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.