Ambulance Adventure

Monday- The week started out like any other, we had 9 new volunteers working with us this week, 3 women from ohio and washington and 6 older folk from the Church of Brethren (a group that works with SBP a lot). I was so much more mentally prepared for new volunteers that the first day of orientation was a breeze! We had a lot of sanding, taping, and mudding to do, which can get pretty boring, but everyone was able to participate and help out, because they aren't very hard tasks. One obstacle that got in the way was that almost all of the church group volunteers had recently had shoulder surgery, so they couldn't sand, tape, or mud the high areas/ceiling, which made for a lot of extra work for the 3 other women who could use ladders and their shoulders to their full potential, but everything worked out!
Tuesday- The day started much like the previous day, with more sanding, taping and mudding, but ended very differently! We had to leave the worksite a little early to get ready and head to volunteer at the theatre, so we cleaned up and sent our volunteers off early, and Joe, Eric and I started walking to the Dollar General to change into our AmeriTux's. While on this walk, Joe said that his heart was hurting again (it hurt the night before, but went away after 15 mins of sitting and eating a banana) so we walked a little slower, but I wasn't too worried, because it hadn't lasted too long the night before...but then he stopped and had to put his hands on his knees and couldn't walk anymore...that's when a sheriff happened to drive by and pulled over to check on us. We told him what was going on, he called an EMT, which came in the form of a huge fire truck and then an ambulance, rushing over and putting an oxygen mask on him. Everything happened so fast, it was crazy...it made it a lot more real for me and a little scary, so I can't even imagine how Joe was feeling through all of this, but he was so brave and strong! They said they were going to run some heart tests, so they had to bring him to the ER and I rode along with them in the front of the ambulance. It was quite a rush, riding in the front of an ambulance, it was definitely a new perspective for me. It took us almost a half an hour to get to Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans, which was way longer than it should have taken, but you would not believe how many ignorant drivers do NOT pull over when an ambulance with flashing lights and sirens is right behind them!! It was crazy. I was also surprised to realize that ambulances still have to stop at red traffic lights...I had thought that they had some magical sensor that turned green so they could go through, but I was wrong, because we had to stop at just about every light we got to! The driver was getting really frustrated on this drive, as I would have been, so it was pretty quite, I didn't want to distract her and didn't know what kind of conversation to have anyway, I was just worried about Joe in the back. So we got to the ER and I had to go into the waiting room for 10 minutes, then go into the lobby and pick up a random phone on the wall, say Joe's name, and they would tell me where to go to find him. This was also a new experience for me, I have not spent much time in the ER, thank goodness, so the atmosphere was all very new to me. Now, I enjoy people watching, but the ER is such an intense place to people watch that it was actually really overwhelming. After 10 mins of waiting, I picked up the phone and they told me where to find Joe, except I got confused and ended up wandering around the hospital for a good 10 minutes, asking random people where I could find Joe Barry. They each sent me somewhere different until I finally got to the right place! meanwhile, the rest of my team is being dropped off at the Theatre for the Cirque Dreams show that we were all supposed to be working at that night. The team leader and one of my teammates dropped them off and then came over to the ER to wait for Joe to get out, which ended up being a good 4.5 hours later. Anyways, Joe was feeling a lot better, so I was relieved and switched with the team leader so she could go in and check in with him, because only 1 visitor was allowed at a time. While I was waiting back in the waiting area, one lady came in bawling her eyes out, being chased by a nurse asking her what her daughters name and birthdate were. A couple hours later, the waiting room was filled with the woman's family, and I knew there was bad news when a boy who was probably about 13 ran through the emergency room with his hands on his head, moaning, and collapsed on the ground crying when he got out the doors. The whole family then got up and followed him, crying and screaming themselves, because as it turned out that the daughter, who was 18, had died...The whole experience was so personal and private, yet I was witnessing all of it and didn't know what to do, because there was nothing that I could do.... I wanted to run around and scream with the family, or hug them, or something, anything, because I couldn't even imagine what they were going through, and it made me realize that life and death are so real...and that I will, we all will have to deal with those things at one point or another...and it brought tears to my eyes because I don't want anyone I am close to to ever have to go through that much sadness and pain and all I could do was picture my own family in that situation and it made me so sad and miss them all so much. Their screams outside were louder than the ambulance's sirens going by...it was really intense and when I got back after the ER, I felt like I needed to call someone to debrief, but it was 11pm and I didn't want to wake anyone up, so I saw that Aleena was on facebook and asked if I could call her...so thank you Aleena! I just needed someone I could talk to and cry to and process everything that had just happened before my eyes. Anyways, It was a really intense night, but Joe is okay now, he had to wear a 24 hour heart monitor and has a stress test on Tuesday (so keep him in your prayers!) and I came home with a very real life lesson that I have heard a million times, but "live everyday as if it is your last, because tomorrow's never promised today."
Wednesday- This day was much better/more normal than Tuesday's excitement, which was nice...we did more sanding, taping and mudding, and had 2 meetings after work. Some of my teammates and I got Sno Balls after work, which was amazing! I love them so much, I think I am legit addicted to them now...and then it was my turn to cook dinner for the team, so my cooking partner, Neva and I made my mom's pistachio chicken salad, with avocado/lime dressing, and it turned out really well! WOOO! I had never cooked chicken before in my life, so it was really exciting that I could actually do it! Everyone seemed to really like it too, so that made me happy :)
Thursday- Today was an awesome day all around. Our volunteers worked really hard and we are basically all ready to texture/prime most of the house so we can paint next week! Yayy! Painting is so much more exciting than mudding! Although I am getting really good at it. Anyways, we left work a little early to bring our volunteers to the Sno Ball stand, where they treated us to sno balls ( I got birthday cake flavored, which was amazing!) and we chatted some, while they all ate their sno balls, which they loved too! And then we got dropped off at our house early, so I was able to shower and get ready for the Cirque Dreams show that we worked at tonight! I was a ticket scanner again, and said "how y'all doin tonight?" to at least 10 groups of people :) Its becoming so natural now, and I'm loving every moment of it! Then we got back here and I am updating my blog, doing laundry, and eating Ben and Jerrys, so it's a great night :)

