Nashville

Unfortunately, I didn't come home with a pair of cowboy boots--though perhaps it was fortunate for our bank account, since I saw not one pair of boots in Nashville for under $250.

Now, the trip was a huge success, and hopefully you've been following the ASB blog and checking in our our progress. We got home last night about 7 p.m., which was earlier than we'd originally expected, and nice for the group, who were tired. We had four volunteer-packed days, spending time with the Second Harvest Food Bank, a Habitat for Humanity home store (a thrift store for home repair and construction goods), and three Youth Encouragement Services (YES) centers around the city of Nashville.

We drove from Nashville to Maryville on Wednesday night to the Once Upon a Time retreat, which is a hostel-like wilderness retreat. The majority of guests are "break away" groups like us, on alternative spring breaks from high schools and colleges. We did service on Thursday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a group of rangers; we spent the time planting grasses meant to help the landscape and feed the animals in the park. The rangers told us that our group of twenty-eight did in about five hours what would have taken them weeks to do alone, and they were grateful and thankful for our work, which made us feel spectacular.

And now we're home! I still haven't unpacked or laundered my duffel bag full of dirty clothes, but I'll get to that after I (finally) take a shower. Yikes. Here's a picture of the group from Thursday in the park, and I'll be posting more later on.