New Orleans
Or, "Nawlins'" in correct proper slang.
Favorite Jason Baker quotes:
"Straight up (out of compton)."
"Your just a big wah, baby, cry face."
"Are we still on the same bridge?" (2 hours later)
"That's intense."
"I'm calling B.S., erroneous on all accounts."
Just got back from a 5-day excursion to New Orleans, Louisiana where we traveled up together with 95 people from Texas State University (in three seperate carpool groups). I drove my car with Sandy, Ryan Hawkins, Mike Campos, and Jenny. One mix tape, eight fruit roll-ups, and nine hours later - we get to New Orleans "The Big Easy".
The Location:
After finding out we wern't staying at the place we were supposed to stay at ("City of Light") we find new accomodations at The Grand Palace hotel right off downtown and just a few blocks from Bourbon Street. The place is pretty run-down, especially the lobby that must have suffered water damage. The parking garage is littered with cars that have been jacked up and everything stolen, and we find out the first night that many of the guy students have to take security shifts in order to make sure we don't get things stolen (like our cars, and personal belongins). So that is pretty reassuring. But the location itself is great being pretty much in downtown, and PLUS the fact that we have rooms with beds and showers and I hear people at other sites had to wait upwards of 3-hours for showers.
The Food:
FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency was kind enough to cook us three home cooked meals a day. Basically, if you didn't eat out, the food that was provided was from FEMA and this ranged from hotdogs, to foot-and-a-half long sausage, to uncooked rice, amoung others. The food actually wasn't that bad, considering they had prepare meals for probably around 3700 students for 3x meals a day. Our group found a place nicknamed "The Hippie Dome" (or 'Made With Love Cafe") where they actually served pretty good food and snacks and we opted to eat lunch there for a modest donation.
The Work:
We split into groups of about 11 people with one group-leader and were assigned job sites to go work on. Every group had a different site (unless the site needed a lot of work and another group would join you), but most groups did very similar work. What this included was taking out all of the furniture, pretty much all the "stuff" inside the house, had to come out. Then we gutted the house which consisted of taking hammers, crowbars, sledgehammers and demolishing all the inside wood and moldy boards that had been water damaged. Pretty intense stuff. We worked Monday-Thursday from about 9-4 every day give-or-take. Our team name was "The Armstrongs" seeing that we were all pretty ripped... that and Louie Armstrong was from there. The work was tough, but definently rewarding.
Our group finished 2 complete work sites and a half day at a church spent cutting down a giant oak tree that had partially fallen over.
The first guy we worked with was named "Crazy" Carl who grew up in Nawlins' and didn't know what he was going to do next. He had just gotten over kemotherapy for bladder-cancer and wasn't able to do much. Crazy Carl talked up a storm. He pretty much talked all day long about anything and everything. Ethan said he was one of those guys who "knows a little about everything, but not much about a lot". But he was a good guy and it was great to be able to be of service to him.
The second lady we worked with was named Gale and the interesting story behind this is how we came to work for her. We needed another job site, so me and Ethan went to the area to find someone on the list. Well this lady was standing at the tent waiting to be put on the list (apparently there was a long list), and we told the tents-people we wanted a large site, and the lady said she had a large house (boy did she), so we offered to take her house on. Total God thing. Perfect timing. So that was really neat to see that happen.
Both Carl and Gale were the most amazing pack-rats. They had stuff EVERYWHERE. I thought that was funny.
This post will be updated with more about the people and probably another post just on my personal experience. I wanted to have kind of a base overview for people who didn't go, or just folks who wanted a recap.
Favorite Jason Baker quotes:
"Straight up (out of compton)."
"Your just a big wah, baby, cry face."
"Are we still on the same bridge?" (2 hours later)
"That's intense."
"I'm calling B.S., erroneous on all accounts."
Just got back from a 5-day excursion to New Orleans, Louisiana where we traveled up together with 95 people from Texas State University (in three seperate carpool groups). I drove my car with Sandy, Ryan Hawkins, Mike Campos, and Jenny. One mix tape, eight fruit roll-ups, and nine hours later - we get to New Orleans "The Big Easy".
The Location:
After finding out we wern't staying at the place we were supposed to stay at ("City of Light") we find new accomodations at The Grand Palace hotel right off downtown and just a few blocks from Bourbon Street. The place is pretty run-down, especially the lobby that must have suffered water damage. The parking garage is littered with cars that have been jacked up and everything stolen, and we find out the first night that many of the guy students have to take security shifts in order to make sure we don't get things stolen (like our cars, and personal belongins). So that is pretty reassuring. But the location itself is great being pretty much in downtown, and PLUS the fact that we have rooms with beds and showers and I hear people at other sites had to wait upwards of 3-hours for showers.
The Food:
FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency was kind enough to cook us three home cooked meals a day
The Work:
We split into groups of about 11 people with one group-leader and were assigned job sites to go work on. Every group had a different site (unless the site needed a lot of work and another group would join you), but most groups did very similar work. What this included was taking out all of the furniture, pretty much all the "stuff" inside the house, had to come out. Then we gutted the house which consisted of taking hammers, crowbars, sledgehammers and demolishing all the inside wood and moldy boards that had been water damaged. Pretty intense stuff. We worked Monday-Thursday from about 9-4 every day give-or-take. Our team name was "The Armstrongs" seeing that we were all pretty ripped... that and Louie Armstrong was from there. The work was tough, but definently rewarding.
Our group finished 2 complete work sites and a half day at a church spent cutting down a giant oak tree that had partially fallen over.
The first guy we worked with was named "Crazy" Carl who grew up in Nawlins' and didn't know what he was going to do next. He had just gotten over kemotherapy for bladder-cancer and wasn't able to do much. Crazy Carl talked up a storm. He pretty much talked all day long about anything and everything. Ethan said he was one of those guys who "knows a little about everything, but not much about a lot". But he was a good guy and it was great to be able to be of service to him.
The second lady we worked with was named Gale and the interesting story behind this is how we came to work for her. We needed another job site, so me and Ethan went to the area to find someone on the list. Well this lady was standing at the tent waiting to be put on the list (apparently there was a long list), and we told the tents-people we wanted a large site, and the lady said she had a large house (boy did she), so we offered to take her house on. Total God thing. Perfect timing. So that was really neat to see that happen.
Both Carl and Gale were the most amazing pack-rats. They had stuff EVERYWHERE. I thought that was funny.
This post will be updated with more about the people and probably another post just on my personal experience. I wanted to have kind of a base overview for people who didn't go, or just folks who wanted a recap.