NOMA

Yesterday was an eventful day, we volunteered at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) for Independent Service Project (ISP) hours in the morning, which consisted of walking around the amazing Sculpture Garden and picking up trash, while also taking photos of all the cool sculptures, of course! Then we went inside (which was good timing because it started to rain) to fold and stuff pamphlets for the Sculpture Garden, which was really fun for me, because I actually really enjoy doing little tasks like that. Then we had a quick lunch break (if we keep our breaks under 15 mins, we don't have to count them as time off) and we were free to go, but since we were at the Museum, the woman in charge let us walk around for free if we wanted! Usually I don't get too excited about walking/looking through museums, but this one was really neat, and the fact that we got kind of a VIP pass to go in for free made it really exciting for me! While we were walking around, lots of museum workers saw our uniforms and thanked us all for our help, which was also pretty neat :)
When we got back to our house, we hung out for a bit before a few of us went to Subway for dinner! Wooo! It was so delicious, I forgot how much I love Subway! I got my usual italian herbs and cheese with lettuce, tomato and cucumber with sweet onion sauce on it :) and I also got a delicious southern sweet tea! mmm mmm good :) After that, we headed off to the theatre for another ISP of volunteering at the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. I got to take tickets at the VIP door, which really got crazy, because apparently there were no VIP tickets for that concert, and some of the people trying to come in were very stubborn, so one of the other ladies working the door with me just told me to let anyone who came to that door in. I did what she said to do and she went away for awhile, so another woman who worked there came up and told me that there were cameras watching that door and that if I wasn't a volunteer there, the guy in charge would probably fire me for letting so many non-VIPers in....that was awkward...but then I felt better, because some stubborn older folks came up to HER and she gave in to them just like I had, and any other human being would...so she couldn't be too mad at me after that haha. We left after the show started, since late people were being held outside the doors until intermission anyways. It is always interesting working at those shows/concerts, because no matter what the crowd is, people act so differently towards the workers there (like me)..it is very interesting for me to observe these people and how they act, being the psychology pro I am haha. Some people start out not even noticing that I am human while I take their tickets, until I say something to them, like "how y'all doing tonight?" or compliment them on their outfit....then some people just look at me and pass by, but most people will suddenly actually make eye contact with me, realize that I am in fact another human being, and jolt back, surprised that I spoke to them while taking their ticket...then they will gather their breath, startled a little bit, smile, and all of a sudden be super nice back to me. It's pretty amusing actually...because i am there to volunteer, yes, but also I just want to be friendly and make sure that they have a nice evening. It's intriguing to me how people perceive other people just by the role or job they are doing...and sometimes forget that they are also a person just like everyone else, not just a robot who doesn't have a personality. I guess I had never really thought about it until I was suddenly on the other side, the one taking the tickets...because i have been to concerts before and not really paid any attention to the people taking my tickets, just handing it to them, maybe smiling, at most saying "thank you" and walking right by....well my mission for volunteering there is to make eye contact with everyone, and say something to actually interact with them. Ok so I am just rambling now, and I don't know if any of this makes sense to y'all, but those are my jumbled thoughts anyways :-p haha.

Flooded Fire Alarm!

