New Orleans Life: Live it.

Just to warn you, this will probably take some time to read. Okay, it's probably my longest tate-blog yet. But I have to write about my two and a half day trip--all of it--in this blog so that I don't have to tell the stories over and over again. Makes it better for everyone.

Oh yeah, so for those of you that read this and don't know (which can't be too many people), I went to New Orleans Saturday until Monday to help out and also check things out. Because unfortunately for me and all my KU friends, it looks like I'll parting from them to head down there for a more extended period of time come January. Weird. Anyway, here it goes...

Day One: Saturday, December 17, 2005

4am: Justin arrives at my home to take me to the airport. Steve and Mahogs are lame and didn't come. I ate some leftover macaroni and cheese for breakfast, and we were off.

10am: I finally arrive in New Orleans. The airport still works, thankfully. This dude Kevin picked me up--he's one of the Crusade coordinators down there. We then drove over to the camp.

The main function of the camp is to feed people around the area. Mostly construction workers around there. And anyone volunteering. It also has a "store" like we had in Minden, only it's a lot smaller. But they give out clothes and toiletries and stuff to people. The people that work at the camp and all the Crusade kids that come down stay there too. But that may not even be where I'll be when I go back.

11:15am: I'm pretty quickly put to work serving lunch. We don't waste any time there.



And of course, I did some sorting work in the store.

No sorting shoes though, unfortunately, since I'm an expert at that. But Emily and Katie, I was for sure thinking of you guys.

12:30pm: I eat the delicious lunch of a chicken sandwich, corn and peaches. It was delicious. Especially since I hadn't eaten anything in 8 hours.

4pm: One of the other coordinators, Mouse, and I go out on the town. Ish. We go see the French Quarter (that's where Bourbon Street is) and get some eats. But it was rainy and cold and me and this Mouse girl are like from different worlds, so it wasn't the greatest night of my life.

In fact, I was rethinking the whole New Orleans idea at this point.

9pm: Mouse and I take this group of Crusade kids from Cincinatti to this church to sleep. I finally get to take off my wet clothes and enjoy heating. Oh it was great. Then we just went to sleep.

Day Two: Sunday, December 18, 2005

4:10am: Wake up. Really freaking early again. We all go out to make breakfast in this church parking lot. First off, we stood waiting in the cold dark for like 45 minutes because the head dude was late.

Then, we started making eggs. Doesn't sound too bad, right? But imagine cracking hundreds of eggs with your bare hands in 30 degree weather. Man it was painful. But the sweet part is that we mixed up eggs in huge buckets. I mean, how often do you get to crack so many eggs that it fills a whole bucket? Not very often my friends.

7:10am: We leave the breakfast making place. I don't really remember a whole lot that happened after this, but it was a long morning. I cleaned out some cambros (huge food storage containers that keep food hot for 24 hours) and returned them to where they belonged. Other than that I just wandered around I think.

11:30am: I get put on lunch duty again, but it is quickly interrupted when Mouse tells me I'm suddenly going to be a coordinator. She informs me that I am in charge of getting a group of North Carolina guys to this house that they would be working on for the afternoon. And why shouldn't I be a coordinator? I mean I'd been there all of 24 hours.

1pm: Me and the 7 N.C. boys head out...all 8 of us in one SUV. On the way there, Mike (who I hadn't even met yet) asks me if I want to be an honorary member of their group. And since I had no friends there, of course I said yes.

We go to this house to bleach it. Basically that meant scrubbing the walls with rags that had been dipped in bleach water in order to kill the toxic mold that was left there from flooding. We had to wear masks and gloves and everything. Pretty exciting. Plus after spending time with the boys cleaning out the house, I realized they were my kind of people. Man they were a blessing.

4pm: After cleaning the house, the boys wanted showers. The day before, they had worked at the same place I made breakfast at, and someone there told them they could come to their church or something to take showers. And then after showers, they wanted to check out this free dinner we had heard about, and I was told I had to join them.

So we decided I should tell Kevin that I needed to go with them to supervise their showers. Awkward. After that my title changed from "coordinator" to "shower supervisor."

5:20pm: We show up at what we're pretty sure is the place they were told to take showers in, but there weren't really any people around. And also there was a sign on the door of the school gym that said "Closed 9:30am to 6pm." That didn't stop us from looking for open doors.

