only ones who wouldn't mind listening to my constant rambling; and my ups and downs throughout the week that the rest of my group, and probably the community itself, felt as a whole. I could tell you about how I loved and hated everything about this place at the same time, and try to explain how something like that feels. I could tell you about each of the people behind the many friendship bracelets covering my wrists; or the fact that not a day goes by when that one week doesn't occupy my thoughts and free time; or that I do not just want to go back but feel the intense need to. I could try to describe all of the mixed feelings about that week to the best of my ability, despite the fact that there are things I still don't understand and probably never will. I could even apologize for the long post or the dramatic language, but I won't, because I truly believe that this trip deserves more attention than anything I've ever done. There are a lot of things I will keep to myself, simply because I don't know how to put them into words.

All I will say is that if you're still reading, and if any of this has struck a chord with you, then this trip is for you. You might buy Simply Smiles coffee or send a donation, but if that doesn't sit right with you and you feel that you need to do more, this trip is definitely for you. What Simply Smiles needs in order to work, and what this community needs, is people who care. People who will set their lives aside for a week at a time, people who will forget about their own wants or needs (including the need to know or understand everything and the luxury of indoor plumbing), people who don't mind getting their hands dirty or being challenged with something every step of the way. If you want to volunteer to do something that truly takes all of you, and that you don't do for the "rewarding" feeling afterward but simply because it's something that needs to be done, then volunteer with Simply Smiles.

If you go to Saint Mike's, you can apply for next year's MOVE group: when the semester begins again, pay attention to application due dates. Although all of the trips are equally awesome, definitely consider CRST Reservation, South Dakota as one of your picks. It's truly a dedication, but it's entirely worth it. If you've never been on a MOVE trip, all I can say is GO. I guarantee that whatever your qualms or reservations about it are, none of them are comparable to your reasons for going. Once you go on one, you'll want to go on all of them. They will change how you see the world.

If you didn't click on the links throughout the post, I would strongly advise going back through and exploring. They will describe some things I mentioned more clearly than I did. And if you're interested, check out the Simply Smiles blog to hear from more of the volunteer groups. My group wrote three while we were there; check them out:

First Saint Mike's MOVE Blog

MOVE's Wednesday Blog

Last SMC MOVE Blog

Whatever you do, give it everything you've got.

-Lauren

Fossil Free SMC!

We've had some really cool environmental awareness things going on around campus over the past few  weeks. Not that this is anything unusual--at Saint Mike's, most students aim to live daily with the environment in mind. However, we're at the beginning of a new, huge movement, and it all started with Bill McKibben's visit to Saint Mike's at the end of January. His talk was incredibly inspiring, and I was quite thrilled to be able to write an article for Her Campus SMCVT about the event.

Bill McKibben is one engaging speaker.

As one of the most influential people on the topic of climate change, Bill McKibben is quite a role model for people all over the world, and the student body was so excited to have him here. He is a founder of the website 350.org, an organization that attempts to instill environmental and legislative change through its campaigns. In the past, it has succeeded in launching huge social activism movements worldwide, and it continues to make an impact on how global citizens view personal responsibilities for the way we treat our planet.

One of 350's recent campaigns is its divestment campaign, which has been asking colleges and universities across the nation to divest stocks from its list of 200 top oil companies. This "Fossil Free" movement, if taken on by enough schools, could make an impact--but more importantly, it's a statement that a great number of our population will no longer stand by and see nothing done about climate change. We want to protect our future, and we will not support something that will inevitably harm it.

So, this week a group of about thirty or forty students got together to start planning our own divestment campaign. We are currently waiting to hear back from the school's administration about exactly which companies we are invested in, and once we find out about that, we're going to start planning talks about divesting from any oil companies. It's kind of surprising that we'd be investing in stocks in the first place--I don't know, it's just something I never thought about. But I'm so glad to be taking this next step. When you're fighting something as gigantic and ambiguous as climate change, everything counts. ESPECIALLY money. And where we put our money is a statement of our beliefs. Taking our investments away from these companies sends out a clear message: this is NOT okay.

