IAEM

Well the second week at WCC went much smoother than the first that is for sure. On monday, while i was filing away in the heat, we got a call from someone in west africa was calling to see if we were offering relief there. The answer was that unfortunately we were not.  My thoughts wandered to think about the rest of the world and them finding our phone number to call for disaster relief.  Incredible and beyond fathomable!  The past two days I had the pleasure of spending with Lisa (the Exec Dir and Founder) at the International Association for Emergency Managers Region II conference in Fair Lawn.  The topic was Campus and School Safety but they talked about a lot of other things and I got to be a booth idiot.  Or so my father said.  I got meet some really awesome people and learn a whole lot.  The one on one interaction with Lisa also helped me to have some serious conversation about my future in the field and where I will be after my adventure at WCC.  Lisa has entrusted me to various projects for the summer and really wants to hear my feed back about a lot of things.  I had to go through some FEMA curriculum and see how it applied to the curriculum that I have been working and see where those things can be integrated.  We also discussed the possibility of teaching some sort of disaster preparedness to the St. Bernard Parish communities. I think that would be an awesome opportunity as part of the outreach with Church of the Presentation.   We had a New Orleans reflection night last night, and I was once again reminded how fortunate I am and how awesome this team is. I really hope that God will bless me with an opportunity to return to region.  Maybe it will be to teach disaster preparedness.   Lisa spoke today regarding the curriculum that we teach and she is a very powerful speaker.  I love the fact too that she wants to immerse me in as much as possible so that I can really learn.   If you are interested in learning more, our website www.worldcares.org has a lot of cool stuff and my work email is dptm@worldcares.org. But i only check it at the office!!   I almost forgot to talk about my new friend Suleyman.  He is working on one of our projects and holds a PHD physical scientist from the Naval Research Institute.  He cracked me up all day yesterday. He is from turkey and is just really funny and his favorite word is dude.  picture a little turkish man going "dude" all day. hehe. 

I also have to note that my Boston BFF has much more exciting blogs than I.  There are always fun pictures to post and her apartment looks awesome.  Anyways, I hope to have more exciting news soon.