"If you see a need, meet it."

Me on the job! Bangs temporarily eliminated due to outside work in the morning.

It's been quite a week: Physically and emotionally exhausting, but well worth it. I'm really enjoying my new volunteers-in-the-morning, newsletter-in-the-afternoon schedule. The exercise (both mental and physical) is good for me. I sleep well at night.

On Thursday, my Colorado Springs volunteers and I headed to clear a resident's yard. When showing us where her property lines were and what grass she wanted cut, she mentioned as an afterthought that she would like it if we could level her back yard. It was clear why: her contractor had left the soil in huge, solidified mounds, making the entire backyard a series of hard, lumpy hills. We made quick work of the grass cutting and had about two-thirds of the yard leveled by the first day. The group was only going to be there for two hours the next day, so I hoped that with a little luck we could finish the rest. I arrived late to the site Friday due to our weekly staff meeting. I couldn't believe my eyes. The yard was leveled.

We spent the last hour clearing the back yard of debris and leveling it even more precisely. When the resident came out, she was stunned, saying that she had already thought it was beautiful the day before and that this was more than she had ever expected. She cried as she hugged each and every one of us. I was previously unaware that, due to physical limitations, she had been entirely unable to walk in her backyard in the state it was in before. Now she can. It's so easy to underestimate the impact that fifteen people with a couple of shovels can do, and yet. . .There it was.

The resident repeated the phrase, "you can't know" over and over. Finally she explained, "you can't know unless you've lived through it," she told me. "But those with heart will try to imagine. Those like you all." I can't even explain what that moment did to me.

That afternoon I went out with my coworkers Burke, Ken, Lubaina, and Jessica (all in the Architectural Design studio) to The Bywater Restaurant and had my first catfish of the trip. $5.95 for perfectly fried and seasoned catfish, fries, and 'slaw can't be beat.

The Colorado Springs volunteers were kind enough to invite me to a cookout they were having at the church they were staying at. It was a wonderful, warm event and reminded me bittersweetly (bitter because I miss them; sweet because they're awesome) of my own church and youth group. It was hard to say goodbye to such an incredible group of volunteers, but I feel certain that they'll all be returning to New Orleans some day, and that helps a lot. The title of this entry is something that one of the youth group leaders, Julie, told me as we reflected on our week. It's a simple, pure philosophy that I will certainly take with me.

Later that night I hung out with Morgan, Petra, Alex, and Megan at our friend Matt's, who goes to Xavier, place. It was a nice, relaxing end to the week.

I did squat for most of Saturday, and that needed to happen. That night Petra, Balint, and I had a picnic in Audubon Park (across from Tulane and Loyola universities) with our program leaders, Stephen and Yoni, and their respective girlfriends and dogs.
Yoni and Bunny, the dog from hell (in a good way).

Later Balint, Petra, and I splashed (illegally?) around in the park's fountain and just walked around in the warm summer night. My favorite kind of weekend, really. I woke up covered in bugbites. Worth it.

Balint and Petra on the fountain's edge.

A mildly insane day.

In a flash of inspiration this morning, I realized that I wanted to do my final research paper for the Urban Geography of New Orleans on a memorial that stands at the entrance to the Lower Ninth Ward (pictured above). The memorial has always been a source of interest for me since I was informed that it was built by a "bunch of rich white people" and that the Lower Ninth Ward residents unanimously hated it. I've been looking into it more recently, and it turns out some of that information isn't correct. For example, several articles seem to imply that the designer, David Lee, is a person of color (they don't specify of what origin). One article also mentioned many residents crying in appreciation at the unveiling of the memorial. Still, I've spoken to a resident who related that she avoids the memorial at all costs because it reminds her of the friends she lost to the storm. This brought me to an interesting question: How do Lower Ninth Ward residents react to this memorial? Does this piece of artwork change the way they move about their neighborhood? And thus, a question for a research paper was born.

In other news, the person I work under was "let go" today completely unexpectedly. I have no idea why. This leaves me as the only person in my department. I also have very little information (for example, where my volunteers are supposed to be going tomorrow). This all happened in the last half-hour of my day, so I really have no idea how it's going to turn out. More on all of this later.