I'm really excited for what the rest of the semester holds for this campaign. It won't be easy work, that's for sure--after all, we don't want Saint Mike's to be losing any money in this process, and we will need to find new companies to invest in that will make up the difference but also follow in accordance with our beliefs, environmental and otherwise.

To support Saint Mike's in the divestment endeavor, like our Fossil Free SMC Facebook page. Find out more about the divestment campaign and how you can set one up for your own school here at 350's campaign website. If your school is already participating, see how you can get involved. Most importantly, SPREAD THE WORD. Knowledge is power, and the more people who know about this movement, the better. Remember that if we keep ourselves educated about the issues we want to face, and band together to change those issues, we really can make a difference.

Stay informed!
Lauren

Fall Break and a Pumpkin Party

Hello everyone!

Last Friday I told you that the upcoming weekend was a long one, because we had Monday and Tuesday off. Last year during Fall Break, I went home to visit my family. This time, I stayed here and they came to visit me! My parents have obviously been here before, but they brought my aunt and uncle, who had never seen Saint Mike's. It was so much fun showing them around!

Dad, Mom, Aunt Tracey and I hanging out on Main Campus.

My mom left her mark in the Word Garden!

The weather was a bit cold and rainy when they first arrived, but it cleared up pretty quickly and it was beautiful on Saturday! We took advantage of the nice day and went on a drive up to the Champlain Islands in northern Vermont. At one point, we were only about a mile away from the Canadian border! We also took the bridge over to New York.

Hmm, which way to go?

A lovely view of Lake Champlain.

After the ride, we came back into Burlington, where we went to Church Street. I insisted on getting kettle corn...it's one of my favorite snacks to have while I'm downtown. I could live on that stuff!

Mmmm...kettle corn!

We tried to cram as much as we could into the days they were there, so it was pretty hectic but lots of fun! Everyone had a great time, and I was so happy to see my family after seven weeks without them!

This weekend has been jam-packed with fun stuff, too! Yesterday, my friends and I decided to have ourselves a "fall party". Some of us went apple and pumpkin picking that morning. It was a beautiful day, so we took a drive out to Shelburne Orchards. We had a great time picking apples, and they were delicious!

Cara found a good one!

 

Greta likes liberty apples!

Once we picked up pumpkins, we returned to campus and began making apple and pumpkin pie. Other friends contributed cupcakes, cookies, and pretty much any dessert you can think of...there was a LOT of food!

Nobody knew where to start!

Cait and Emma mixed the apple pie filling.

Emma, Alex, and Merrill made delicious cupcakes! (Click on the linked names to see their blogs!)

We also brought our pumpkins outside and carved them to make jack-o-lanterns. It brought me right back to my childhood! I know some people get freaked out by "gutting" the pumpkin because it feels so slimy in your hands, but I have to admit that's one of my favorite things about pumpkin carving! It turns out that most of my friends are the same way. It got very messy very fast!

Getting started!

 

Liz with a "pumpkin beard"! She separated all of the seeds so that we could roast them :)

And here are the finished products! Maya and I carved the one in the middle with hearts for eyes.

Our party was definitely an awesome way to spend the day. The fun will continue later on when Green Up, an environmental club here at SMC, hosts their annual Harvest Fest. There's all kinds of food and tons of fun activities. But for now, it's time to study!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, everyone!

Lauren

Tandem Biking, Mountain Hiking, and Other Shenanigans (Just an Average Week at SMC!)

Happy October and Happy Monday!

Last week I had to finish a project for my Nature and Outdoor Writing class called Encounters. Basically, we've been working on this project throughout the whole month of September, trying to spend as much time as possible outdoors and documenting what we saw. I spent a great deal of my month walking through the woods taking pictures...sounds awesome, right? It gets better though! We also get to spend a lot of our class time outdoors, and we journal about all of our adventures. Our class this past Thursday was a bike ride! We went to Local Motion, a local business that supports biking in Burlington, and rented bikes (a cost that we were luckily able to get funded by the school). I got to ride a tandem (two-seater) bike with my friend Nate. On the way back, I rode with Professor Sultze--we had some laughs trying to coordinate our pedaling. It was so much fun!