This morning I was back at the Vanderhoff trailer that I was at earlier this week, and where I will most likely be for the remainder of our time here with this project. We had 5 volunteers, 3 who were here the other day and 2 new people. They are all really nice and know what they are doing, so it's nice because we don't really have to teach them anything, they can just go off on their own and "get things done!" They had to leave at lunchtime though, to head back home to Virginia. It was so cute, because I wasn't there yesterday but they were still at that site, and they missed me (of course! haha) and they remembered how much I love ice cream and especially snickers ice cream bars from the dollar store, so they got one in honor of me since I wasn't there :) After they all left, we were working on mudding and drywalling on our own. I had to pee, and the area we are working in is pretty sketchy, so I made Joe walk to the dollar store with me to use the bathroom. On our way, 2 boys riding around on a dirtbike almost hit us, then drove by again and stopped right next to us and one of the guys said "Hey, where y'all from? Cause I know you ain't from 'round here" So I told him I was from Maine, here with AmeriCorps and working with the St. Bernard Project to rebuild houses. It turned out that he really didn't care why I was there, because he continued with "well if you're looking for something fun to do during the weekends, hit me up on my cell, okay?" Uhhh, suuuuure....that's exactly what I'm going to do...NOT! Haha, so sketchy. Another boy along the way also stopped us in the road to ask us where we got our awesome boots, to which Joe's answer was "the military" and the kid thought he was joking, so he was like "man, I'm serious, I love those boots, I gotta get me some." Then, we finally made it to the dollar store so I could relieve myself and when we stepped out the doors it started to downpour! It actually felt pretty good, but I was scared it was going to start thundering so I couldn't fully enjoy the cool drips of water running down my face. Anyways, we got a ride home from Kim, who is an AmeriCorps State member working for SBP and she brought us to a neighborhood where a few houses literally washed away across the stream behind their houses and you can still see them mover there today...it was pretty crazy to see those abandoned houses across the water, while standing on the foundation...quite an experience. So we got home and showered, then the fire alarm went off all of a sudden, and when we went to look at it, it started dripping water! Then we took the batteries out, and it still beeped! So we took the whole thing down altogether and then noticed that water was pouring out of it! We then turned to see that the wall next to the fire alarm was soaked through and cracked from being so wet and we started to really freak out...so we sent a couple people into the attic where they found a few inches of water covering the floors...apparently what had happened was that our AC had literally frozen, like ice cubes formed around it and shut off...so since it shut off it started getting really hot in here and the ice melted, which caused a flooding of the AC draining thingy....which sent the water through our ceiling and walls! Wonderful! So it has been a pretty eventful evening here at 3409 Judy Drive, to say the least! Later we might go play Laser Tag! Or rent and watch a Red Box movie...either one sounds awesome to meeee! This week totally flew by sooo fast and I am absolutely exhausted, but I want to enjoy my weekend, not waste it away with sleep!

Tornado! (of volunteers)

Today flew by like no other day I have ever experienced...it started out with waking up at 6am to workout with Joe and Drew (I promised them last week that I would workout with them on days when we don't do PT starting this week...and I am not a liar!) So we ran a little over a mile, then did lots of crunches, pushups (I can now do 10 in a row without stopping! and not the girly version!) and then some things called "burpees" where you do a pushup, jump up, go back down, pushup again, etc. Needless to say, I am absolutely exhausted right now! Then after that amazing workout, I spent the rest of the morning with Heidi (the girl who trained us at the Toledo house the past couple weeks) at a new site that neither of us had done work at yet. This house was almost done, all of the flooring, painting, etc. was already done, we just had to work on the finishings. The only problem was, the door frames in the house (all of them!) were 1 inch too short...so we had to saw off 1 inch off of every door and door frame in the house--so fun! NOT! But the morning went by wicked fast and we went to Subway for lunch (she got subway, I ate my pb&j) and then we went back to the house to clean up the site (it wasnt very organized or clean when we got there, which totally overwhelmed me!) and then our half-day volunteers showed up around 1:30. We were supposed to get 7 volunteers that we were going to have help us put in some baseboards and call it good, but what we really got was what seemed like a tornado of 30 volunteers all attacking us at once! There were really only 12 of them, but that is still a LOT for one house and only 2 supervisors! Also, keep in mind that this was only my second time ever leading volunteers and I was not very confident in leading them in baseboards to begin with, which is why Heidi was there with me...thank goodness she was there! As soon as they got off their bus, two 30-something year old guys walked right up to us saying, "wow, they didn't warn us that we would be having two such beautiful site supervisors today!" which cracked me up, because let's face it...you all know how ridiculous I look in my uniform! They were all really cool people, but since they were only going to be working for half a day, they were ready to get going and didn't want to listen to anything we were saying! They thought that they knew what to do, so Heidi and I were constantly running around chasing after them trying to keep an eye on them and correcting them when they made wrong assumptions...it was nuts! They were from all over the country, and worked for Guardian Insurance, so they talked a lot about money and were totally shocked that we could live off of so little (which is funny, because that is something I am quite proud of, myself!)  At the end of the day (2 hours later) Heidi and I came to the conclusion that that was the craziest day of supervising volunteers EVER and we thought we had just survived some kind of natural disaster, but the people we worked with really were cool and would be fun to just hang out with, preferably off site though! One of the guys there is married to Samantha, the former host of Dancing With The Stars, which is really cool! And this group had the most awesome shirts made especially for volunteering, so I joked around saying, "Awesome shirts! You guys brought some for us too, right?!" Which Heidi told me later that they really are going to bring us shirts :) Woohoo! I love free t-shirts! They are def in my top 5 favorite things :) We had another "Welcome Home Party" tonight, which was fun, with some delicious cake, and then we had breakfast for dinner at River 2's house (which, by the way is AWESOME! They even have a pool!) and our Unit Leader, Neil was there, so we had a nice group dinner and hang out session with everyone =] So now I am doing laundry and then going to bed! I am sooo tired tonight, but I wanted to update my blog for y'all before I went to bed.

