NOTE

Hey everyone! Internet's out from the center, I don't know when it'll be back up, but hopefully soon so I can make a longer post with pictures, for now, there's nothing to do but wait.

Day Five-Let's Paint!

Since we finished taping up the ceiling yesterday, today we laid tarps and Michael, Meadow and I began to paint (as you can see, we had a lot of fun with said tarps ;) ). We put up three coats on the base board, which took us most of the day.

Conor, Garratt and Dan worked on building the back door of the house and installing the already made doors on the interior of the house for the bedrooms and bathroom.

Molly and Milady (I helped a bit too while we waited for the paint to dry) continued putting in the baseboard.

Tonight we are going to have dinner at Bethany United Methodist Church in the 9th ward. The church is our church's partner and we helped them rebuild their sanctuary and do landscaping around their courtyard. People say it's the only green grass for miles.

Day Four-It's Pouring

It rained nearly all day today, starting when we got up and its still going on now. There was a brief time this morning where we thought it was going to clear up, but soon the buckets came pouring down.

During that time, Conor and Garratt went outside to work more on the roof, where we actually used math outside of a classroom(!!) I used the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out how long to cut the soffit for the roof (see the house and my "math block" below).

However, once it started to rain again, we had to go inside, so Conor and Garratt never even got to cut their soffit (we were also informed that none of us are liable to be more than seven feet off the ground). We had also finished the framing inside, which has to be inspected before the drywall can go up, so we were relocated to a new house (below), where Michael, Meadow and I taped near the ceiling so we can paint it tomorrow, Conor and Garratt cut baseboard and Milady and Molly nailed the baseboard to the walls.

Our new house is a lot further along than our old one: all the drywall is up and painted and the plumbing and electrical work is done, but the floors still need the be finished, doors need to be hung and there's a few paint jobs to do too. I like our new work site, but I'm gonna miss Frank :)

And don't worry, Michael and Erin, I'm practicing my gymnastics while I'm out here (see my new profile picture) We even passed a gymnastics school on the way to work today!

Day Three-The Work REALLY Begins

Meet my team!

This video is from yesterday, I tried to put it up, but was having difficulties uploading it.

Since yesterday was mostly a "scope out the house day", today we really got into working. We worked in small groups, making repairs around the house.

Molly and I worked on putting cross studs into the wall for the drywall to go on

Conor and Garratt put together the door frames

Meadow, Dan and Michael worked on fixing the roof fo rthe rain gutters

And Milady took out old drywall that was stuck between the studs

It rained most of the afternoon yesterday and it began raining again when we left the work site this afternoon, but its gotten up to 95 degrees while we've been here, so the rain is a nice way to cool off. I hope our team will be able to meet our home owners before the week is over because we didn't get to meet them last year.

Day Two-First Day on the Worksite

We got our house assignments early this morning. Our team (Team 2-Me, Molly, Meadow, Conor, Garratt, Michael, Dan and Milady) has a house further away from the others. Contrary to what we believed, we will not be drywalling the house because the plumbing and electrical work is not done yet. However, we will be working on the roof, staircase, and finishing putting up the studs, that drywall will be later put over. We spent our day today doing a bit of repair work from the previous team working in our house, who didn't seem to have as much experience with construction as we do. We also came across a dog who followed us around our worksite. He was very sweet and we named him Frank.

Our house

Nailing in studs

And after work today, we went to see the swamps of New Orleans....

Ahh! A baby alligator!

The swamps

A real alligator

Day One

Our team of 18 kids and 7 adults touched down late last night at the New Orleans International Airport, located in the the western side of the city. It was too dark to see much as we came into town, but the few street lamps that lit the streets showed nothing more than devastation. We are staying at the Peoples United Methodist Church and Recovery Center in New Orleans 3rd ward (the 9th and lower 9th wards were the areas hardest hit by the hurricanes). Even the houses just across the street from the center (below) look badly damaged.

