Snakes, Alligators and Indians

Welcome to the interesting world of Steph and Andrew in N'awlins..ENJOY!

The bus ride was amazing, easy, we couldn't have gone threw the border faster. We have nothing but kind words for the Border Control Workers. We got to watch Mighty Ducks 2 and sleep in the most comfortable positions, who needs a real bed? We would like to buy a bus in order to get a good nights sleep.

We arrived at the Middle School and it reminds Andrew of his middle school, creepy. There are still Science Lab tables and white boards in the dorm rooms we sleep in. The bunk beds look and feel as though they may collapse on themselves, but that is all part of the adventure of waking up each morning. With that being said though, the operation they have set up here is pretty incredible and runs like a well oiled machine. The fact that this place is here for volunteers to live in and come down and help is amazing.

There are 500+ people staying here this week and the AmeriCorp volunteers cook breakfast and dinner for each of them. Talk about doing amazing work. On top of all of that they also volunteer out in the communities. There are also local residents that come in and eat with us for each meal, they have their little dinner TV set up and watch Wheel of Fortune, but will turn it off to talk to anyone and have truly the best stories. John Wilkes Booth (Yeah, we know, it is his real name) talked to the whole group last night about his adventure during the hurricane and it was definitely an eye opener.

Today the boys woke up at 5:30 because Mark forgot to change his clock back an hour, they got less sleep than the girls, that is funny, although Andrew disagrees. We then had a wonderful breakfast and traveled to the city. We know it is Family Day at home, but here it is President's Day, so we didn't get to volunteer but instead took a tour of the Lower 9th Ward, where the levees broke. It is the poorest area of New Orleans and was hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Steph has been here before and there has definitely been a great change. There is less debris and more of the houses have been demolished in order to rebuild. On top of that Brad Pitt's organization, Make it Right, has started rebuilding and the designs are incredible, you should check out the website! Our favourite part of the Lower 9th was this child's play ground that we found that looked like it was from the Jetson's and was powered by solar energy. We relived our childhood for a few minutes and played on a teeter totter.

We also went to Musician's Village today. The 5 returning volunteers got to get out of the bus and take pictures with the houses we worked on last time, this is probably the best experience we will have all week. Steph's only hope is that the new spring breakers will have this opportunity some time in the new future!

We had some time this afternoon to hang out at Camp Hope. We played some basketball and read a lot of books. While this was happening Kaleigh got pooped on by some kind of bird, it was very upsetting. The rest of us found it amusing.

After that we took a guided tour of the entire city, the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, the Garden District. We are very excited to revisit these places again as the week goes on. Our tour guide for the afternoon might have seemed mildly racist. He told us a very good story about how the French and Americans built a wall to keep out snakes, alligators and indians, good times! We are visiting Bourbon tomorrow, yes it's Mardi Gras time here, bring on the beads!

We start work very early tomorrow and are very excited to get to work. We will be back tomorrow with more stories. We're here, we're unorthodoxed, we're down with the swirl, get used to us!