First Day Supervising

Today was my first day as a legit Site Supervisor! it went really well :) I think it was good for me to have the beginning of the week to mentally prepare and learn mudding and drywall more before actually having to teach anyone. We had 5 volunteers from the Church of the Brethren, including 2 women in their late 20s, 2 other women in their 70s, and a man in his 40s who has done construction his whole life and was awesome! He just went right in and fixed all of the hard tasks that we had been avoiding because we didn't know how to fix them haha. Anyways, they were all awesome and really friendly and easy going, so it made my first day excellent! I taught the 2 younger women how to put up drywall and they did such a great job! I was so proud of them, they finished the entire hallway themselves (with my direction, of course)! Which shocked me, because they had had no prior training with drywall and it probably would have taken me a lot longer to do, myself, even with training! I also got a Snickers ice cream bar at the Dollar General AND a Sno Ball after work :) woohoo! Oh man, now I really want more ice cream....as I told my volunteers today, ice cream is my favorite food group ;) haha
After work, we had 2 meetings and then came back home for "Martha Stewart's Workout" aka cleaning the house, each doing our chores, while jogging in place, and then every 5 minutes we would either do 30 jumping jacks, situps, or pushups...we got our chores done so soon that we had to go out for a run and then do more workout stuff outside because we have to workout for 45 minutes three times a week. It was awesome, I like cleaning anyway, but this made it even more fun, and we listened to my music while we cleaned :)
I forgot to mention this already, but the homeowners cat lives at the trailer we are working on and LOVES us! We don't know it's name, we think it might be Mama, but Joe re-named her Delicious, so that is what we and our volunteers called her today haha it was awesome...and she was so cute, she would come right up to people while they were cutting drywall and rub up against their legs so they would stop and pet her. Now, I have never really been a big fan of cats, or pets in general really, but lately I just want a kitten and/or puppy soooo bad that I am starting to even like other pets! Crazy.

The Visitor Wave

So my wave of visitors hit hard this past weekend! It started last week with Mikki Nana and Bruce visiting, then this weekend 8 members of River 7 (another AmeriCorps team that is currently doing Habitat for Humanity in Alabama) rented 2 cars and came to visit us in N'awlins for the weekend! Some people from my team and I got a hotel room for Saturday night so we could all hang out that night, since the government team van we have can't be out past midnight, and we toured around the River Walk area which was fun :) It's crazy how we were away from that team for 3 weeks, and yet when we got together this weekend it immediately went back to the way things were before...it was as if we had never been apart! I'm sure that's what it will also be like when I eventually get back home to Maine for Christmas, but right now since I am so far away I just feel like I am missing out on so much!
Today was our first day of being full out site supervisors, and I was super nervous to become a leader instead of just a volunteer like I have been used to! All morning at our site while we were going over last minute things and organizing our site for our volunteers I had such a tummy ache and butterflies of nervousness like I used to get before basketball games....it was terrible! But as it got later and later into the morning (around 10:30am) we were really starting to wonder where our volunteers were and if they had gotten lost, since they were supposed to arrive around 9am...so we called the office and they told us that we didn't actually have any volunteers today or at all this week until Thursday! Go figure, that would have been nice to know this morning! But I was super relieved and my stomach immediately felt much better after that! So we got to work on putting drywall up and mudding by ourselves today, which was fun and good to get more experience ourselves before we have to really tell others how to do it. Again, I will say my all time favorite quote that I live by, "everything happens for a reason"! Since we didn't have any volunteers, it was almost lunch time, and the River 7 crew was heading out soon, so John, Cain, and Taylor from that team stopped by for a bit to visit and say goodbye before they headed back to Bama...so sad! But they reminded us that we will all be back on campus in Mississippi for transition in 3 weeks! That seems so soon, it's crazy, I mean we just got done training for this project! Anyways, after they left, Joe, Eric and I knocked out some decent work in the house and I cleaned and organized the house some more, which reminded me how much I love to clean! So after we got back from work tonight, Auntie Beth, Linda, and Diane came to visit me! I am telling you, I have been so blessed/spoiled with visitors lately, I am absolutely loving it! They took me out to dinner at Applebees, which was amazing, because I had not seen one down here until tonight and we also went to a new area of Louisiana that I hadn't been to yet and it was really nice! As usual, it was awesome to see Auntie Beth and feel re-connected to my Mainers back home! But then I get sad when they leave and I know that they get to return to Maine soon and I am still here for so many months without my close family and friends back north! I just wish that there was some way that I could be with EVERYONE from back home AND all my new friends from AmeriCorps at the same time...that would be freaking SWEET!

