Introduction to new home

So we have officially settled into New Orleans. We are staying in a cute lavendar colored house with yellow trim. We live on the 2nd floor in a 2 bedroom apartment with 2 bathrooms, brand new appliances (touch screens!), and brightly colored walls. There is no common space but we are excited to get out a lot and explore the city.

We started work on Tuesday with Rebuilding Together and it has been great so far! On Tuesday we unloaded 7800lbs of insulation and had a full tool training which was extremely helpful and informative. The rest of the week we were split up among several different sites. Rebuildig Together works on renovating homes an doing minor home repair. They currently have over 75 homes on their slate, so we are trying to close out homes so that the owners can move back in. I spent the first day finishing a fence and working on a gate, which was much more difficult than I had expected. The next couple days JJ and I worked on a home that is very close to finished. We painted window and door frames and stained doors. I like that working for this organization allows us to work on several different sites and complete small tasks, but at times it is difficult to measure our progress because we don't always see the completion of our project, which is very different from our last round project.

I hope to update tomorrow with a few pictures from transition and this past week tomorrow during the day.

Back home

Round 1 is over. It seemed like it went by so quickly. At times while we were in Lafayette it seemed like the round would never end, but now I can't believe we are already over 2 months into this. Our last week in Lafayette was a bit of a struggle for our group as a whole. We were only able to work 2 days out of the week because we had to come back to campus on Friday, so we felt as if we didn't have much closure. It had rained pretty heavily earlier in the week and there was mud and puddles everywhere, making it hard to work on the houses. On Thursday we did some pretty productive things though, and felt it was a good last day on site.

Holy Cross church, who was sponsoring the houses, cooked us dinner on Thursday as our last night in town. It was so yummy! We had seafood gumbo, garlic bread, and potato salad. We learned that putting the potato salad in your gumbo is DELICIOUS. Sounds gross, but trust me. We were able to spend a little more time with our site supervisors which was nice, and we were able to say goodbye to Habitat.

Now that we are back on campus we are in a little bit of a whirlwind of meetings in order to get ready to leave for next round. It is strange to see everyone from the Corps after being away from each other for so long. There is lots of small talk and "how was your spike?" as well as an attempt to decompress and take some time for myself. I'm excited for a little break and am hopingI can get a lot of work done on grad school and gre stuff.

Will update before I leave.

Cajun crazies

Day 70: Working 10 hour days is much harder than I anticipated. I’ve been going to sleep very early, and still feeling exhausted after 8 hours of sleep. This has definitely taken a toll on my grad school preparations and life in general outside of the AmeriCorps. I’m excited to see how next around affects me, with working 5 days a week and having 2 days off.

We have been doing some really great work with Habitat. I am learning a TON of new skills along with the ins and outs of building a house from scratch. It is really interesting how each task can be done several different ways, and that in many cases precision is not always necessary. The Habitat staff has allowed us to work on our own and take the time to master a task. Although last weekend was pretty hectic, it was nice to work one-on-one with Habitat this week in order to learn more about construction.

I have attached some pictures so that you all can see the progress we have made on the houses. It’s amazing to think that just last week we were working on a concrete slab.

I am really excited to be in New Orleans and work with Rebuilding Together. We will probably be working on several different houses doing repairs in various areas of their homes. It will be fun to get to do several different tasks and possibly learn some new skills. I’m also really excited to spend an extended amount of time in New Orleans. There are so many things I have wanted to see and do while I am there, but never got the chance to. I have spent much of my time in the French Quarter, so I hope I get to spend time outside of there and in other parts of the city.

Yesterday we worked the Festivals Acadiens et Croeles. It was so fun! We sold Coca-Cola products at various stands at the festival. The one that I worked at, you could see the stage from. It was nice to hear the music and see many couples dancing in true Cajun fashion. We worked about 12 hours, so we were pretty tired at the end of the day. I ate so many yummy things! Cajun sausage, baked potato stuffed with crawfish etouffe, peach cobbler, homemade potato chips, seafood bouillon balls, and funnel cake! SO GREAT! It was just awesome to finally get a taste of the Cajun culture and be around all of the crazy drunks.

We only have 2 more days working with Habitat and then we head back to Vicksburg. Next entry will probably be from there.