Recap of New Orleans

This is a few days overdue but last week on Friday our group divided into two separate groups within the lower 9th ward. My group put some sheetrock (drywall) on the upper floor of a town house. I was glad that we were able to do some construction work but the foreman in charge was a little crazy. He ran around with his head cut off and wanted his volunteers to work as quickly as humanly possible. He didn't want to waste any materials. For example he made us put up a piece of sheetrock that was poorly cut. The gap between the two pieces of sheetrock was wide enough for me to use the Flip cam effectively with a shot that went through the gap. However, that was the lone incident that I wouldn't have done what he did.
Then during the night we went to eat at a restaurant called Oceania. It was a half block off Bourbon Street within the French Quarter. I had an alligator Po-Boy and it was awesome! It was such great food.
We left New Orleans early on Saturday morning and arrived in Waverly at 4a.m. on Sunday.
The trip was such a great experience. I would advise all students to go on a service trip before they graduate. You get do help people who while creating great friendships in a new city.

City Park New Orleans

Today (Thursday) and yesterday (Wednesday) we went to city park to do some restoration of the city park. The first day our group mulched a trial that circled the north side of the park. Then we had a few others that did some gardening work for the botanical garden. We made great progress on the trail the city park director we worked with, Jim Morrision, was grateful for the progress that we made.

In the afternoon we went to a local elementary school to help the teachers in teaching their students. I was amazed at how different the educational system was. The building was built after Katrina and the building looked nice. However, when we went through the school the situation was much different. The students were out of control. Children in kindergarten told us some expletive words. The children were out of control and in the classroom I was in, were out of control. The teacher I was with just kept yelling and yelling at her students. The situation varied from class to class but in my personal view, the students need more positive reinforcement and more resources.

That night we went down to the French Quarter and Bourbon St. The atmosphere there was crazy. There were people everywhere and music filled the street. It was a great place to visit.

Today (Thursday) we went back to the park and we were in charge of students from the Lutheran school district. We divided the school children into different groups and they did various tasks around the park. The school children did everything from picking up trash to pulling ragweed. The school children had a good time and so did we.

Tomorrow we are going to the 9th ward doing construction work.

Andrew Bridgewater

Day Two Boys and Girls Club

I’ll try to leave off and add a bit to Andrew Bridgewater’s previous posts. Today was our second day at the Boys and Girls Club/ NFL Youth Education Village. It’s a really neat place built by the NFL and maintained by both organizations. The Saints football team visits the facility so you can defiantly tell their pride all around. We met some great people there and being our second day they started to open up to us. We learned how hard it was first hand to get out of the city of New Orleans, and that one of the children that frequents the club was found clinging to a light post. It made us realize that even though we felt like we were not working hard enough, it means a lot to people to have places to go. I did not think about how weird it would be not having organizations and businesses available. Today at the club we cleaned and organized inside, (it was storming outside) and tried to make it nicer for the kids. Then after a full morning of work the camp director loaded us on to the club van to show us the Lower Ninth Ward.

The tour was more real then I could have ever imagined. For the first time in our trip we saw numbers of people who lost their lives in the very houses we were looking at. We also saw holes people had made in roofs to escape their attics. There is still so much left to be done. There is progress, I highly recommend visiting http://www.makeitrightnola.org/, but there is so much left to do especially in the ninth ward. I would like to remind people to keep the Katrina areas in their thoughts because they are still in need of help and donations.

Brianna Nielsen

The Untouched Gym

The untouched gym is at the Boys and Girls Club near downtown New Orleans. The Superdome was just a couple of blocks away. We were what the Americorps volunteer called "beautification" of the building. Basically we did some clean up work in and around the building and a vacant lot across from the building. In the afternoon, we discovered an empty gym that hadn't been cleaned up from Katrina. The roof was partly torn, the wooden floor was covered in several layers of dirt. We thought that the floor had been removed but it was so covered we couldn't see it. The second layer was covered in sand. It looked like people just had just got up and left right before Katrina struck. Words can not describe the destruction and the eeriness. Tomorrow we are returning to the Boys and Girls Club and were taking a tour of New Orleans.

Andrew Bridgewater

Made it to New Orleans!

We left Wartburg at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and arrived in New Orleans after more than a 1,000 miles and 20 plus hours of driving around 1p.m. We got lost a few times but we made it here in one piece. Trying to sleep was interesting but I managed to get six hours of sleep! We are staying at Camp Restore in East New Orleans. More to come in the days ahead but right now, it's time to relax!

Andrew Bridgewater