What A Disaster!

It has been a wicked busy week, if you haven't noticed from my lack of blogging lately, my apologies! Most of the week was spent at the Toledo house where we continued to get trained in various construction skills, including putting in a vinyl floor in a bathroom (which was awesome, cause it was like putting giant stickers on the floor!), sanding, mudding, priming, painting, and teaching another group of my teammates how to put wood flooring in. It was neat to be the teacher and explain to them how to put the floor in, because it proved to me that I actually did know what I was doing :) Thursday was most of ours last day working at Johnny Toledo's house, because we got sent on "disaster duty" on Friday, so Johnny cooked lunch for all of us on Thursday and it was delicious! Of course I didn't try the popcorn shrimp or the other options with seafood, but the homemade french fries and garlic bread were amazing! There were also only 10 of us workers there and 10 staff from the St. Bernard Project showed up when they heard about free food too! Haha, we don't even know how they heard about the food, but they were all there!
So Friday was every bit of a DISASTER, for sure...we had to unload 2 truck loads of boxes of cleaning wipes for oil spill reasons, and we were supposed to only be there from 9am-2pm, but we ended up being there from 9-5:30! We had been unloading the boxes for 2 hours before the woman in charge came out and in the rudest way possible told us that we were doing it wrong and got all crazy and started throwing boxes off the truck and creating the most stressful/hectic environment (the kind that I do not do well in!) and we all got frazzled and exhausted and everyone was in a bad mood by lunch time and didn't want to finish unloading another truck! But we persevered and by the end of the longest work day ever, we felt so relieved and amazing for having finished what previously seemed like an impossible task, that it made it all kind of worth it (but not really).
Saturday we had in ISP (independent service project) where we volunteer for different nonprofits in the area, where we did some random gardening and fixing fences, painting, etc. for a couple houses in the 7th Ward in New Orleans. It was fun to be outside and do some different things than normal, and we got done at 1! After that we took a group shopping trip to find cute clothes (because I am sick of all my clothes that I brought with me already, I want more of a variety!) and I had no luck, so I ended up with a sweet $7 shirt from Wal*Mart that says "Gansta saurus" hahhaah I got lots of compliments on it last night!
One of the other AmeriCorps teams (River 7) came to New Orleans this weekend to visit us! And Auntie Beth, Linda, and Diane are here too! So I will get to see them soon! I love visitors! (hint hint) haha :)

Weekend Catch-Up

Saturday we worked at a community garden, pulling weeds and cleaning up the area as a 9/11 service project. It was pretty fun and we only worked half a day, and there were some adorable middle school kids there that we got to work with :) I had a great convo with the 2 youngest/cutest little boys there that went something like this:
me: hey boys, whatre you doing for work? guarding the cookies? (they were eating cookies all day instead of working)
boys: oh yeah, we are guarding them real good
me: so how old are you boys anyway? like 16?
boys: haha oh yeah, actually 14...nahhhh we are 12!
me: ohhh, coulda fooled me! so do you have girlfriends?
boys: oh heck yeah, of course! (hahahaha so cute)
me: oh yeah? do you impress them with your big muscles? I bet you work out at the gym at least 3 times a week
boys: oh yeah, we work out plenty for the ladies
----later that day----
boys: so is there gonna be like news crews here or anything?
me: there might be, i'm not sure though...is that why you are here? to become famous and get on tv? (in a joking way)
boys: nahhh, i'm not into publicity...i just came here to help out the community
me: awwwwwww that is the most perfect, cutest answer ever!!
end of story...thought it was cute though so i wanted to share with ya'll!
Sunday we went to Catholic church (mass?) which was neat, except I felt kind of out of my element, because I didn't know all of the rituals and sayings that everyone around me did. It was a beautiful building though! Then last night we volunteered at the Adam Lambert concert, which was amazing! Most people on my team were ushers, but I was a ticket scanner, which I was nervous about at first, but ended up LOVING it! I chatted with all of the people in line, complimented their outfits, explained what the "A" on my uniform was all about, got lots of "thank you for what you do!"'s and I even caught myself say "how y'all doing tonight?" to a group! That made me so excited, because I didn't even plan of saying y'all! It just happened naturally! Woo!
Monday (today) we didn't have to be into work until 11, so we slept in, which was awesome!! Then we had an all-staff meeting where we got broken up into new teams just for today and got sent out to different work sites to work alongside the staff and people higher up in the St. Bernard Project organization. I was sent to a trailer (which is rare, it is usually a house) that was so badly ruined by katrina that it was actually used in the Terminator movie (or some movie like that) because of all the termites and cockroaches that were infesting it! Ewww! So anyways, they had to clean out the entire house and basically just use the shell and rebuild everything else inside to actually make it livable. So we just hung drywall for a few hours, which was neat because that was the one thing we hadn't learned yet. Yay for learning new things! After that, we went to another welcome home party for a family whose house just got finished..and instead of NFL players being there, this time there were 20 world-renowned chefs cooking dinner....including 2 of the WHITEHOUSE CHEFS as in PRESIDENT OBAMA'S!!! The only bad thing about the amazing chef's was that they were only cooking seafood...which I don't eat! BUT two of my teammates MADE me try the ALLIGATOR, which was actually delicious and tasted like chicken, but since it wasn't chicken, I couldn't bring myself to eat more than 1 piece! Haha. So many amazing things have been happening lately, its super exciting! THEN the night got even better, because Mikki and Bruce are traveling around on a roadtrip and came to visit me tonight!! I just got back from eating Chinese food with them! Oh man, this day was amazing...it was so awesome to see Mikki and feel more connected to home!

