Finally Some Rain

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, St. Louis is finally receiving some significant rain. We've had a few thunderstorms during the spring and summer, but quick downpours rather than a steady rain. Going almost 4 months without a day of steady rain was hard. Don't get me wrong a love a nice sunny day, but you appreciate the sunny days more when you have a little rain. Besides finally bringing green to the grass, it's also going to be cooler the next few days as well. It's the break in the heat I've been waiting for, all spring and summer long. While I've handled the heat and humidity pretty well so far, it's nice to have a week-long hiatus. I'm enjoying the rain so much that I just spent the last 2 hours playing Ultimate Frisbee in the rain. I haven't been able to do that since my days at Madison.

Of course this rain is all from Hurricane Dennis, which leads into my next topic (somewhat). Last week the Outreach Team (that's the team I'm on next year) had our retreat. The six of us (four members, a third-year intern, and the program director) went out of town for 3 days to discuss roles, projects, goals and a timeline for next year. I've been very excited to start in my new role, because I'm full of ideas I think will benefit the Corps in the long term. This was our first chance to really discuss some of the bigger events and tasks that we are responsible for next year. While there were times it seemed we had more on our plate than we could handle, I left the week knowing that we would face many challenges, but that if we worked hard we could meet our objectives and really fuel the Corps next year. By Friday, we were already facing a possible obstacle in the form of Hurricane Dennis. Our Emergency Response Team was prepared to leave to go down to Florida to provide disaster relief down there. Last year, the ERT and the Outreach Team were called down to Florida and Alabama, but not until late August. With the ERT preparing to leave, there was some doubt whether or not the two returning members on the Outreach Team would go down. While this would have been a manageable situation, it would've made that much more difficult to prepare for the upcoming year. Now that Dennis wasn't nearly as destructive as once thought, it looks like we're in the clear for now, but the prospect remains open that we, as a team may be called upon to respond in the event a larger hurricane hits later in the summer. On the one hand, I think going down there would be an experience like nothing I've ever had before, but it would be a serious setback to our team as we prepare for the new year and work to meet our objectives. As always, I will do whatever is needed of me, even if that means putting some of our work on the backburner so I can go help those who will truly need the help.