Friday, July 24, 2009
Final Blog is Coming!
I just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about my last post. Tonight is my last night in the NOLA and am about to go out and enjoy it. I will post sometime on Monday or Tuesday after I get back into Chicago and have had a little time to reflect. I think my last blog post may just be the best one yet so stay tuned!
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Paint Project, Exit Frenchman
Well, it’s kind of crazy, but my time in New Orleans is starting to wind down. I have another 9 days of work and 12 days total here in New Orleans before I head back to Chicago. I’m definitely ready to come home and relax a little bit but it just feels weird that this experience is almost over. On one hand, it does feel like I have been in New Orleans for awhile. But on the other, it feels like I just got here and things that happened toward the beginning of the year don’t seem that long ago. I’ve definitely had some random déjà vu moments over the past couple of weeks from when I first got here. I don’t think that it has really hit me yet that I only have two weeks left here and what this whole experience has meant to me. I’ll probably have another posting or two for the last couple of weeks that really reflects on my time here.
The 4th of July weekend was pretty uneventful for me because I was sick. The Wednesday before, I was at work and was just feeling awful and decided to go home. When I got back, I took my temperature and saw that I had a pretty bad fever. I laid around the house for a couple days but was starting to feel better by Friday. I decided that I needed to get out of the house for a little while so I went down to the French Quarter and on the river to walk around. It was so hot it was unbelievable. I was sweating 20 minutes into walking around. And after a couple of hours, I was dying and came back home. It’s not a good idea to be walking around town when the heat index is 108 degrees. I guess I learned that lesson the hard way (although you would think I would have already known that). On the 4th, I was feeling a little bit better and went to a friend’s apartment Saturday night to watch fireworks. New Orleans launches their fireworks from different barges on the Mississippi River. My friend’s apartment was pretty close to the river, so we had a good view of the fireworks. They weren’t great, but better than I expected. I feel like you have to watch fireworks on the 4th. Everyone was in a pretty festive mood which was fun. It took me a few more days to completely shake my flu but I was back to normal by Monday and Tuesday.
As part of my term of service with AmeriCorps, I have to put together my own service project which is separate from my normal work duties. Myself and four other AmeriCorps have been working together to put together our project for the past few months. And it finally took place this past Saturday. Back in March, I found a school to partner up with for our project, the Andrew Wilson Charter School. The Andrew Wilson Charter School, currently located in Uptown, will soon be moving back to Broadmoor where it was located before Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of the past four years the interior hallways and classrooms of McDonough 7, the temporary home of Andrew Wilson, have weathered the usual wear and tear of hundreds of elementary students using the facility everyday. Our project was to serve Andrew Wilson by bringing the interior of the old Uptown location back to the condition it was in before the storm. We recruited over 100 volunteers to come help us out and paint the hallways and stairwells of the school. I couldn’t believe how many people we ended up getting. We also had to turn down two other groups of 30 because it would have been just too many people. The day was supposed to last from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Because there were so many people, we finished and left the school by 1:30. It was great to see all of our hard work and planning be successful and see the volunteers enjoying themselves. I definitely think that some of them will volunteer with Rebuilding Together again because of their experience in helping with our project. As part of this project, we had to raise all of the money for supplies on our own, which came out to be about $1,500. When we started looking for supplies, I called one of the Sherwin-Williams paint stores here and got them to donate almost $300 worth of materials. After that, we were still pretty short on money. So I got in touch with one of the partners I worked with at Ernst and Young to see if he’d be interested in helping me out. The partner got in touch with the office in New Orleans (I didn’t even know they had an office here) and they ended up donating $1,000 to us. I knew working for E&Y would pay off eventually (ha). We ended up raising all of the money we needed and had some left over to buy pizza for our volunteers. Overall, I think the project was a big success and am pretty proud with my effort and the outcome. I was dreading doing this project all year but it turned out well. I’m definitely happy that it is over though.
Saturday night, after the project, I went with some friends down to Frenchman Street, where there was a lot of live music being played at the different bars there. Frenchman Street was one of the first places that I went out to when I first got here. I remember that right before Hurricane Gustav, when some people had already evacuated, going to see some blues music at the Blue Nile. As I was leaving Frenchman Street, I realized it was probably going to be the last time I went out there. I had a lot of fun on that street and it will definitely be a big part of my memories of my time in New Orleans. It definitely is a unique street and I recommend checking it out if anyone ever comes down here. I guess I’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of things over the next couple weeks.
