JVC Updates

One - July 29

Hello everyone,

This is just a quick email to let you all know that
along with changing the focus of my life for the next
year, my email address is also changing. My new email
address is going to be: eric_holthaus@yahoo.com...
it's hard letting go of SLU, but it's also very
exciting to think about what's in store for the
future. A quick update on me... I've been working in
Greenbelt, Maryland this summer at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center studying hurricane data from NASA
aircraft. I don't really understand much of what's
going on, but I have been learning a lot, and somehow
I put together a bunch of pretty pictures and graphs
into a presentation that I'm about to give today, so
wish me luck! This wednesday (tomorrow) I'll be
driving back and staying the night in St. Louis (my
cell phone number is still the same), and then this
Sunday evening my plane leaves for Portland, Oregon
where I will be serving over the next year with the
Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I will be living in a
community with four other JV's and working as the
Social Services Coordinator for St. Luke's Parish in
Woodburn, Oregon (about 30 miles south of Portland).
Woodburn is a little farming community of about 5,000
with a lot of migrant farm workers from Mexico living
in the area, so I'm expecting to use a lot of the
Spanish I've picked up over the last few years, and
hopefully improving a lot as well. There's also
evidently a lot of Russian immigrants that live in
Woodburn too, so with the help of a friend here in
Maryland, I'm trying to at least learn the Russian
alphabet. So as you can see, it will be a big change
for me after graduating from SLU with a B.S. in
Meteorology. I'm looking forward to the change
though, and expecting to learn a lot about the world
and a lot about myself over the next year. I'm
planning on sending out an email every few weeks to a
month (along with a picture in each one probably...),
so stay tuned and keep me in your prayers!

Take care and enjoy the rest of your summer!
Eric

P.S. my info in Oregon:
Eric Holthaus
474 Harrison St.
Woodburn, OR 97071
(503) 982-8610
(314) 973-3443 (I will take my cell phone with me)