Maybe it's not feasible to have your life changed in a matter of days, but I am definitely not the same person as I was last week. Going on this trip was the single best thing I ever did and I would do it a thousand times over. No matter how many crude images were thrown all over TV, no matter how many times I heard amazing stories of survival and summaries of events, nothing prepared me for what I saw this weekend.

We left Wednesday afternoon and spent about 12 hours on the bus, with a change to central time included. I hate long bus rides, and the whole time I was somewhat anxious. I had no idea what to expect. I had never done any other volunteer work before, plus I kept thinking about how the showers were not going to be private. This bothered me so much for some reason. I drifted in and out of sleep on the bus, and when I woke up for the last time, I looked out the window and saw a roof torn off a house. I knew we were here.

We spent the entire weekend under a circus tent in sleeping bags. We woke up at 7 every morning, were split into groups, and given tasks. The most heartwrenching one of them all was gutting houses that had been destroyed.

Equipped with gloves and work boots, we made our way to the house we were assigned. I had my camera with me the whole time, ready to snap at anything. It was absolutely unbelievable. There are no words to even begin to describe what I was seeing. I'm going to try and get pictures on the internet, because to sit here and try to explain how an entire house was sitting in the middle of the street is too much. But yea, there was a house just sitting in the middle of the street. There were lots of them. There was a boat on the grass much like a child throws his toys all over the floor. Sometimes there were just stairs and some cement representing where a house used to stand. We walked on the beach for a bit. Entire casinos had been moved miles away from where they were. They had washed up on the shore still in tact, for the most part. Trash and flies were everywhere. Occasionally a lonely stuffed animal would just be lying helplessly on the ground and I would stop and think who it belonged to. There was a spray painted code on each house that had been checked. The top number was the date it had been checked, the left was who checked it, the bottom number was how many people they found and if they were dead or alive, and the right was if they found any dogs or abnormalities such as a gas leak. Most houses had a 0 for how many people were found dead, but not all of them did.

In some places, the water level had risen above 20 feet. Houses landed on top of one another, but seemingly meaningless things like signs had stayed in place. I felt like I was walking through a war torn country. How could this be America? I knew what I was looking at. I knew what had happened. I knew strong winds and flooding had caused all of this, but I still could not believe what I was seeing.

We got to the house. All of the houses are small and close together, located on once cozy streets. There was an awful smell everywhere you went. Some people were still living in these houses, and I honestly don't know how they survived. I rushed in the doorway to get a look. It was gut wrenching. First the sight hits you, then the smell, then all of these emotions. Furniture everywhere, muddy rugs, papers, utensils, toys, pans, everything that's in a house, just wet and dirty and moldy and not where it should be. The water level in most of these houses had only gone to about 5 feet, and it was marked by a line of mold on the wall of the entire house. I ventured in a little further to the kitchen. Even though I had a mask on, I didn't know how long I could stand the stench. This house had not been touched since the storm, which meant this place was just left to rot and now we were all in it, breathing in decomposition. The refrigerator was overturned, and its contents, whatever they were, had to be the worst thing I had ever smelled. Next to the kitched was a little girl's room. Clothes and barbies were everywhere. On the door there was a calendar flipped to August. All of the other pages were stuck together. It was like a window into this girl's life. A window that had been horribly shattered.

The next room seemed to be a spare room, and the last room was the grandmother's. It was crushing. There were all of her things, every single item she owned, and we had to put it in a plastic bag and throw it in a pile in the yard. People who were not there don't understand what's it like to empty out someone's closet and throw it all away. Christmas ornaments were strewn across the floor. All of her Sunday clothes had to be thrown away. Her bed, her shoes, her purses, her alarm clock, everything. Although I knew these people had lost everything, I did not quite understand just what everything meant.

Our assignment was to gut the house, which meant take everything out of it and knock the walls down and pull the carpet out. We started an assembly line to pass the things out of the house. As as a small statue of Mary passed through my hands, I held it for a little longer and stared. I don't know what I was thinking about. Something about God and these people and how it all plays a part. But I don't know.

We saved photos and jewelery and other things of sentimental value. I saw the picture of the girl whose room I was kicking the walls in. She was very pretty. There was a photograph of a young woman with a love note to someone named Rodney scrawled on the back of it. Something about being together forever. There were some rings which we couldn't figure out the value of. There was a BMW in the driveway. We climbed on top of it to get to the roof. Everytime I went past it I automatically thought not to scratch it. I had to remind myself that it was nothing more than a piece of junk.

Finally everything was removed and we could tear the house down. The walls came right down. Poisonous black mold was everywhere, as well as cockroaches and an assortment of other bugs. After 8 hours only wooden frames stood. It was outrageous.

Walking into a house and leaving it a bunch of wood beams is one thing. Walking into a house and seeing it completely destroyed is another. Doing both these things just blows my mind.

I didn't get a chance to talk to people who had been in the storm, and I really regret that. I heard some stories from kids who had. There was one about a man who had stayed in his house to ride the storm out, and he was clinging to his child as hard as he could, but the winds ripped the child right out of his hands forever. There was another about families who tied themselves to tree tops when the water had risen so high to keep from floating away, but when the water kept rising they drowned. When the water went back down again corpses were hanging from the trees. Another man rode a bath tub for six hours until the water went down. Yet another couple rode into Biloxi a few days after and pulled into a Walmart parking lot where they saw other cars with people in them. The next day they woke up to FEMA spray paninting the cars. The people inside them had all been dead.

Stuff like this only happens in movies. I was trying to explain to my friends over the phone just exactly what I had done, but they didn't understand. I didn't understand before I got here. It's impossible to comprehend these larger than life stories and the devastation that has raped this community. It's not just here, but it's across three states. But at the end of the day, I was glad to have grass to sleep on. I didn't care that I was eating unrecognizable meat, that I took a three minute shower, that I had no make up on, that I had sweat through my jeans, that I was filthy, that my hair was the size of a small dog. All I focused on was going in and getting the job done and worrying about myself later. Suddenly showering in public was so far off in the distance. Another side of me, a selfless, motivated side of me that I never knew I had came out of me while I was down there, and it came out of everyone who went. And I am damn proud of myself because I know I made a difference to someone. Maybe I sound conceited, but you know what, maybe I am. Not everyone who isn't out there gutting houses doesn't care about these people. And the people here will need help for decades. But there's something rewarding about actually being here, about seeing it with your own eyes, about accomplishing something from start to finish, and it's not the same as throwing a can of tuna fish in a box. And no one can take the complete and utter satisfaction I have with myself away from me by calling me stuck up.

I have a greater appreciation for the Salvation Army and Red Cross. It's easy to point the finger and say these groups aren't doing enough, which the media has done a lot. But when you get down there and see entire neighboorhoods completely gone, you wonder where exactly to start. In my opinion, everyone should have an opportunity to go down there, but not everyone can. I'm thankful I got to be a part of this. All my other friends went to the beach and ate pizza for their fall break, but I was a part of history, I did something that I will never forget, and for that I can only be proud.