And they found one. We wandered into the building, where we found a whole bunch of bunkbeds and people's stuff. Probably this was a place that housed volunteers. I have no idea if we were even allowed to be in there, but the boys decided they should hurry up before it was 6. Thus began the secret shower mission. I stood on guard in the hallway. We never saw a single other person, so we're pretty sure no one ever knew we were there. Sneaky.

6pm: We leave the school to go find free dinner. The guy whose house we were cleaning, Hamilton, told us this restaurant was serving New Orleans style food for free. However, his directions were awful. We drove around for over a half hour. At one point we saw these search lights and we were like, haha what if that was the place?

It was. But we didn't discover that until after driving around in circles. Also, it's not a restaurant. It's a bar. And, of course, they're out of food. Great. So Hamilton goes to ask if they have anything left in the kitchen. We then find ourselves following these hippie dudes, who claim there's food for us, outside the bar and across the street to a house.

There is one word that comes to mind to describe the neighborhood we were in: Sketch. Someone said, "this is the point where they take us out back and kill us." True.

The house across the street turns out to be another place where they're feeding and housing people. This guy offers to make us Thai noodles, which was really nice but we really just needed to leave. Plus, who are these people? Nobody knows. Then they proceed to give us a 20 minute tour of the houses. In the dark. In the ghetto.

Okay it wasn't that bad. But we were a little concerned now since we had an 8 o'clock curfew and had not yet eaten. So we say bye to our new hippie friends and get out of there.

7pm: I convince the boys we need to get fast food. No time for a sit down restaurant. So we go all the way across town again to go to Rally's. The drive-thru lines are ridiculously long, so all 8 of us get out and go to the window. They hated us. But at least we got food. Oh yeah, and we got lost on the way to Rally's too.

While sitting at the tables at Rally's waiting for everyone to get their food, I told the boys that it's weird that they all call me Amanda and made me feel like I was dating all of them. So it's official now. I'm dating the whole group.

8:10pm: We finally make it back to camp. Kevin instructs us to assemble some wheelbarrows. Justin and I worked together as a team, and we did pretty good, I must say. But here's Mike and Scott being real excited about their finished product:



11:20pm: After haning out with the boys for awhile--watching them jump on mattresses, debating whether to go hang out with the other people and getting scared to do so, discussing our differeing music tastes--I decide it's time for bed. Bed time in the trailer:




Outside.










and Inside.






Day Three: Monday, December 19, 2005

7am: Wake up. Nothin' like getting to sleep in until 7. That is, after you've gotten up at 4 the two previous days.

I was really dirty at this point. Hadn't showered yet. Unfortunately, the trailer shower was clogged. So I just did a brief hair-washing thing. Again, Minden memories. Although I didn't have Emily Ashcraft to wash my hair for me. Oh yeah, and Justin and Alan, I think they helped with the hair-washing too.

I wandered around most of the morning doing random stuff. Then I started doing some of the following things with the N.C. boys (they were in charge of handling things around camp this day):

burning cardboard with justin and ryan. someone told us after awhile that the fumes produced by burning cardboard could be toxic. oops. i mean i'm still alive, so we're fine.

patrol duty with scott and weston. actually, that was just their excuse to drive around in the beach patrol vehicle. they didn't really do anything.

introducing scott to screaming music (specifically underoath).

3pm: I finally head out to the airport. And I read 3/4 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on the journey home.

Some Concluding Remarks

God blessed me a lot on this trip. I hated it at first, but then I ended up having da bomb time. So in mid-January, I'm headed back down to be a coordinator for Campus Crusade in New Orleans. I will basically be in charge of all the Crusade groups that come down to do relief work.

At this time, Crusade is stationed at that camp, which is run by a combination of several different ministries. But this may not be the case when I go there, because Crusade is maybe splitting off to do their own thing. Plus there will be lots of preparations to be done for all the people that will come down on Spring Break. Sweet.

Also, the camp has an endless supply of Teddy Grahams.

Mmm.

I think that about wraps it up. You're probably still like, I don't get it, so what will you do down there? The truth is, I don't really know. We'll just have to find out.

I just hope I can easily get internet. I have a slight addiction. To email, to facebook, and of course, to tate-blog.

Oh yeah, me and my boys:

Weston, Luke, Paul, Justin, Mike, Ryan, and Scott. No future groups will be able to compare to my boyfriends from North Carolina.

Christmas Break!!! Springfield in a week!!