I suppose if I want to be a blogger I have to write about the President's State of the Union address, eh? Well, my roommate and I just watched it. I played a game where I drank a sip of water whenever the president said a key word (9/11, Terrorist, Iraq, etc.) and waited...and waited...and waited...for him to say something about New Orleans.

Cindy Sheehan got invited to the State of the Union, but got arrested beforehand (inside the Capital) and wasn't allowed to stay. This is a great way to treat the mother of a fallen soldier. How can they arrest her and applaud the family of the soldier who died last month for 10 minutes? We shouldn't even be in that war, their sons should still be alive, and since there's no avoiding that, their sons should be respected...not arresting their mothers. But maybe that's just me.

Also, I was confused by the "we should make sure everyone gets well educated" and trying to get America ahead in math, science, and education.

Do you know what would help me become educated?? FAFSFA. Money to go to college. But instead the federal funding was CUT. That doesn't help the education system. But once again, maybe that's just me.

At 9:59 he mentioned New Orleans. At 10:00, he finished. Cool, it's not like the city's completely destroyed or anything, no, it's cool. Really. It's not like you could have used this time to tell everyone how New Orleans still really needs help. He's like "We're going to build stronger levees" and I liked that he said he wanted to help the poorer people in the city...I only wish I could believe it.

And now some discussion from Sarah:
starseed4474: "they're terrorists, and the weapon they've chosen is fear."
starseed4474: i'm glad he defined the meaning of the word TERRORist
starseed4474: i was getting confused about that term

starseed4474: "america is addicted to oil"
starseed4474: what america is he talking about...not my america...not like that wasn't the smartest thing to say, ever
aLiEn14217: I was confused-it's not like Bush has ever been in the oil business or anything

Ok, my plan is to finish the write up for New Orleans since Father Tim sent me 4 emails, and yelled at me in person about it, so I should really get started.

Plus, my Politics in the CyberAge class really makes me think about blogging and makes me miss this thing.

So anyway, Thursday we went back to the second house with the group from the community center. Pretty much everyone in the group was there, and we were tearing down ceilings, walls, and clearing everything out. I spent a majority of the day shoveling ceiling and insulation out the window onto the plank and onto the front lawn.

All the hard work from the past couple days was really wearing me down. The fact that we were going home the next day and leaving the entire city just like this was really bugging me, and I was feeling even smaller and more insignificant than even in the past few days. Then people started to fall through the floors while working, and we had to leave around three. The house was pretty much gutted, we were exhausted, and it was probably the most depressing work day, in my opinion.


We left the house and took showers. To make things better, I got a phone call saying my Grandma was in the hosptial getting tests done, so that really added to the day. We had Mass, and then we headed back downtown. The ACC treated us all to a dinner to thank us for our help. Our table was Friar Peter, Robert, Shannon, Matt Adams, Alexei, Chris, and me. I had a sandwich full of fried goodness--salami, olives, and some other good stuff. Most of the other people got fried fish.

At the end of dinner, most people skipped out to head to Bourbon St. and the bars. Alexei was still eating, so a few of us hung back to wait for him. Eventually Chris and I headed out to have a walk. We saw the Cabildo and St. Louis Cathedral, and Jackson Square, and then hung out by the river for awhile. It was very nice. Then we went to the Cafe du Monde for some beignets, and sat with Father Tim, Sister Jean, George, and a graduated SU student & his girlfriend. Mmm...beignets. There were some French hippis sitting next to us. The adults decided to go shopping, but we hung out and drank our coffee. Friar Peter and Alexei came and sat with us. Then Chris, John, Alexei, Father Tim, Sister Jean, and I headed back to the house. (John, Alexei, and I are under 21...) and the others uh, stimulated the New Orleans economy. We went to bed early.

Friday was a big drama day, so I'll go into that in another post.

PS. I forgot to say that the second house had cockroaches mating and 7 TVs!

Ok, I just can't keep myself away. I heard after the trip that apparently George (W) Bush had been down in New Orleans when we had and he said,

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," he said. "It's a heck of a place to bring your family. It's a great place to find some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun.