"You'd look sweet upon the seat...of a bicycle built for two!"

It was such a relaxing day, and I still can't believe that I got to go on a bike ride for class. It'll definitely be one of my favorite and most memorable classtimes ever!

Anyway, I started off by telling you about my Encounters project and kind of forgot where I was going with that. Woops! On Friday morning, only a few hours before I was to hand in my project, I was sitting outside on a bench with my friend and we saw a squirrel jump into a trash can. Now, the squirrels here at Saint Mike's are pretty crazy, so there was nothing new about that, but the problem was that there apparently wasn't enough trash in the can so the poor squirrel got stuck all the way at the bottom! It was trapped and couldn't get out.



So sad!

No fear, though. Saint Mike's students to the rescue! A few people crowded around as we took the lid off of the trash can and slowly tipped it on its side. The squirrel had been scared and was hissing at us (who knew they could hiss!), but it scampered away as soon as it was freed. I hope none of the other squirrels jumped in after we left! I decided to give the last page of my Encounters Project to this little squirrel. It certainly was an interesting encounter!

So, as you can see, I had an interesting few days. But it gets better! I was doing a lot of homework over the weekend, so I was happy to take a break. Earlier this month, I had signed up to take a hike with the Wilderness Program. The Saint Mike's Wilderness Program is really cool because it offers you a chance to go explore all of the awesome natural wonders of Vermont in a safe environment with people who share the same interests. Plus, it's pretty cheap! You can even borrow and equipment you might need so that you don't have to buy all of your own.

Each trip has student leaders who have been trained as wilderness instructors. Our group had two awesome leaders, plus four other students in all. I liked having a smaller group...we all got to talk and get to know each other while doing something we loved!

This was my first activity with the Wilderness Program. Every time I signed up for something last year, I unfortunately had to cancel. So, especially after a long week, you can imagine how pumped I was to hike Mt. Hunger!

A beautiful view of a waterfall about halfway up Mt. Hunger.

The hike was a 2.2-mile trail to the top, so 4.4 miles in all. Some areas were pretty steep while others were a more gradual ascent. As we got toward the top, it was much rockier, and we had to climb some parts of it. To be honest, it was quite the workout!

It was also pretty rainy, so it was difficult to see. I imagine that the view from the top would have been awesome, but we lucked out enough with the weather. At the summit, we stopped to eat lunch. It wasn't raining yet and there wasn't much wind. It was cool, but it felt nice after all of that hiking. It only started raining on our way back down, and there was enough tree cover that it wasn't bad at all.

The summit of Mt. Hunger on a foggy day.

Still, I was soaked by the time we got back. It was a bit slippery on the way down, especially in muddy areas. Being the clumsy person that I am, I definitely had to take it slow at some points. The group was really understanding though, and we all helped each other out.

I'm pretty sore today, but I can't wait to do another hike. Vermont is beautiful, and there are so many opportunities out there. I'm so excited to have another experience like this!

Founder's Society

Last night I went with my friends Cait, Alex and Merrill (congrats to Cait and Alex on their tour-guide status!) to the last Founder's Society meeting of the year. To sum up very simply what Founders Society does, I'll use the following quote from the Saint Mike's website:

"The Founders Society is Saint Michael's student ambassador organization. Ambassadors work with Admission and Alumni Relations staff to foster strong relationships with prospective students and alumni through a variety of campus and off-campus activities."

So basically, Founders Society does a ton of really cool stuff to get the word out about Saint Mike's. It is in charge of the SMC blogosphere as well as coordinating tours for prospective students and organizing events like the Phone-a-Thon, which is when current students get together and call prospective students to talk about why they like Saint Mike's.

I had gone to a Founders meeting at the very beginning of the year, and had a good time getting information from its members about their different jobs and what they do to contribute in helping prospective students gain the whole Saint Mike's experience. I also participated in a Founders event at one of our accepted students days, when I had lunch with a few graduating high school seniors and told them about my own Saint Michael's experience. I had always wanted to get more involved with the Founders Society, so I was really glad that I attended this past meeting.

