Rainy Day (Britt and Amanda) January 16, 2008

Today our work was canceled due to flooding roads. This made us realize the daily problems the people in this area face. We wish we could have made progress on our houses today, but for the safety of our group the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance team decided that it was best to cancel. On the other hand, yesterday we both made a lot of progress on our houses.

I (Britt) got to talk to our home owner, Laura, and her daughter, Lauren. We got to hear her story about the day of the storm and the struggle after. She told us her son, who was in his early 20s, stayed behind at the house during the storm. He met up with neighbors and found refuge on the roof of the only two-story house nearby. Luckily, Laura had just gone to the grocery store before the storm, thinking they would be coming right back to the house, because her son was able to salvage most of the food in the refrigerator before it went bad or floated away. Laura also told us about her trip back to find her son since they were separated. She talked a lot of the horrible smell and the sight of dead bodies floating in the road. To our surprise she mentioned how warm the water was and how much worse that made the conditions for the people still stuck in the area. Eventually, she found her son and they all evacuated to Texas and came back to rebuild months later. She is very grateful for our work and is excited to make us some home cooked New Orleans food. After meeting Laura, her husband, and her daughter Lauren we have even more motivation to finish her house for her and her family.

I (Amanda) continued to work on tiling the house. We were able to tile the majority of the house, now all we have left are the corners of the house that are a little more difficult because we have to cut and measure each tile. Other members of the team finished working on the bathroom, which now just needs to be sprayed with texture. I was really looking forward to finishing the floors, since there is a small portion left undone. Unfortunately, we have yet to meet our homeowner, but hopefully she will come by soon and will be able to see all of the progress that has been made. I would love to see her reaction because the house looks great already. My team and I are all looking forward to tomorrow to finish what we were unable to today; we were disappointed we could not get some work done today.

Last night we had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Stephens, the head of the New Orleans Heath Department. He gave a presentation with some of the statistics since the hurricane and we were able to ask questions about the current conditions and next steps. Today we sat with our site teams from our service in New Jersey and planned out our next semester’s calendar. We got a lot done so far today even though we are not at the houses and hope to have fun and do some Bonner bonding!