Yes, I'm Alive!

The past few weeks have been quite hectic but I have survived them and I'm looking forward to finally telling y'all about it. When I last left you, I was getting ready for our big Starbucks project at the end of October. During the last week of October (starting Monday, October 27th), Starbucks hosted their national managers convention in New Orleans which brought down over 10,000 employees. As part of their week in New Orleans, they were to all take part in a service activity with one of the non-profit organizations in the city. Rebuilding Together was given 4,000 Starbucks employees for 4 shifts over a 3 day period. Based on these numbers, we had 31 houses open and a few other small side projects for the volunteers to work on. The Friday before the build, all of the AmeriCorps (which includes me) spent a crazy 12 hour day at our warehouse pulling supplies, loading trucks, and getting ready for the week ahead. We were told that we would have to be at the warehouse the next Monday at 6 a.m. in order to be ready for the volunteers to show up at all of our sites at noon. Because of the late night at work Friday and the hectic week that was to come, I decided not to go to the Voodoo Music Experience that took place October 24-26. The people who went enjoyed it but I just decided last minute not to go and went out a couple of nights in the city to relax.

On Monday morning, I arrived at the warehouse bright and early at 6 a.m. where we got our instructions and logistics for how everything was going to work for the week. The director of Rebuilding Together, Kristin Palmer, gave us all a good pep talk and reminded us that this week with Starbucks was the largest service project in the history of New Orleans. Kristin is a very inspiring people and everybody in our organizations love her speeches and encouragement. She is an especially postive person and influence on the organization who has been working with Rebuilding Together for years now. After our meeting, we all went out to our sites to prepare for the volunteers. I was in charge of the house at 4437 Eden and was to have my volunteers scrape and prime and paint the exterior of the house. It's important to scrape a house of all of the old paint and paint chips before applying new paint. The house was enormous and very tall so I was skeptical about whether my volunteers could finish. I had gone over with my construction manager, Brad, the plan of attack and how I could space things out each day and what colors needed to go where. I spent all of 10 minutes with Brad a week before the build going over the color scheme so by the time Monday rolled around I had kind of forgotten so decided I would just make it up as I went along (and I had a general idea of what I was doing).

After I was dropped off at my house, it took me a couple of hours to get everything set up for the volunteers and noon crept up on me pretty quickly. So I went to the designated drop off area and had 20 volunteers come back with me to the house. I gave them an orientation about our organization, our policies and procedures, and information about the homeowner (who as of that Monday, I had yet to meet). The homeowner, Thomas Points, was originally from New Orleans and actually moved to the south side of Chicago when he was in high school. He joined the army and went to Vietnam. When he came back, he started his own landscape business and got married. He moved into the house we worked on two years after his wife passed away. When Katrina hit, he was displaced for over 20 months. His house was under 8 feet of water during Katrina and when he returned, his whole first floor had been damaged. Thomas lives on the second floor but hasn't had the money or time to fix up the first floor yet.

The shift went very smoothly and quickly. A couple of the volunteers had to get up on 28 ft. ladders and rip down the rotted gutters. I was pretty surprised that many of the volunteers were willing to get up on the tall ladders (throughout the week, not just Monday), which made things easier. I had a really good time leading this group, many of which were from Canada. They ended up getting everything done that I was hoping and the group Tuesday could come in and get right to work. I think some of the older adults (and when I say older I mean 50s) were getting a little tired of me telling them what to do by the end of the day because they started to make fun of me every time I asked them to do something or reminded them about something.

Tuesday was the big day because we had a morning shift (8 a.m-12 p.m.) and an afternoon shift (12:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.). When I arrived at the worksite at 5:30 a.m., I was able to meet Mr. Points. He was so appreciative of all the work that was being done for him and he said he wished he could have skipped work to help and hang out with everyone. I never got to see him again to see what he thought so I'm hoping he was happy. I had about 25 volunteers during each shift and they both went great. The volunteers were very enthusiastic and had a great time. A couple of the young girls took some nice pictures with myself and Brad (when he stopped by) which was pretty funny. Brad described these girls as "sexually charged" which never hurts a worksite I guess. By the end of the day, I was losing my voice and sick of hearing myself talk (which is very rare). It was quite an exhausting day but I had a lot of fun with the volunteers.

The last part of the project was one shift on Thursday. Even though I told Kristin I wasn't sure if I could have the house finished, she told me that we'd give it a shot. So I ended up getting somewhere between 35-40 volunteers for the last shift. This last group really worked hard and I think because I kept telling them that I didn't think they could finish, that pushed them to work harder. These volunteers got an unbelievable amount of work done and were pretty chatty and fun during the process. Between the four shifts (and about 16 hours worth of work time), they got done with about 95% of the house. I will add some pictures of the almost finish product after I'm done with this posting.

