New Orleans

I'm back in New Orleans this week for spring break. We have 140 students working in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish on 11 different projects. It's easy to see that things have progressed a little bit in the last two years, but shocking that things are still so devastated.

There are houses all over the Lower Ninth Ward that are still uninhabited and uninhabitable. They are still marked with the Xs of the first responders. And many houses have been rebuilt. They look like new, modern houses and don't have the same unique architectural features that the old houses did, but they are ready for residents and their families.

This week, our groups are tiling, painting, scraping, and doing some deconstruction. This morning, I helped tear down sheet rock. And then I scraped paint off of molding. Very exciting work. And I should have brought my own safety goggles (yes, I have them). The ones I borrowed were too hard to see out of!