BEST DAY EVER!

Today was the greatest day at the work site thus far! Maybe it was because it's Friday, or because we were inhaling too many paint fumes (just kidding!), but we kept breaking out into song and dance parties throughout the day and while Mitch and I were painting a room with Heidi, the site supervisor, she started painting us and started a "paint war," which is technically not allowed in our AmeriCorps uniforms, but since the person in charge started it, I went with it! Haha it was so fun! We also got to go out to lunch and it was all paid for by Johnny, who owns the house we are working on. I got a grilled chicken caesar salad and sweet potato fries (to make up for the pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream I ate right before I went to bed last night!) which was soo good and good for me! After that we went to the dollar store and I got a pink powerade and sour gummy worms, which seem to be my new favorite candy these days :) After work, a few of us went to get Snow Balls, which are like sno-cones, only BETTER because they have vanilla ice cream in them, and the shaved ice is way smaller than normal sno-cones. I got kiwi flavored, which turned my mouth an awesome bright green, and it was deliciousssss! The day kept getting better with Drew's delicious quesadillas he made for dinner, and then DESSERT quesadillas with chocolate chips, peanut butter, sprinkles, and powdered sugar in them after! So now I am fully full and relaxing for the first time all week! Gosh, I love weekends (even though we have to work a half day tomorrow!) :)

NFL Build

Today was an amazing day, even from the start. We went out to get in the van to head to our work sites, and our neighbor, who is one of the 8 sheriffs who lives in our neighborhood, was outside with his 2 year old son. He said hi to us and was asking how we were doing, when 2 stray dogs came over to our yard and started barking really loudly at us. Mr. Sheriff immediately ran over and yelled at them to leave, which obviously didn't work, because they don't speak english...they bark (duh). So he proceeded to spray them with pepper spray/mace! I know that this is not a nice thing to do, but at the time (7am) I found it hilarious and could not believe what I had just seen! Throughout the day when I told people this story, though, they didn't seem to find it as funny as I did...whoops! So Today was also the NFL Build day, where some current players, former players and hall-of-famers, and their crews came to help build houses with the St. Bernard Project through a partnership with United Way for all of 3 hours this morning. It was pretty cool, but of course they had to work on the house we were working on, so we had to do other work this morning so they could have the house to themselves and their numerous camera crews. We were excited, but also bummed, because we weren't actually going to get to see them, but then we got invited to a "homecoming" party for a family whose house just got finished being build by the St. Bernard Project, and the NFL crew was all going to be there too! So since we couldn't be at our normal work site, we got a tour of the levee and swampy, but beautiful area near the 9th ward. I took some awesome pictures and learned a lot about the area. After that, we went to help organize stuff in the warehouse, including measuring their collection of doors, then moving them and organizing them all into their appropriate areas by size and interior/exterior. After that, we finally got to go to the homecoming party where there was a world-record sized "po-boy" which is a huge sub-like sandwich with shrimp and seafood in it. This was very exciting to everyone else there, who love seafood, but kinda gross to me, not only because it had seafood in it, but also because there were a million flies around it and a couple people trying to swat them away! EWW! So we got to meet Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, who I hadn't heard of until today, but I was psyched when he came up and shook my hand and asked my name :) and we also got some pictures with some other people. For players and former players,
I didn't recognize anyone, but they were: Marcus Allen, Tim Brown, and Thurman Thomas.
After all of that excitement, we went back to our work site and worked on the baseboards for awhile, and I got to use an automatic nail gun! Oh man, it is the coolest tool ever! I am usually afraid of those kinds of things, but this is soo cool I love using it! We also got to hang out with Johnny, the owner of the house, who was given a free ticket with club seating to the home opener Saints game tonight by Roger Goodell! He was so excited about it that it made me really excited for him, and instantly turned me into a Saints fan! I want to go out and buy a t-shirt now so I can feel like a local and truly belong in this amazing community!
I finished the night out by taking an adventure walk to the gas station with some teammates where I got Ben and Jerry's ice cream and ate the WHOLE PINT! Oh man, I loveee my ice cream!
Overall, it was an awesome day, and I am so excited that it is almost the weekend! Eventhough we have to work like every saturday from now on...oh well, it's for a good cause!