He promised that help was still coming. The article in the China Daily said,

Bush's route to the college took him down a coastal road past thousands of snapped trees, debris still hanging from limbs and lots emptied of their buildings. There were almost no intact structures _ in most cases only concrete foundations were left _ and little evidence of rebuilding.

"There's no homes to repair," Bush said. "It's just been flattened. That's what the people of America have got to understand." Unlike in New Orleans, where most of the population has not returned, the road was lined with dozens of onlookers. Many held signs pleading for help and pledging their determination to rebuild their communities.

Many New Orleans neighborhoods are still abandoned wastelands, with uninhabitable homes, no working street lights and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage. The levee system is as vulnerable as ever. Barely a quarter of the 400,000 people who fled have come back, demographers estimate.

Let's see if he helps the people in New Orleans. It was nice of him to stop by for the first time in 3 months, right before the State of the Union. He's such a great guy.

So they just announced in the news today that the White House had information that Katrina might be a catergory 5, and that it might destroy the levees...and the White House was STILL slow to react, and now they've put a cease of information in the case...which only means there's worse things we don't know. Fantastic!

So the thing about playing Mafia with that group is that it gets very intense. My usual strategy for playing Mafia is to act very guilty, because I'm very bad at hiding it when I actually AM Mafia (which never happens) and when I play at home I'll usually add some drama into the mix i.e. "Well, who would want to kill DO besides his VERY OWN EX GIRLFRIEND??", but I didn't really know the NO people that well yet, so that didn't really work. Dave had training from when he was in the army so he was right EVERY SINGLE TIME. It was intense. Sister Jean got alittle crazy and she killed off both the friars so when we jokingly killed her off because "who else would kill them off?" we were pleasantly surprised to know we were right. Whenever we had no idea, we always killed off John, because as the only freshman, he was the best scapegoat around.

Tuesday morning we drove back to the house. The second day was a LOT easier because we weren't trashing personal stuff, we were just trashing walls. I spent a lot of time taking up some tiles, before we realized they were the asbestos kind... Friar Peter and I had a Mafia-style clean up crew, where after the walls were all busted in and all over the floor, we would come in and take care of it. We were very good, if I do say so myself. The lady whose house we had broken into bought us some fried chicken which was also very very good. (That may have been Monday, but in either case, she wasn't upset. We also took a walk around the neighborhood, which was depressing.) We finished up the house around 3:00 and headed back, leaving the house completly gutted. (Zack and George sprayed it with a bleach mixture on Wednesday to kill of the remaining mold, but it was dangerous, so we didn't all go)

I think the worst part of Tuesday was when I was cleaning up the debris in the kitchen of the house on the left (the one we were supposed to work on) and found a little plaque that said "God Bless our House".

We all took showers (20 people, 3 showers...) and headed down for Mass. Ryan on guitar and Chris singing (and the two of us wearing matching Echo shirts), the Mass was very nice. As soon as it ended, I ran upstairs and changed so that Chris & I didn't match, and we ate some jumbalaya. (Or maybe the jumbalaya was Monday and the Cheese noodles thing was Tuesday...it's not important) Then we headed down to Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.

The French Quarter was not severly affected by the storm and was, for a large part up and running, just not very crowded. We had a pretty sweet group, and we walked around some.


We found a pirate store with some interesting things. We tried to find the Jazz Preservation place, and when we did it was closed. There was a cat inside that tried to attack Ryan's face. We headed over to the Cafe du Monde for the world famous Beignets which were spectacular. Lots of (free, thanks to Father Tim) Beignets, and a "mug incident" later, we decided to check out the river. The river was HUGE and very beautful. We met up with the other group and most of the people decided to head to the bars, but John, Alexei & me (who were all too young), Chris (who wanted to stay with me), and Robert (who's a seminarian) decided to walk along the waterfront. Much to Chris' dissapointment, we found out that the aquarium is going to be closed until the summer, and we wandered around for a long time looking for food to feed Alexei (that kid is a bottomless pit!)and eventually lost John to Father Tim & Patrick. Then we went to a traditional NO restaurant, and Robert bought us food! Alexei and he got poboys, I got NO-style cherry chocolate cake? and Chris got gumbo, I think.

