New Orleans!!!!!!!!!!

We left for New Orleans the day after Induction. It took us 2 days to drive down here, but I was totally okay with that because we stopped in Knoxville for the night! I can't believe that I got that lucky to be in Knoxville and see some of my friends for the night....it was sooo much fun! I love you guys! Sunday we left pretty early so we could get to New Orleans at a pretty reasonable time. We ended up getting in around dinner time and went strait to our "Cottage". This place that they call a Cottage is so not what I picture a cottage to be.....this place is a large house! There's four bedrooms, three bathrooms, living room, dining area, kitchen, another living room area, and washer and dryer.....it's pretty darn nice! It used to be a place for troubled boys to live, so the furniture is really heavy duty. After we got settled into our house we went out to dinner in the French Quarter with one of my teammates brothers who is also doing AmeriCorps, just a different program.

It was a really good, really cheap mexican restaurant......delicious!

The next day was our first day of actual work. We are working with Operation Helping Hands and Catholic Charities remodeling houses. OHH primarily works with homeowners who are disabled or elderly and just don't have the means to do repairs themselves.

For the first week we were there we worked on one home. It's located on Louisa Street in the Upper 9th Ward.....I think? Basically all we did that week was pick up where the short term volunteers before us left off. We floated drywall.....all week long. I even had dreams about mudding and sanding because that's all we were doing. Yeah it was tedious, but i'm glad I got to learn how to do something new! (we actually were at the same house for 2 weeks...mudding and sanding every single inch of the place).

well that's all for now!

Induction

On Friday March 12th, we were officially inducted into AmeriCorps NCCC!!!! Training was finally over and we were on our way to our first spikes!

It was pretty cold and rainy that day and we had to wait outside for about an hour, but it was totally worth it!

Pre-Spike

Were going to New Orleans!!!!!!!!! For our spike reveal, Colleen had us go on a scavenger hunt around 9H. We each had a different area to go to and find a letter....when we put all the letters together it spelled out "Helping Hands". Then she gave us all a few puzzle pieces and without talking we had to put the pieces together to make a picture.....it ended up being Bourbon Street!!!! After we figured out that we were going to New Orleans and calmed down a little....Colleen told us about our spike details. We are living in Marrero which is only about a 10 minute drive from downtown New Orleans and Bourbon Street! They said that we would be living in a small cottage. We are working with Catholic Charities of New Orleans and Operation Helping Hands. What OHH does is help those that are elderly and dissabled rebuild their homes after hurricane Katrina.
The week leading up to our departure was crazy busy. We had to put together all of our information about New Orleans in a Power Point Presentation and present it to the Director! It was intense and very nerve-racking, but we got it done and even got a compliment on it! Once the director's briefing was over, it was pretty much smooth sailing and planning for the rest of the week!

Mini-Spike

We went on a 3 day mini-spike to get us redy for our first real spike! We didn't go too far from Perryville.....about an hour and a half. We stayed in they cute cabins that had a kitchen and porch. It was in a girl scout state park....Killens Pond. Sounds pretty scary right.....the lake in the park is called Murder Kill Lake! We were prepared for anything....we made up a scenario just in case a serial killer came after us at night....fortunately I lived! For our work that week we spent 2 days at Lums Pond and the last day we went to Fort Delaware. At Lums Pond we painted and tiled the Recreation Center.

We finished it so fast that the third day they sent us somewhere else, Fort Delaware. We took a ferry ride over cause the Fort was on a man made island.

Apparently the Fort is really haunted....the show Ghost Hunters came there a couple years ago and they filmed a ghost. The guys working there showed us exactly where the ghost was seen and then they told us that this is where we would be working for the day! I was pretty excited cause I really wanted to see a ghost, but nothing happened :( It was still fun though...at the end of our work day the guys gave us a tour of the Fort and we got to see al of the rooms that they restored so far....I also saw some rooms where Generals were being held captive and there were signatures and dates written all over the walls....it was pretty cool!