Conquering Fears

Yesterday and today were spent at the Toledo household, working on mudding, sanding, painting, and flooring. I decided to try and conquer some of my fears, so I took one for the team and grabbed the tallest ladder, climbed up, and sanding the previous day's mudding. Pictures for proof are below! It doesn't look that high up, but it was....it was one of the highest kitchen ceilings I have ever seen! Later today I also used the electric saw without being scared...I watched my teammates use it so I felt confident in what I was doing, and didn't let myself think about how dangerous it was, I just did it! One of my favorite parts of the day (besides buying ice cream at the dollar store for everyone!) was working on the flooring. It was like a giant puzzle and it was pretty confusing at first, but once we figured it out it was pretty fun! It was wooden panels that snap together, so cool!
Tonight for dinner we went to a local church for "Taco Tuesday" which they have every week for us! It was delicious! And they made us fried ice cream for dessert! Wooohoo! It was a realllly long day at work today, but I enjoy learning new things, so it was fun! Oh, and mama, I will be able to finally finish the bathroom for you! It is the exact same stuff we are learning to do right now! I hope you are as excited as I am about that! And that also means that Aleena can paint it, which should be right up her alley :) OR I can just teach Zac and Jonny how to finish mudding the bathroom and they can do it...even better! haha

Quaker's Meeting Has Begun...

This morning Alleigh, Norah, Mollie, Neva and I went to a Quaker Meeting at 10am in New Orleans. It was most of our first experience with something of that sort, except for Neva, who grew up Quaker. We arrived at the building (which was also a Methodist Church) and were the first ones there. There ended up only being 15 of us total, and we sat in chairs in a circle in a small room in silence and meditated for an hour. After the hour was up, the Clerk, Mack, asked if anyone wanted to share what they had been meditating about and we also went around the room and introduced ourselves. Most of the people there (about 12 of the 15) were from other states, which I found pretty interesting. A few girls were students at Tulane University and some other people were locals. After the meeting we chatted with some of the other people there and told them all about AmeriCorps, because they were curious and they thought that what we were doing was really cool. They also told us about some places we should visit in the area. It was a really refreshing experience, because being here, in a team-based program is fun, but there is little to no alone time where it is silent. It was nice to have an hour to actually think about life and reflect for a bit. After the meeting we ventured around the cute little neighborhood and found a coffee shop, which is actually harder than you would think! There are hardly any coffee places down south, very different from the north where there is a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks on every corner! We decided that Quaker Meeting and coffee would be a fun Sunday tradition we want to start doing, a nice and relaxing way to end the weekend. Maybe we can even convince some of the boys on the team to come with us next time?!

Site Supervisor

So we had a tour of the St. Bernard Project offices and warehouse the other day, which was pretty neat. We also got to meet a bunch of staff members who work there and they all seem really cool! While we were waiting for our team leaders to determine which jobs we would all get for the next month and a half, us core members went to the warehouse to get a tour and then got put to work putting away all of the new supplies they just got earlier that day. Now, as most of you know, I have many fears. I am basically afraid of everything, especially down here where everything is creepy AND poisonous! Anyways, since I have so many fears, it is my team's goal to help me get over some of them. I decided while in the warehouse that day that I would try to conquer my fear of heights, so I volunteered to climb up onto the top shelf to help put some big boxes up, which I actually did without being afraid! The only problem was that there was a metal piece sticking out of one of the boxes that scraped up my ankle (picture below), but it didn't hurt and it wasn't old and rusty so I was fine, but it freaked out some of my group members so they helped clean me up and stick a band aid on what I like to call my sweet battle wound (it looks more like a cat scratch now). So after that, we found out our jobs, and I am going to be a site supervisor with my teammate Joe. I am pretty excited, because now I will get to work with lots of new volunteers, meet lots of cool people, and learn some handy new trades like painting, mudding, flooring, etc. I am going to become the female version of Bob The Builder (can we fix it? yes we can!) haha. We went to a work site the next day and got to get our hands dirty with some mudding practice. It was actually pretty fun! The person teaching us was named Stephen, but he was a goofy guy and liked to be called Pickles on the worksite haha so it was a fun day. He said that I was a natural at it and made fun of me a little bit because I was so gentile and took my time to do it right, when most people just do it quickly and kinda sloppy. I took it as a compliment, but tried to not be so "girly" with it after that! We listened to music the whole time, which was fun, and there were so many of us there that every once in awhile we would break into a dance party and sing along to the songs--it was a good time! At one point, one of the site supervisors even busted out a rap of his own about drywalling...it was hilarious! The biggest problem of the day was that there was no bathroom facility in the house we were working on...so we had to walk a couple blocks to the local Dollar General store, which was across a very busy main road with train tracks too, and we had to keep asking the manager of the store to unlock the bathrooms for us each time we went in there...we must have been pretty annoying! The highlight of my day was probably when we were just coming back from our lunch break and bathroom break at Dollar General and one of the site supervisors bought a box of ice cream treats for all of us! MMMMM I love ice cream!  
Last night a bunch of us went to Bourbon Street in New Orleans to see what it was like, and it was quite the site...it was like the Old Port plus Old Hallowell Day, times 5! There were so many bars and clubs down one street with people on balconies throwing beads down to people...and lots of Daquiri shops-they even have drive thru daquiri places here, which doesn't make any sense to me! It was neat to see the culture of Bourbon Street last night, but I am all set with that scene and opted to stay in for a girls night tonight instead of going out with the guys again!
We also heard from the owner of the house we are staying in (George) that if he didn't give out free seafood to everyone in the neighborhood, the would most likely kick him and us out, because I guess some past AmeriCorps groups that have stayed here haven't been very respectful of his property and were really noisy, so we have decided to change the neighbors minds! We are baking cookies all day tomorrow and putting them in cute little bags with tissue paper and delivering them so we can introduce ourselves and get off on the right foot! I am excited to continue meeting new people down here and getting an in with the community we will be working with/in for the next month and a half! And there are lots of young families here with the cutest little kids ever, so maybe we will get some babysitting opportunities?!
OH! I also just got Skype today, which is a way to video chat online, my user name for that is MindyLopez, because BrittanyB was already taken...Mindy Lopez was one of my fake "detective identities" from middle school when Heather and I used to pretend to be detectives and "solve mysteries" haha. I got to chat with Nate earlier, which was really great! It was so cool to finally see him and chat with him "face to face" or more like "screen to screen" haha. I gave him a virtual tour of the house I am living in and he got to "meet" all of my teammates :) I am looking forward to eventually Skype with Heather and anyone else who has an account!