Wednesday we headed to our second house, this one in a much worse area of town. This area had been hit pretty hard--the water had gone to the roofs, so we had to take downt he ceilings too. This house was also a duplex, but we were able to get into both. The son of the lady in the back house (She and her granddaughter were safe and staying in Chicago for the time being) was there--he had driven in from Houston to take the things that could be salvaged...which was not much. It was heartbreaking to see him trying to box up the things and put them on pieces of board balanced on the support beams in the attic. The only things that he could take were dishes, one dance trophy, and a few of the ceramic collectables we could find and give him. The back room behind the kitchen was the second worst room I've ever seen, with huge circles of mold everywhere. Chris and I helped Maxmillian (?) to box the things while everyone else started taking stuff out of the front. The good thing, I guess, was that the stuff wasn't even recognizable for the most part it was so destroyed. Once we had cleared out a lot of the stuff, I began working on the worst room I have ever seen--the bedroom. It reminded me of a room on the Titanic, the water had smashed everything together and warped the floor really badly so that it made a ~ shape. The bed was on an angle, lying half on top of one of the dressers, and the fan looked like it had melted. I think the most heart wrenching time of the entire week, was when Maxmillian walked into the room, to where Chris & I were cleaning out the closet and said "I lived in this house my entire life," then he looked at the big box at the bottom of the closet which had melted to the floor and we couldn't get it up. Then he said "That's full of pictures, but they're gone forever now. They're all melted. The water melted them. I don't know how strong that water was, or what was in that water to MELT all my pictures!" and then he left. I had to take a breather after that one. Man, that room smelled too!!! And that house was full of cockroaches and termites. And the bedroom had all the books in the bedside table (which was no longer bedside) that were important to her--photo albums, relgious books. The Bible. (I only found the cover, so I was able to throw that out. The Book part must have been melted in, and since it's the Word that's important, we didn't have to save/burn it).

Apparently the washing machines were full too, and the water had rotted away the laundry detergent, leaving only the detergent's sulfer, so that smelled REALLY BAD. It was also bad to have to take out the refrigerators. Friar Peter and some of the guys went next door to help a man there, who had bought fresh seafood right before the storm...yeah, that smelled too. And then there was a thing of "Grandma's Cookies" which smelled NASTY, which Chris took out, and had to be hosed down afterwards because of. A lot of jars and things still had water in them, which was upsetting, and everything was damp, and rotted through. The rugs had melted to the ground, and all the wood was warped. The plaster walls were still wet, and hence were really easy to break through, which was good for knocking them down, but not safe for living in. I took some of the walls down with a hammer. They had latrines set up at random areas of the city for workers, which was very well thought out (also, garbage cleanup was very prompt, which is another good thing to say for the city.) The latrines were a joy to go to because they smelled SO much better than the house. There were so many abandoned and ruined cars EVERYWHERE--we saw a few of them that had already been towed under and overpass and there must have been 1,000 or so, and that was nothing. We saw some men from the city going around documenting the cars, and we saw an animal rescue vehicle come by when we were at the first house. Friar Peter ran after them yelling "oy!!" to make them come pick up our cat, Crowbar, who we had fed fried chicken because the poor thing was starving. The area the second house was in didn't have electricity yet, and no one had moved back in yet. A few of the houses were being gutted, or cleared, but we didn't see very many people.

Well, this one cowboy drove up with a dead Elmo tied to the front of his car asking to talk to the homeowner about the tree in the front yard of the house next door (we were eating lunch on their lawn). It was an intense time. We had a long lunchtime because we weren't sure if the house was worth saving it was so bad, so we called the Deacon and he came to check it out. He said that he'd seen houses that were in worse shape, and since the homeowners said they were coming back, we were going to work on it. When we got home, we heard that there had been a group gutting a house near the community center (just like us) and the house had collapsed on them (they were all safe, but that's a devestating thought.) We're still not sure if the house is going to be salvagable, but the rumor has it that a house has to be gutted before it can be bulldozed anyway, so we did that. Gutting can go for $3000-$5000, so we saved the people SOME money, and they needed it gutted to see if it was salvagable or not, right? But the best arguement for why we continued was the fact that we weren't just there to bring help, but we were there as symbols of hope. The people we saw were hopeless and miserable, but we cared enough to come down and help them on our winter break--and I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.