I decided to take today (Monday) to relax a little bit and take care of a few things that I need to do before I leave New Orleans. I don’t have much time during the week and next weekend I’m running a 3 mile trail run called the Spillway Classic. You can check out more details about the race if you’d like at active.com. Other than that, I’m just trying to end on a high note and finish up strong. I’ll try and post next weekend after the race. I’m hoping for two more postings before the end of the month. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the blog once I get home, but I guess I have some time to think about it. Well, that’s it for now, talk to y’all later.
The 4th of July weekend was pretty uneventful for me because I was sick. The Wednesday before, I was at work and was just feeling awful and decided to go home. When I got back, I took my temperature and saw that I had a pretty bad fever. I laid around the house for a couple days but was starting to feel better by Friday. I decided that I needed to get out of the house for a little while so I went down to the French Quarter and on the river to walk around. It was so hot it was unbelievable. I was sweating 20 minutes into walking around. And after a couple of hours, I was dying and came back home. It’s not a good idea to be walking around town when the heat index is 108 degrees. I guess I learned that lesson the hard way (although you would think I would have already known that). On the 4th, I was feeling a little bit better and went to a friend’s apartment Saturday night to watch fireworks. New Orleans launches their fireworks from different barges on the Mississippi River. My friend’s apartment was pretty close to the river, so we had a good view of the fireworks. They weren’t great, but better than I expected. I feel like you have to watch fireworks on the 4th. Everyone was in a pretty festive mood which was fun. It took me a few more days to completely shake my flu but I was back to normal by Monday and Tuesday.
As part of my term of service with AmeriCorps, I have to put together my own service project which is separate from my normal work duties. Myself and four other AmeriCorps have been working together to put together our project for the past few months. And it finally took place this past Saturday. Back in March, I found a school to partner up with for our project, the Andrew Wilson Charter School. The Andrew Wilson Charter School, currently located in Uptown, will soon be moving back to Broadmoor where it was located before Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of the past four years the interior hallways and classrooms of McDonough 7, the temporary home of Andrew Wilson, have weathered the usual wear and tear of hundreds of elementary students using the facility everyday. Our project was to serve Andrew Wilson by bringing the interior of the old Uptown location back to the condition it was in before the storm. We recruited over 100 volunteers to come help us out and paint the hallways and stairwells of the school. I couldn’t believe how many people we ended up getting. We also had to turn down two other groups of 30 because it would have been just too many people. The day was supposed to last from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Because there were so many people, we finished and left the school by 1:30. It was great to see all of our hard work and planning be successful and see the volunteers enjoying themselves. I definitely think that some of them will volunteer with Rebuilding Together again because of their experience in helping with our project. As part of this project, we had to raise all of the money for supplies on our own, which came out to be about $1,500. When we started looking for supplies, I called one of the Sherwin-Williams paint stores here and got them to donate almost $300 worth of materials. After that, we were still pretty short on money. So I got in touch with one of the partners I worked with at Ernst and Young to see if he’d be interested in helping me out. The partner got in touch with the office in New Orleans (I didn’t even know they had an office here) and they ended up donating $1,000 to us. I knew working for E&Y would pay off eventually (ha). We ended up raising all of the money we needed and had some left over to buy pizza for our volunteers. Overall, I think the project was a big success and am pretty proud with my effort and the outcome. I was dreading doing this project all year but it turned out well. I’m definitely happy that it is over though.
Saturday night, after the project, I went with some friends down to Frenchman Street, where there was a lot of live music being played at the different bars there. Frenchman Street was one of the first places that I went out to when I first got here. I remember that right before Hurricane Gustav, when some people had already evacuated, going to see some blues music at the Blue Nile. As I was leaving Frenchman Street, I realized it was probably going to be the last time I went out there. I had a lot of fun on that street and it will definitely be a big part of my memories of my time in New Orleans. It definitely is a unique street and I recommend checking it out if anyone ever comes down here. I guess I’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of things over the next couple weeks.
I decided to take today (Monday) to relax a little bit and take care of a few things that I need to do before I leave New Orleans. I don’t have much time during the week and next weekend I’m running a 3 mile trail run called the Spillway Classic. You can check out more details about the race if you’d like at active.com. Other than that, I’m just trying to end on a high note and finish up strong. I’ll try and post next weekend after the race. I’m hoping for two more postings before the end of the month. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the blog once I get home, but I guess I have some time to think about it. Well, that’s it for now, talk to y’all later.
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