Hey Everyone

So I have finally made it to the Big Easy and am writing this post from my room in my new house. I left last Thursday night and drove down here with my dad. We drove for about five hours and then stopped in Carbondale, IL to get some sleep and break up the trip. We hit the road Friday morning and about 10 hours later we were in New Orleans. The only delays on the way down here came from me getting on the wrong highway for a few miles and a car on fire on the side of the road. We finally got to my new house around 6 pm on Friday. The address of the house is 5836 Willow, New Orleans, LA, 70115 for anyone interested. The house is a nice, small place which I will be sharing with two girls who are seniors at Tulane. I've only met one so far for a few minutes and she seems nice but I've barely run into her at all yet. My room is a little smaller than the one I had at my old apartment but I have my own bathroom which is nice (for obvious reasons). I dropped my Dad off at the airport at around 12:30 yesterday and was officially on my own. I'm not going to lie, I am a little freaked out about this whole thing but am keeping positive and know that this experience will be life changing. Shortly after dropping off my Dad, I went to a BBQ that AmeriCorps had for all of the new volunteers. The training for my program actually started last Monday (August 18th) so most of the other volunteers have been down here for a week or two. The BBQ was a good time and I was able to meet a lot of the people. A group of 5 of the other volunteers live in a house (which is definitely nicer than mine, ha...which I'm jealous about) so I went over there last night before going out. Cabs are pretty expensive in this city so it seems like someone is going to need to drive most nights which sucks but I'll have to make do. I went to two bars on Magazine Street, which is a pretty big street down here, with 3 of the other volunteers. We went to The Bulldog which was a pretty laid back place. The main beer down here is Abita and there are all different types (similar to what Goose Island is in Chicago). After The Bulldog, we walked down Magazine Street for a bit, and it was surprisingly pretty dead. I guess most places and restaurants don't stay open late, even on Saturday, I'm not really sure. At Ms. Mae's we watched the first half of the USA Basketball Gold Medal game, stopped at McDonalds since we hadn't eaten in 12 hours, and then headed home. Overall, a good first day. Today, I have to get some groceries since I have no food and get ready for my first day tomorrow, which I'm very excited about. It doesn't seem like I missed too much the first week and will hopefully catch up quickly. Well, that's it for the first post. I'll post again in the next couple of days with an update on what exactly I'll be doing down here and how my first couple days on the job went.