Around 3:30, the garbage trucks came by and said we had to stop because if we had anymore garbage, there would be too much to take, so we waited around for them to destroy everything from that duplex...I was really glad Maxmillian wasn't there for that.

After our showers, Friar Peter had another prayer. This time he busted out some momentos that he had found. A Bible, and a newspaper from the day before the storm struck (still wrapped in plastic) that announced that the storm would be really big--catergory 4 or 5. He has them in his office now, he showed them to me last Sunday, and it smelled like New Orleans. (mold)

Then, for the most depressing part of the trip, we drove to the 9th Ward to see the real devestation--worse than the house we were working on. Here, the water had crushed houses, left trucks on top of roofs, devestated the entire area, and killed people. Every house we had seen in New Orleans had a cross on the door showing that it had been checked out, how many people were inside of it, if it was safe, if there were animals around, etc. Every other time we had seen the "0" on the bottom half of the x. Then we went to the 9th Ward. That "1 DOA" is one of the worst sites I've seen in my entire life. Words can't do justice to what we saw in the 9th Ward. If people could go there and see it, they would want to help, they would know that New Orleans is not back to normal yet. They would know that New Orleans may never be back. It won't be for the next 10 years. At least. The garbage could fill up the Superdome 22 times, I think maybe more. There are people who are making money giving tours of the 9th Ward, which I think is disgusting. That's not something people should profit out of. It made us work that much harder, and it made us realize that the house we were working on could be much much worse. They are talking about just plowing down the 9th Ward, and starting again, but people who live(d) there are very upset. I don't think there are any standing structures in the entire area.




We went home and George cooked us a huge and wonderful meal of hot dogs, hamburgers, and the like. It was delicious.


Then we played Mafia. I was FINALLY the Mafia the last game, but my VERY OWN BOYFRIEND killed me off. Oh well, we had a good run.

I'm going to take a break. I can talk about Thursday, Friday and Saturday soon.

Well, I had a dream last night that I was home and we all had to leave in a hurry--but everyone from New Orleans was there, with my family. I had to get my dog out (which was a big discussion we had when we were down there, seeing all the "dead dog" and "1 dog found on premisis" or "SPCA--IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION" type signs written on houses all over the city. I would make sure to take my puppy, no matter what. Anyway, then at one point, one of the girls on the trip was taken prisoner and there was a kidnapping type deal. I'm not really sure what happened, I just knew we had to evacuate and I was scared. I didn't really make the connection until about 4:00 when I was thinking about that instead of the class I was in...

So we drove through the city in complete silence. The driving was tough because most of the streetlights were still out, and we got kind of lost, but we eventually found the seminary which was across the street.
Then we found our house--but we weren't able to stare at our house because were too busy staring at the rubble next door. We were staying in the Catholic Charities battered women's shelter, next door used to be the Archbishop's house and a transitional apartment for battered women after they leave the shelter. The two were connected, and apparently very beautiful. In the craziness of the aftermath, the two were looted (everyone had evacuated) and then burned to the ground. It was a lovely site for the boys with rooms on that side to wake up to.

We just stood around outside quietly for about an hour. Friar Peter was extremely distressed, which really upset me. Chris went to talk to him. Everyone hadn't quite realized how bad the city was. (And we hadn't seen the worst of it yet...) We were waiting for Kevin and the seminarian whose name I don't know to come let us into the house, so we did what Friar Peter later called "reverting" and played a few games (heads up/heads down, and some game where you didn't want to be in the middle of the circle.) Finally we were let in, found our rooms, had a short orientation meeting with Kevin, and devored the pizzas that Father Tim was able to buy. (There were very few pizza places open in the city, so it took them a long time to find pizzas, and by the time they came back, we were starved!) Then we tried to watch Family Guy, but had forgotten about the time change and all we got to see was American Dad. Then we watched the News and Chris & I played Sudoku while a lot of people played Uno.

