Thursday, April 12, 2007

Making a lot of Progress in Musician's Village

The blue house in Musican's Village. This is how it was left today. Great work guys!
My Goodness, Dear Reader. Just this morning we put tarp up on the entire roof! Tomorrow and Saturday we will put up the shingles. It has just amazed me how much progress we've made here on the blue house in Habitat for Humanity Musicians' Village.

So not only does it feel good to be here-- knowing that I'm helping out a bit on the house-- but it's also felt so good to make so much progress in such a short amount of time. With the combination of skilled labor and the rest of us (that is to say, we started out on Monday quite unskilled), working with people from many backgrounds and every part of the country has felt GREAT. Yay Habitat! I encourage anyone who is able to come here and see for yourself both the heartache left after the flood and the hope in rebuilding that remains. I just wish that the kind of progress and moving forward that we feel as volunteers could be felt by all of the people here who lost their homes in the flood. The progress made on rebuilding for many people here has been VERY slow.

What else have I been doing in New Orleans? I've taken it easy in the afternoons by strolling around on the bike and hanging out at a great cafe close to the Mississippi River in the French Quarter called Cafe Du Monde. I think it's pretty cool that a business has been around for well over a hundred years. It's open 24 hours a day, just like many restaurants and cafes here in New Orleans. Not that I need a place to be open 24 hours. I'm so sleepy after working on the house during the day that I go to sleep at 10pm. I've also been riding around the French Quarter listening to musicians playing in the street. This is a place like no other.

This weekend I will go to the French Quarter Festival. It'll be fun I'm sure, and I hope to enjoy it with some new friends that I've made by volunteering this week.

All the best, Dear Reader!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi ms.v,
this is the st. peter branch library crew in new iberia,la. congrats on your trip. i hope you enjoyed all of south la.. i told you it was to get unseasonably cold for april down here. it was a pleasure to meet you and we have kept up with your travels. we will continue to check your blogs for upcoming trips. it was a pleasure-- ms. nan, tamica and ms. lee

Teacher V said...

Ms. Nan, Ms. Tamica, and Ms. Lee,

Thanks for writing me! I had a loveley time at your PRISTINE library. I was so impressed with the libraries in Louisiana-- especially compared to all of the other libries I went through in the south.

IT WAS SO COLD on the way to New Orleans-- you were right! I wished that I hadn't sent back my sweater-- that's for sure. But I survived :)

Cheers to you all.

Marcia