New Orleans 2011: Southern Hospitality

The past few days have been a blast for everyone, but now we're all settling into the time change as well as the culture differences between Louisiana and California.

Last night at the soup kitchen we got a first hand look at how the population of New Orleans is still being affected by the poverty brought on by the natural disaster. The students working the soup kitchen saw how even through these trying episodes, the openness and kindness from those being served is steadfast. By working together on each individual kitchen assignment, we were able to keep a very efficient pace while still being able to interact with guests and see southern hospitality from a typically unseen perspective.

Today we switched the volunteer activities for each of our two groups. The first painted a house built in the 1940s in Lakeview that was torn up by the hurricane. The owner's name was Noel and she is still working on restoring the original designs piece by piece. After Katrina hit, the water in her home was not drained for two weeks. There was severe soot and mold in every corner of the house. This lead to her decision of complete restoration to its original fashion. All the stories we have been hearing are giving us all new perspectives and teaching us how effective it is to share your story with somebody else.



The other half of our group volunteered with Hike for KaTREEna, the same organization the first group served yesterday. Today there were trees planted in newly renovated hurricane-affected areas. These areas were beautiful and the high spirits of the residents was uplifting. They were interested in where we were from, why we were serving, what we were studying, and truly thankful for all Katrina volunteers. While planting trees we listened to stories ranging from why Ms. Teresa's dog is named Courage as well as how long it took before families were able to move back. One resident even made us collared greens! We also planted trees at a local park and found it very rewarding when a father and son began to play together as we finished our project.






Tonight the second half of the group will serve at the soup kitchen then we'll make stir fry for dinner and hope to keep the good vibrations happening and meet some new friends in the hostel!