Work itself was great. My Colorado volunteers and I met our homeowner. She was incredibly sweet; she brought us cookies, chips, water, and juice to the work site and wouldn't cease telling us how grateful she was. We prayed with her and her sister at the end. I had the pleasure of sitting with her on her newly built porch as I waited for the project manager to pick me up. She told me about how she is at peace over losing her house (it was entirely uprooted and destroyed by the storm) because, after all, "it's just stuff." As I told my dad about this experience later on the phone, he remarked, "that's what you came for." Excuse my bragging, but the man is brilliant, and he was certainly spot-on in this case. (Dad. . .I miss you.)

I've had a great time bonding with the Colorado group. Their energy and curiosity often reminds me of my own youth group. I find myself getting a little motherly with them, urging them to drink water and shielding their eyes while I spray their faces with sunscreen. (Mom. . .I miss you.)

The newsletter is going much better. I've been consolidating what I've created while concentrating on keeping the essential parts of the newsletter there. It's difficult; I'm used to organizing words, thoughts, and meanings, but certainly not images. Though I enjoy color and images, I've never been asked to format them in a pleasing-yet-professional way, and it's certainly proved to be a new challenge.

I have returned! Sort of victoriously!

Above is a fountain that's in the French Quarter. Notice the woman and her little girl playing at the edge-- so cute!

Alright. I am back to regular blogging. There was a little lag there in which I was very tired and started watching Lost online due to Bryna's suggestion (read: mistake).

I literally did nothing last weekend. That is, homework, nothing by myself, or nothing in the sense of lying on Balint's floor with Balint and Petra for four hours in a row. It felt great and it needed to be done.

This week at work has been interesting. My boss is fairly busy, so it's been up to me to be in the field with the volunteers. My day is split in between taking the volunteers to the site, doing physical labor while directing them on how to do their own physical labor, coming back at lunchtime, covertly bathing myself in the bathroom sink, and changing into business attire before returning to my newsletter duties. I feel like a sweatier, less heroic Clark Kent in reverse.

This week's group is a thirty-member Presbyterian youth group from Colorado. Getting to spend every day with them has been awesome. I think it's hard to know the meaning of volunteerism until you see a bunch of high school kids clear six feet of grass from a lawn in half an hour while enduring 100-degree weather. They go into their work with enthusiasm, smiles, and lots of intelligent questions, and it's great to be a part of it.

The newsletter has hit a snag, unfortunately. While one higher-up approved it fully, another has now decided that it needs to be reformatted in order to be mailed out. This makes my job fairly complicated, as neither higher-up has spoken to the other and both are too busy for me to speak to either of them. The story is incomplete for now, so I'll refrain from saying more. All I can know for sure is that there will be a NENA newsletter, and it will be good.

A kitten ran into work today. The Job1 kids were terrified of it; I think they thought it was a rabid stray or something. I picked it up, if only to stop them from yelling, and it immediately relaxed in my arms and started purring. Needless to say, I took an inordinate amount of time "putting it outside." Worth it.

It was 107 degrees today with the heat index.

My glasses fogged up immediately when I went outside.

Unfortunately, I am exhausted right now and really can't bring myself to write. I promise this will be the last entry (at least for a while) that basically says nothing. . .But a big one will come tomorrow!

In the above picture is me, Balint (from Budapest), Will (from New Jersey), and Buttercup (from my bed). Will and Balint work at the Broadmoor Improvement Association and are also in the program with me.

This entry coming to you from a very sleepy girl

Long day. The ones with work and class always are. I was up quite late last night chatting with a certain older brother, so my energy is very limited at this point.

Today: Finished newsletter mock-up and submitted it for review. Oriented surprise volunteers from Georgia. Took Job1 kids out to pick up trash. Entered various data. Discussed the term "snow bunny" with Will. Made fun of Morgan's abysmal high-fiving skills. Taught Balint how tall a six foot person was (Hungarians suck at non-metric measurements, apparently).