I met a few of the other bloggers there and had a blast exchanging tips and hearing about how they became interested in Founders Society. I had come on a special night, as it was their last meeting of the year and coordinators were giving out awards to various members for their hard work and dedication. I was impressed at how close everyone in the group seemed to be, even though it's a large society. It was just like a big family reunion!

Going to this meeting really helped open my eyes to the Founders Society, and I can't wait to attend meetings and become more involved next year--in fact, I'm sad that I missed out on so much this year! I'm also going to work on becoming even more involved with other groups next year as well, including signing up for more MOVE events, Green Up (a student environmental organization), and the Wilderness Club.

Here's one of the latest videos from a few of the folks in the Founders Society. This video is part of the SMC Kribs series, which looks at all of the housing options we have on campus. Check out the SMC YouTube Channel to see more informative and hilarious footage!

Peace,
Ren

My MOVE Trip: Big Thicket, Texas 2012

We have an awesome volunteer program here at Saint Mike's called MOVE (Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts).  We do a ton of local projects, and there are all kinds of programs you can sign up for each week to help out the community in some way, whether it's cooking for the hungry, playing with shelter animals, or hanging out with some local kids or elderly people. There are a lot of outdoor volunteer opportunities too, like working in the organic garden or cleaning up public outdoor areas.

Some of the coolest opportunities MOVE offers are the extended service trips. There are domestic and international trips that take place over winter, spring and summer breaks, completely dedicated to volunteer service. I spent a week of my winter break working in the Big Thicket National Preserve near Beaumont, Texas.

My trip was so amazing and enlightening, and fortunately I had the opportunity to prepare a scholarship project about it to present on a panel. It was called "How are you MOVED?" and each of the panelists spoke about what they took away from their trips. I was really nervous to do this, since the panel I was on was for faculty members and my voice gets all shaky when I have to speak in public. However, I really enjoyed presenting, because I realized I had so much to say about the experience.

I made a little scrapbook on mixbook.com to use as a guide for my speech. The following are a few of the ideas I addressed:

This was the cover of my scrapbook. I was so happy that I had such an awesome time on my first MOVE trip--it  definitely will not be my last!

I wanted to set my first page up like a little yearbook. There were 11 of us on this trip, and each person was such a key character with a different personality. Everyone added to the dynamic of the group, and we really hit it off. The center picture if the Field Research Station, where we had accommodations to stay for the week.

On our first day, we met a young ranger named Elliot. He spoke to us for a while about the Big Thicket, and how it's such a diverse ecosystem because so much was pushed south from the Ice Age. After thousands of years, these different ecosystems adapted and began to thrive together, which is why the Thicket is so diverse. During his talk, he was describing how dense the forest is, and how hot and humid it becomes in the summer. He told us, "When the wind blows in the Thicket, you can see it, and you can hear it, but you can't feel it." Then, later on, we were taking a hike through a really dense area of the woods. I heard this rustling noise and looked up to see the tops of the trees swaying and leaves falling down around me. But Elliot was right, because I couldn't feel the wind! It suddenly gave me this incredibly small feeling.

That's why my favorite picture from the trip is the one on the top left side, looking up at the tree. I think it's the only picture I took that captured that feeling. I told everyone at the panel that I also like the leaf in this picture, too, because in real life this leaf is tiny but looking at it from this angle makes it seem huge. I was thinking that a leaf is such a small detail in a whole forest. But without leaves, what would the forest be? So even though it's small, this leaf makes a huge impact. That's kind of how we felt too. Here was this group of college students, staying for only a week, being dwarfed by these massive trees and doing such a small amount of work in such a gigantic place. But the important thing is that we were there, and like those little leaves, we made an impact too.

All of these pictures were taken the day we went to the Sandylands to clear trails. The Sandylands are an interesting part of the Thicket. The soil is sandier, hence the name, and the trees are more sparse. However, the brush is grassy and dense, so cutting these trails was quite the challenge! That's me in the top right corner of the left page, wielding my machete. I never thought I'd ever use a machete in my life!

This was such a cool experience because we were all pushed to our limits. We accomplished so much that we had never even dreamed of...and by the end of that day, we had cleared about a mile of trails that would be opened up for public use!