We made the news!

ABC26 In New Orleans did a story on us the other day while we were volunteering for Feed The Children! Here is the link to watch! I am shown at least 3 times :) YAY!

http://www.abc26.com/news/local/wgno-news-oil-victims-food,0,1170765.story

Induction and Louisiana

So we were officially inducted into the AmeriCorps NCCC program on Tuesday. It was sad while we practiced marching in, because since I have never been inducted into anything before, it reminded me of graduation, which made me think that I would be leaving all of my new friends and it was really sad! As much as I wanted to be done with trainings, I didn't want to go separate ways from all of my new friends for our new and exciting, but scary (because they are so new) projects! We had some good speakers (including the mayor of Vicksburg) and we got to wear our awesome AmeriTuxes though, so it was very eventful haha. My team also made an awesome poster telling everyone about our project (pictures below). Then, as if all of that craziness of induction wasn't enough, my team and one other team got called on disaster and we had to leave right after induction instead of the next day like everyone else. Now, this seems like no big deal, because it only meant we were leaving 1 day early, but my mind likes to have a plan and when the plan does not go the way it is supposed to I sometimes have a hard time dealing with the change...which some of you know about me! So I was basically freaking out all that day, trying to clean my room, pack everything into 2 backpacks for 2 months, and also make time to hang out with and say goodbye to my new friends from other teams. It was really stressful, but I managed to fit it all in by staying up until 3:30am and waking up at 6:30am the next day, gahhh! I did surprisingly well the next day on only 3 hours of sleep though! So yesterday after induction we traveled 4 hours to a beautiful church to stay the night and help out with Feed The Children the next day by distributing boxes of food, hygiene stuff, and water to families affected by the oil spill. But before we could distribute the boxes, we had to unload them from a huge mack truck...all 288 24 packs of water and 800 boxes! Thankfully many hands make light work so it didn't take too long! I did get a little sunburn on my face today for the first time since being down south though, because we were actually outside for once instead of in an air conditioned room! Oh, I forgot to mention that the church we stayed at the night before was beautiful on the outside, but super sketchy and old and dirty and had no AC on the inside...blahh! So I guess the whole Feed The Children event was sponsored by Eli and Peyton Manning, so they took a group picture of us for their website :) Woohoo! And the local news crew was also there to film us for awhile, which is exciting. AmeriCorps really gets a lot of publicity!
After all of that we drove another hour or so to our home in Chalmette, LA. Its a cute little house, but was really messy and dirty inside because the other group that just left this morning decided to just leave all of their junk here for us to deal with...so we had to spend 2 hours cleaning before we could even think about moving our own stuff in! It was a really long day, but the house looks great now and it has wireless internet that my computer actually connects to (knock on wood) so that made up for the mess, in my book! Tomorrow starts our 2 week training here for the St. Bernard Project, where we will be working until Oct. 15th, unless we get called out to a disaster site again! Okay, well it is getting pretty late and I still have to shower before bed and get up early tomorrow, so I'll update you all again soon! Oh yeah, and for everyone who is wondering about my health....I am feeling much better these days! My voice is still not 100% back (my mom and sister both thought I was my 11 year old brother on the phone...haha) but I feel great and I am also done with my ear infection medicine, because it has been a week...so yay for feeling better!