Spring break was dirt cheap and dirty for University of Mary freshman Jennifer Anderson.

It also was the best nine days of her life.

She traveled in a bus with 43 other college students, most of whom were from North Dakota State University, and saw the Midwest, Deep South and Texas.

She went with a group called Students Today Leaders Forever on its Pay it Forward Tour. The volunteer work Anderson did along the way was a perk. Her main reason for going on the trip was to travel.

"I've never really been out of this general area," she said. "I've been to Houston, but not a lot of big cities."

For $425, she spent nine days on a bus trip that included two meals a day and a place to sleep each night. Usually the meals were sandwiches and the place to sleep was a floor in a church or youth center. Showers were not always available. Everyone was up by 7 a.m. and the bus was packed to move on to the next location.

"If the place had a shower, it was amazing," she said. "I never appreciated a shower so much."

The trip gives many students a new appreciation for everyday things, as well as a new view on life and a look at life they may have only seen on TV.

Take the syringe she found in the gutter in what looked like a nicer neighborhood on one of the stops in Texas. Seeing drug use like that on TV or reading about it is one thing. Picking up after it is another.

Most of the service projects involved cleanup or renovation. The students visited with nursing home residents in Madison, Wis.; clearing out a gym warehouse in Indianapolis; volunteering at a botanical garden in Memphis, Tenn.; building flower beds at an apartment complex in Shreveport, La.; helping renovate a YMCA in Galveston, Texas; and working with the park service in San Antonio.

Her favorite stop was Memphis, while the most gracious recipients were in Shreveport, and the most humbling experience, which also was her least favorite place, was in Indianapolis.

In Memphis, the weather turned stormy and lightning struck a tree near where Anderson and a few others were raking the grounds of a botanical garden. Also during her stay, they ran into people in a restaurant from North Dakota who had a son who goes to NDSU. Another person in Anderson's group knew the couple's son.

Those types of connections were everywhere, including among members of the group. She met the girl whose parents convinced her parents to let Anderson go to the University of Mary. Anderson is from Grandin.

The food was good in Memphis. They fry more types of food there than she's ever seen done in North Dakota. She tried fried green tomatoes and thought they were good.

She also learned about Southern hospitality, and she would get more lessons the farther south she'd go. People also were prayerful. They would pray, and they would pray for her, she said.

"They were so willing to share and thankful for everything, too," she said.

The residents of the apartment complex in Shreveport were among the most gracious of their volunteer sites. There they planted four raised flower beds.

But, they learned a lot about life at the other sites. In Madison, she spent time playing bingo with some competitive residents, and other students in the groups visited with patients in the Alzheimer's unit.

In Indianapolis, they cleared out warehouse space that will help the gym expand to serve more people. It was in what looked like a shabby part of town, Anderson said. What she saw of the city looked equally depressed.

"It is one of the saddest places," she said.

None of the places they went were in well-to-do neighborhoods, Anderson said.

When they were done with a project in one place, they would get on the bus and move to the next. Besides sleep, time on the bus was used to talk about individual experiences at each volunteer site and getting to know each other. Then, on occasion, the bus became a rolling dance club.

Anderson enjoyed her experience so much, she wants to do it again. And she'd like more University of Mary students and people from the Bismarck area to participate. She plans to start a chapter of Students Today Leaders Forever at University of Mary for the university and Bismarck State College students.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)