I almost got a little choked up at this part of the presentation, because Maxine is one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. She's an 83-year-old native Texan who is absolutely obsessed with the Big Thicket. She accompanied us one day in the middle of the week, and brought us to this tree on the left page. It was one of the biggest, most beautiful trees I have ever seen. Planted by Lance Rosier, "father of the Big Thicket," this elm was over 150 years old. Our task for the day was to clear the area around it--the saplings growing up near it were rubbing against its bark, which isn't good for such and old tree because it can open up "wounds" and become easily "infected."

After we completed this task, Maxine said she had to show us something. She took off through the Thicket, not even following a particular path, like a true trailblazer. She really knows her way around, because in a few minutes she stopped us in front of this old mulberry tree, which is in the first three pictures on the right page. Maxine had grown up with this tree, and unfortunately it was dying. Parts of it were rotten and scorched. She told us we were going to have a "tree funeral."

I love nature, but I had never thought of doing something like this before. As we were gathered around the tree and Maxine began to say a few words, I thought, why not have a tree funeral? Trees provide life, oxygen, and such an abundance of resources. Where would people be without trees? I will always remember this day because at that moment I learned something about respect--it's not something that only humans deserve.

As we were leaving the site of the tree, I thanked Maxine for bringing us to see it. She patted my shoulder and said, "I just wanted to share that with people who truly care." I realized then that our group really did care, and we really were making a difference. It was beautiful, and Maxine is someone I will remember for the rest of my life. 

On the last two days of our trip, we spent all of our time planting trees. Longleaf pines are essential to the Big Thicket's ecosystem. We had heard about them all week, and were so excited to plant them. The little seedlings looked like brown carrots with the soil packed around their roots, and that eventually became a joke with the whole group. We used dibble bars, which were these long poles with dull spikes on the end that could be driven straight into the ground. Then we'd take a seedling and place it into the small hole that the dibble made. This was an efficient process, and by the end of two days we had planted 10,000 trees. Isn't that crazy? Our little group, doing so much in so little time. It was amazing, and those trees will grow tall and strong as a reminder of the work we did there. Our impact will live on for hundreds of years.

Throughout the trip, we had reflections every night where we would just sit down together and explain our thoughts about the day's work. One thing that kept coming up was about how our trip is sort of different than the other MOVE trips, in that we're not working directly with people. The other trips often do work like serving the homeless or helping classes at underprivileged schools, while all of our work took place out in the wilderness with barely anyone around. The main question one night was, what are we doing to help people?

The answer came pretty quickly. We realized that serving the environment is serving people. Everyone in the world has one thing in common: we all share the Earth. That means we need to protect it, take care of it, and make sure that it stays in shape for future generations.  

Saint Mike's is a small campus, but I can guarantee that if I hadn't gone on this trip, I would have never met most of these people. I was terrified to embark on this journey across the country with a bunch of people I barely knew. But I reminded myself that I wanted to reconnect with nature and do more service as well as get out of my comfort zone, and this was an excellent way to do just that. I left Saint Mike's with a group of friendly strangers, and I returned with ten new friends who, each in their own way, had changed me for the better.

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and place, because you'll never be this way ever again." This quote truly wrapped up everything I felt about my MOVE trip. The Big Thicket was a special place, and I was there at a really special time. I will never be the same because of it, and I couldn't be happier.

So, that was my experience! After I finished presenting, I found a few of my group members who had come to support me. They were almost in tears! We all talked about how much we missed Texas, and I realized that this is why I really love these people--we may not have seen each other in a while, as we're all extremely busy, but as soon as we get together again we're back in Texas and the conversation is as easy as ever.

Michael Samara, the Dean of Students, came up to me after my presentation to shake my hand. He thanked me for sharing my story, and Dave Kells from the Counseling Staff told me it was touching and something that "needs to be heard." As I walked outside, a woman approached me and told me how much she had enjoyed my presentation and ending quote. She said it was beautiful and inspiring. I was so happy to hear the positive feedback and know that simply telling my story sparked something within so many people. That's really what it's all about, and that's why I will continue to serve.

Peace,
Ren