While reviewing our prep materials, I found this note regarding the volunteer housing:
*It is important to note that Yankie Stadium is still under construction. At this point, our housing is a mix between camping and staying at a cheap budget hotel. If you have higher expectations, there are plenty of hotels in the area. If staying in a hotel, you will need to make your own reservations.
Hmm.. “Cheap Budget Hotel…” Actually, based on the slide show below, the place looks incredibly nice
Tommy found an article about where we’ll be staying..
It sounds pretty cool:
Four days before Katrina hit last August, the Salvation Army bought Biloxi’s Yankie Stadium, with plans to turn it into a Ray and Joan Kroc Community Center of Hope, a $22 million facility named for McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc.
The 50-year-old concrete bleachers, inundated with about 9 feet of water during the storm, were covered in mud and “full of dead things” when Green first saw the structure. It took months to clean it, seal it in and create small rooms under the seats, each holding four bunk beds.
The rooms have been made to look like little houses, “or bayou shacks” as Green likes to call them, complete with shingled roofs, porch lights and fake windows. Each room is air-conditioned; outside, the silver vents pop out of the bleacher seats like mushrooms.
At any given time, the Volunteer Village is home to about 100 people who are refurbishing homes for the poor, the elderly and the working class who reside on the surrounding streets of East Biloxi. They do everything — wiring, plumbing, putting up sheetrock — which means Green is always looking for skilled volunteers.
Flash Slideshow : VOLUNTEER VILLAGE: Haven in a stadium
Then there was this is one on Voluntourism..