This morning we drove across a canal of the Mississippi River and into the 9th ward. Most of the ward is now just an enormous grassland with slabs of concrete on the blocks where houses were (we stopped and got out at one to get a closer look at it; you could even see the lines on the floor from where the walls separating rooms were). The few houses still standing were spray-painted with "Do Not Demo", or else the government was within their full rights to take the house down. Other houses had been fixed up by their owners or rebuild by contractors, if the home owner could afford it, but keep in mind: these people have no neighbors, no school system and no work or grocery stores for miles away.

Crossing the canal

The lower 9th ward

A house that was not demolished

The concrete foundation of a home

An abandoned church

Houses in areas such as the 7th and 8th wards, were not destroyed, but simply filled with toxic flood water for three or four weeks. After the water drained, the houses (like the ones below) were searched for survivors. Each time a team finished searching a house, they marked it with an X so that the next team coming along would know it had already been searched. The number on top of the X indicates the date the house was searched, the left is the team that searched the house, the right lists any toxins found in the house and the bottom number tells how many were found dead in the house. When we start construction tomorrow, we will be working in these areas.

Afterwards, we went to a more upscale area of New Orleans, where little damage from the hurricanes remained, and worshiped at Rayne United Methodist Church (below)

I can't wait to get out tomorrow and receive our house assignments so we can start working right away.

Last Year's Trip

Homes in the 9th Ward

My Work Team (L to R: Micheal, Holly, Dylan, Philip, Emily, Me, Grant)

Dry-walling a living room

Painting

Our entire work group

The Lower 9th Ward

The Lower 9th Ward As Well

Thought I'd put up some pictures from last year's work trip and a piece I wrote for the church news letter to give a better idea of what's instore in New Orleans...hopefully, the city will be even closer to the end of its rebuilding effort this year than it was the last.

"New Orleans, Louisiana: A city so rich in culture and diversity. A place where jazz music beats down the streets and the jumping sound of street performers echoes across the town. New Orleans has been a symbol of the uniqueness of the United States for years.

And then you see the residential areas, after the storm. Homes damaged. Lives destroyed. The spray-paint on the walls, “One dog dead under house” or “Boy found alive in attic”. I got queasy whenever we went by the house that said “1 man dead, 2 dogs, 1 bird" and "This was home" across the top of the threshold. The lasting affects of Hurricane Katrina shown to the world.
One of the hardest things to do was imagine. Imagine what life was like before. The lower ninth ward, now just an enormous grass field, was once covered in hundreds of houses. Here, on this grass lot, was where a father scolded his young son for leaving his new jacket at the playground. Across the street, a new married couple finds their first home together. And in the basketball gym, one of the only buildings left standing in the ward, a little girl watched her big brother play ball with his friends until it became too dark to see.

Each morning we awoke at seven a.m., grabbed something to eat, said a quick prayer and headed out to work on what many think is a lost cause. They think we don’t care, that we’re too caught up in our video games and rap music. Each day we found ourselves drenched in sweat from the boiling heat before we had even unloaded the car. But we knew we had to make sure that every nail was in place, every wall was square. We knew we were not only rebuilding someone’s house, but their home, their life."

Three Days to Go!

Hey everyone! Thanks so much to everyone who is giving me support, whether financial or more importantly, emotional, when I head out to New Orleans, Louisiana is just three days time. My youth group and I are so excited to get back down there and take part in the rehabilitation efforts. We've been through two training sessions in the past few months where we've learned how to build studs and put up drywall, which additionally involves mudding, taping and sanding. Last year we were told that our group was one of the most well-prepared teams out working. We have also done many fundraisers including our Beignet Breakfast and Showcase Night, where we had a small talent show and Red Beans and Rice dinner. All this work is leading up to our big day on Saturday, where we'll pack off the cars early in the morning and head out to the airport. Each day we're in New Orleans (Sunday, August 10-Sunday, August 17), I will add a new blog post with pictures, videos and descriptions of what we saw and the work we did to help rebuild the city. If you'd like to learn more about our trip, you can visit http://www.santamonicaumc.org/