Good night y'all.

Existentialism on lunch break

This morning I was making the rounds with the volunteers. If I've met them already, I usually greet them, ask them how their day was, etc. We have three groups at the moment: Eight undergraduates from Berkeley, ten folks from a Baptist church in Ohio, and ten high school and undergraduates through the Job1 program (which, as far as I can tell, is a decades-old initiative run through the local government to employ youth during the summer).

I was talking with a middle-aged man from the Ohio church. He told me how he had met the homeowner at the house they were working on the day before, and how he'd had a long talk with her about her recent experiences moving back in. We agreed that listening to a homeowner's story is just as important as tiling or sheetrocking or flooring their house. I commented that I believed that the silver lining of Hurricane Katrina (I believe I referred to it as "the beauty of the storm" in a speech I gave in my freshman seminar for a certain favorite professor) involved the interaction of people across the country-- and the globe-- who otherwise never would have met. He immediately began nodding, and related that he felt that that was God's work. I found myself saying, "I agree."

My thoughts on God are complicatedly simple. I believe I spent most of elementary school liking that being, most of middle school angry at it, and most of high school and college being unable to believe in its existence but unable to discount it either. (Sorry for referring to God as "it," but the whole gendered deity thing throws me for a loop.) An idea that struck me while talking to that tattooed stranger was that God is what makes us do what we believe is right. That necessitates that God is in everyone. It also opens up a lot of wormholes and maintains the complicatedly simple quality of my beliefs. I'm not sure if this is an idea I'll accept, reject, hold onto. . .But it's the first one that's made some sense in a while.

- - -

I've begun work on the NENA newsletter. I became quite excited about it the more I worked on it. Spreading information is one of the critical things that is necessary to help people recover from the storm. I hope to do that with the newsletter and, ideally, have people come to NENA and receive its service as a result.

We got about ten Job1 kids who started work for us today. Job1 is a government-run program focused on employing New Orleans citizens. As far as I can tell, it employs any youth who applies in an organization of their interest for $8.00 an hour (75 cents above the current Louisiana minimum wage; the minimum wage will actually be changing to $7.50 in October). In any case, the kids who are now working for NENA are awesome. Today I chaperoned them as they took censuses for the 9th Ward Beautification Program and got to watched as they charmed 9th Ward residents. They added a hefty number of applicants to our list and did it with incredible spirit. . .In the 105 degree weather.

Two silly and unrelated things:
1) I now understand the stereotype of Southern women having large hair. My hair is about four times more voluminous here than in Massachusetts.
2) Strangely, instantaneously, unbelievably, I stopped biting my nails (literally for the first time since I mastered the ability to chew) upon arriving to New Orleans. It was entirely subconscious. Now, however, I've started grinding my teeth. Problematic. (Suggestions?)

The setting sun

I stood up from my bed to take a shower and gasped out loud in amazement at the orange of half-sun that stood on the horizon. Hey, Angela was playing and I stood with my palms on the windowsill while it dipped lower, slower over the city until it was gone. I knew watching it that I was happy and that I am supposed to be here and that I miss the people I love but that they're here with me in this place that I need to be.

---

Today was good. I finished my Excel manual, which was a huge weight lifted. I wish I knew that it was as good as my Word manual, but I'm almost as new to Excel as the people I was writing it for. A group of girls from a Catholic school in Baton Rouge arrived unexpectedly, so we put them to work clearing the NENA-owned yard that happens to be next to Fats Domino's house. They did a fantastic job. It's incredible what ten people can do in two hours.

Tonight my classmates and I had the pleasure of watching a panel discussion between Trisha Jones, the founder and president of NENA, and the president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (Holy Cross is a section of the Ninth Ward). Both were brilliant but reserved, passionate but resolute. It became clear that it's people like them who prevented neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward from becoming the city's drainage system after Katrina, which, I'm sure, mattered worlds to both people I work with every day and hundreds I'll never meet.

Picture from: http://images-0.redbubble.net/img/art/size:large/view:main/2971608-2-sun-setting-on-a-louisiana-rice-field.jpg