Round One - New Orleans!

We are finally here!!!!! So exciting! We got here on Monday afternoon and found our nice Bright green house. It is 3 bedrooms and 2 bath. Our TL gets his own room....and then there are 5 of us in each of the other rooms. Nice and cozy! We have a front and back porch and a gorgeous view of the warehouse yard - which is full of doors and windows and other stuff that has been salvaged from the houses that were destroyed by Katrina.

On Tuesday we had an orientation to tools. I got to try a Chop Saw, Circular saw and a nail gun. Pretty Sweet. We also went to the New Orleans Preservation Center and learned about New Orleans history and the effects of the hurricanes. It is pretty amazing the devastation that still exists after 4 years.

Wednesday we started real work finally!!! Yay! We are working on finishing houses. They are already built for the most part, just need to fix some random things, paint, flooring, other things of that nature.

Yesterday and today we worked on a purple and red house. It is huge! I got to paint eaves on a second story from a 20 foot ladder and then on some two level scaffolding! WooHoo! At one point my ladder was against a column, stabilized by two pieces of wood, and tied to the porch! - A little scary...The lady that lives there is really nice. She puts out snacks for us. :) Today she showed me some pictures of the damage after the levies broke from Hurricane Katrina. Crazy... The water was so high, random shit was in people's yards.. She said she was gone for 3 months living in Detroit. I can't believe the devastation that is still there. On one street, there could be more than half of the houses empty...The house across from the first house we were at had plants growing out of it, no windows or doors, just destroyed and has been like that since 2005... The houses all have X's on them - top: date searched, left and right: who searched and if there were any warnings (like gas leak) and the bottom was the amount of bodies found inside. Pretty awful.

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But I will elaborate later, now it is time for my birthday celebrations to begin!!! Number 23 in the French Quarter!