On Monday, as Chris likes to say, was better because we actually got to do something about it. We all knew we were there for the right reason, and we were all really glad we were there, even if we didn't think we were going to make an impact at all. We all woke up early, got dressed, ate breakfast, and were ready to go. My group was Friar Peter, Matt Adams, Chris & myself. We were with George's group of Jen & Ryan, and Patrick's group Zack, Mandi, Brent, and Shannon. Together we drove to the back of this one big church, where we met up with the Jesuit Seminarians (Kevin, Robert, and the other one) and then met with the Deacon who took us to our first house.

At the first duplex, the water had only gone up about 3 feet, but it had destroyed mostly everything on the first floor. The lady on the side of the house we were supposed to work on had passed away since the hurricane, and her brother hadn't given the keys to the Deacon, so we gave George (A) Bush the crowbar and had him break off the lock. It was quite funny. We stopped laughing when a lady drove by, rolled down her window, and asked whose house we were supposed to be working on. We told her, and she said "what's the last name?" the Deacon told her, and she said "that's what I thought. They're the other side. That's my house."

Awkward!

So then George broke into the RIGHT side of the house, and we apologized profusely to the lady. Then we decided we would just do her side of the house too. (She was pleased, because she wasn't going to get her house gutted until March as it was.) We suited up and started doing the worst part of the job: taking everything out to the garbage. I was working on the second side, so the lady was telling us which stuff she wanted saved (dishes and stuff which could be washed, so we brought them upstairs) and alittle of the stuff on the other side--where there were photoalbums rotting on the floor, and some really horrendous smells. Chris was amazing and took out the pan of beans which let out the first of many smells that I pray my loved ones never have to imagine. The worst site/sound in the entire world is the sound of the caterpillar trucks clawing through and throwing out everything that was these peoples entire lives. Pictures, furnature, clothing, pictures, bills, papers, nasty beans, everything, gone forever. It's really a terrible experience. By the end of the day, we'd made a huge pile of garbage. We were so modivated that we did a day and half's work in a day. Oh, and I got the first injury of the trip. After using a crowbar, a sledgehammer, and multiple other huge scary tools, I cut my pinky opening my lunch.

That night we had our prayer meeting led by Friar Peter and then we played the first of many very intense games of Mafia. I would tell you more, but it's time for dinner.

Ok, so I have to write a short essay for Father Tim about New Orleans, but I think I'd rather get everything down and then write him something shorter.

On January 7th, we had a short meeting and a Mass for everyone who was leaving. The Mass also counted for the Feast of the Epiphany. Then we got into two vans and one Jeep Cherokee and headed for New Orleans, stopping every three hours, changing drivers and taking a short break. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Alabama for breakfast on the 8th, signalling the fact that we'd hit the Deep South.

About midway through Mississippi, we began to see the the devestation of Hurricane Katrina, in the form of broken trees and abandoned cars. A good majority of the trees were broken in half, and it only got worse when we hit the Louisiana border. Once we came into Louisiana, besides the abandoned cars, there was also litter and debris. We heard later that the hurricane had pretty much travelled down the thruway, and that's why the devestation was so bad, but it was nothing compared with what we would see soon...

Then we came to the bridge when passes over the Mississippi River and leads into the city of New Orleans. It was almost sunset when we were on the bridge, and ths sun was shining down over the river. It was absolutly beautiful. For the first time (out of many times), everyone fell silent. (This was, however, the only time it would be the good kind of silence...) The bridge is very long, and we were staring at the beauty for a good 10 minutes.

Then came the moment when we first saw the site that would change our lives. As soon as we came off of the bridge, all we could see was utter devestation. No words can do justice to the city of New Orleans, particularly since I need to go eat breakfast now.

More later.

I'm taking a class called "Politics in the Cyber Age", and a large part of the syllabus is bloggers and blogging. Actually, one of the books is called "blog!" and it really made me miss this thing. So then I...FIXED THE LINKS. All by myself!! I'm quite proud of myself.

So basically the best and worst thing about livejournal is that anything you write goes on your friends pages. I think I'm going to write about my New Orleans trip in here instead. That way, if people want to read about it, they can come here. If it's too intense for them, then it won't be on their friends pages. Deal?

Cool. Well, I have a date tonight, but I will update tomorrow for sure.
I hope you're excited! My blog is coming back!!