Friday-Saturday:
We were the last of 14 vans out of the neighborhood - badger 4 apparently loves stuff. We had to repack and leave some essentials that didn't fit in the van behind..such as the blender and the rice cooker. After getting pretty lost past Baltimore we finally got on the road and made it into Knoxville around 9. Slept. Got up. Left. Ate. Drove. Ate again. and finally made it into New Orleans. We settled into our little volunteer house - we have a kitchen, living room, and 2 bunk rooms. It's a tight space but it works! We then met with our project sponsor Daryl...who is a young guy that came down to New Orleans from Minnesota right after Katrina hit..volunteered for a bit. left. and then came back and started up United Saints 1st Recovery. The organization is run out of a Methodist church and that's were all of our meals and meetings are. (We eat communal meals...a guy name Chris is a great chef and fills up our belly's with delicious treats everyday! gumbo, soup, jumbalaya...etc.)
On Saturday night the team went down to the French Quarter and Bourbon St. It's pretty wild now because of all the "spring breakers", but it was fun to check out the scene. On a side note: The carriages that transport the young and old in love are not pulled by horses but by mules. And they will not stop for anything...especially a six-piece band followed by team Badger4 who crashed a wedding party's processional march through the streets.
Monday-Thursday:
It was a long hot week. Everyday in 80's - needless to say my farmers "tan" is coming along nicely. There are a multitude of projects that we can pick to work on everyday. A lot of the houses that we work on weren't necessarily greatly affected by the storm but need a lot of help nonetheless. United Saints is big into redeveloping the community of Central City (where we are located) We are currently working on a few houses, painting the church, handing out food and some other random projects. I did a little bit of everything this week. On Monday i painted a sign in front of our home. Tuesday: Handed out bags of food at an organization called Angel Food. Here people can come in once a month and get a pretty big bag of food for free. Wednesday: Painted at John Harrisons's house (whatta nice fella!) Thursday: Worked at Mr. Masons house. He bought us delicious shrimp, oyster and sausage Po Boy's (sandwiches). yum. Everyday after working and dinner we went to the New Orleans Mission. We helped serve dinner to those that were spending the night there. It was a pretty awesome experience and we will definitely be going back in the weeks to come.
Friday-Sunday:
In the summer a fleet of vans and trucks drove over to Texas for Ike relief. For some reason or another they did not drive all of the vehicles back to Perry Point so about 16 of us from 4 different teams from New Orleans and Lake Charles,LA (4hours north/east of NO) drove out to Austin to pick up those vehicles and bring them back. It was a long and rainy drive. At least we packed and dressed for the weather. WRONG. We all sported shorts and t-shirts in the sweet 40 degree weather. Typical. We got to see the city on Saturday - it was pretty cute. Maybe i will return when it's not so cold.
This week there are A LOT more spring break volunteers coming to work for United Saints. About 45 more than last week. It should be pretty interesting to see how much we get accomplished and how we all get fed. I have taken a lot pictures of projects and where we are living so i will put those up asap. So far things are stupendous!
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