Blog Post from Simon

Hey everyone it's Simon!

I forgot to blog last year, and although I won't necessarily be there for Mission Trip Sunday, I thought it would be nice to get my thoughts and experiences down. Since Monday, I've been working with a crew at a house in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. The owners are in their seventies and had lived in their house for a long time prior to the storm. Since then, their house has been raised on stilts (many comparisons to Baba Yaga have been made), where we are repairing it now. Since we started, the name of the game has been mudding, sanding, painting, and flooring. I painted three separate rooms multiple times. Our works days have been long (~8 hours), but it seems as though each day goes by more quickly than you would think. On Monday and Tuesday (as well as tomorrow) we visited Stewart's 50's themed ice cream shop, and it was amazing. Monday I had Salted Caramel Pretzel, and Tuesday I had Cookie Dough. Yesterday we had the opportunity to attend a minor league baseball game. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did, but it was really fun. We got on the big screen multiple times. I bought popcorn, but it was way saltier than I wanted, or expected. Probably to get their customers to buy more drinks. Many of the baseball players had weird names, such as Phildrick, it was fun to pretend like we knew them. Although our sleeping arrangements aren't as good as they were in New Orleans (but who expected them to be), they are notably better than they were in Joplin. There are three rooms, one for girls, guys, and adults. It's strange because even though both the girls and adults rooms are freezing, ours is very hot. One night, we woke up the group by trying to bring an industrial sized fan into our room. This week I've been reading a book my history teacher gave to me called River of Doubt. It details Teddy Roosevelt's journey into the Amazon rainforest. It's a good book, and also confirms my thoughts about his personality (which that he was cool, impulsive, and at times a not so nice man). Did you know that by the time of his death, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's son, knew Urdu, Hindustani, Romany, English, French, German, Spanish, Greek and Portuguese? Today, Ben, Ryan and I were working on flooring a room and the nail-gun jammed up on us three times. It was frustrating to say the least. It's been difficult being disconnected from the outside world. Generally, when another politician enters the 2016 race, I retweet CNN, but I was unable to do that for either Jeb Bush or Donald Trump. Also, I don't get to listen to all of the music I want to. Though I did make a mixtape which has been called "perfect; really good; A+". Luckily, before I left I binged the entire third season of Orange is the New Black so I don't have to wait in suspense. On Sunday, we visited the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York City. I found the memorial to be very profound. I did enjoy the museum, but it didn't strike an emotional chord with me as it did with others. It has been fun being with all my friends here, though as it can be, communal living is hard, and it is very easy to grow irritable with others. On Tuesday we visited the ocean, I was hesitant at first, but eventually I got in the water. I had forgotten how much fun it was to ride up and down with the waves. I'm so thankful that I've gotten to be a part of these mission trips the last four years, and I'll surely miss them in the years to come.

Thanks for reading,
Simon Brown

Oh also sorry this blog post is very disjointed, but I wrote what came to mind.