After the project was over, we were given a half day on Friday which was great because it was Halloween and we were all exhausted. I got to drive a huge UHaul truck back to the rental place on Friday which was cool. They are hard to drive but it was a fun experience for the 30 minutes that I got to drive it. The Starbucks build was exhausting but it was the best part of my experience down here so far and probably the most rewarding. It took such a team effort from everybody in the organization to manage this many volunteers and have everything run smoothly, which it did. I had a great time leading the volunteers and being in charge of everybody and what was done to the house. I think that the volunteers enjoyed themselves and really felt a part of the whole project and that they were making a huge difference in the community. It was a whirlwind few days but I loved it and look forward to having more volunteer groups in the future. I could keep going on about this so if you'd like to hear more, let me know I can tell you. This is your blog too. For whoever reads this, let me know the types of things you want to hear about. I'm giving you what I can think of, but if there's anything I'm leaving out, I will start posting more and adding it.

I was able to catch a quick nap on Friday after work and pick out a pretty cheap costume at a costume store. I dressed up as a hippie with a crazy shirt and sunglasses. I met up with my friend John who had two girl friends in town. They had both just graduated college and were living in their hometown in New Jersey (where John is from). We drank at John's house for awhile and then went to a party at his neighbors. The neighbor's house was all decked out in Halloween decorations and they had jumbalaya, kegs, and jello shots. We stayed for about an hour and got nice toasted over there. We were trying to head down to Frenchman Street but couldn't get a cab down there. We ended up just hopping in a car with two people from the party who were going to Frenchman. They were definitely weird and told John that his costume looked gay (which he is, but it was pretty rude the way they said it). I was happy to get out of the car. Frenchman Street, which has a ton of bars on it, was packed from sidewalk to sidewalk with people in costumes. It was completely nuts. There were so many people and everyone was in good spirits. We stayed on Frenchman Street for awhile but it was unbelivable crowded so we decided to walk into the French Quarter and went to a few bars there. We ended up at a gay bar, which was pretty funny. But it wasn't one of those gay bars with wall to wall techno music and guys without their shirts on. This was a pretty normal bar, only it was a gay bar. So I only felt somewhat uncomfortable (probably a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10). I ended up running into some of my Starbucks volunteers and they bought me a couple of drink which was cool (though I made it clear to them that I wasn't gay, not that there's anything wrong with that). We ended up staying out till about 4 in the morning and it turned out to be a pretty good Halloween. I somehow had energy the next day and went back out and saw some pretty good live music Saturday night.

We spent the following week (after the Starbucks project), trying to finish up some of the houses that weren't done yet. The house I went to was even bigger than mine. I was pretty much up painting on the roof or 28 ft. ladders for three days straight. After the three days, I hated that house. Dave, another AmeriCorps, spent most of the week on a 40 ft. ladder which was freakin' crazy. I wouldn't get up there (that thing was so wobbly; not for me). On Thursday of last week, Leo (an AmeriCorps) and I, spent the day deconstructing the outside staircase of a house. It was at least 80 degrees that day and the sun was glaring down so it was hot. We spent the whole morning swinging sledgehammers at the stairwell, which was made of bricks, concrete, and clay. By lunch, I was exhausted. My arms were dead. This stairwell easily went up about 8 feet. We spent the afternoon shoveling everything into a dumpster. Luckily, more people came in the afternoon to help us out. It was honestly the most exhausting and tiring day of work I have ever had in my life. I was sore for the next three days. It was honestly the most exhausting and tiring day of work I have ever had in my life. I was sore for the next three days. At the end of the day though, I actually felt great. Exhausted, but great. By the end of the week, I felt pretty burnt out.

I also forgot to mention that on Tuesday, I woke up earlier and performed my civic duty of voting. Watching the election coverage was very interesting and I’m very happy Barack Obama is the new president. I’m sure we all have our opinions on the matter so that’s all I’m going to say about that. On Friday night, I went over to Sean, my supervisor’s, house and who had a few people over. He lives close to City Park and Bayou St. John, so we went out on the Bayou and hung out there because it was such a nice night. I pretty much spent all of Saturday in bed and went to the New Orleans Hornets game Saturday night with Leo and met up with another AmeriCorps, Steve, after the game. Overall, it was a pretty relaxing weekend. I’m pretty tired of typing right now, so I’ll post again soon with details of this week, though it wasn’t too eventful.

Again, please let me know if there are things in the blog that you’d like me to talk about/add. I know I’m not posting enough, which I’ll try to get better at but please give me feedback if you want. Hope this was as good for you as it was for me (that’s what she said, this post I mean).