and it begins

First day of work in New Orleans is done. It was pretty damn cool. We worked at a Catholic cemetary in St. Bernard Parish (just out of NOLA), an area that was completely submerged after Katrina. So we cleaned up the tombs that had noone to care for them and painted them white again. I gotta say, they looked gorgeous after we painted them. Like magic somehow. I took lots of pictures.

And my arms are all painty and my back is aching already and my biceps have come out of hiding, but I am already having a blast.

Did I mention we're staying at Camp Hope? This is Camp Hope 3, their third location in the last 5 years and I'm really liking this new spot. We're closer to the 9th Ward (which could be scary, I admit), but that means closer to the Quarter. And this location is certainly smaller than Camp Hope 2 so they can support less volunteers, but the showers. The. Showers. THE SHOWERS! *sigh* The showers this year are 5 gazillion times better than last year.

An aside about the showers: last year's showers were nasty (to quote Coco, very Psychoish) and dirty. And the hot water lasted through the first 3 showers and then was freezing. And water was scarce so each person was alotted 60 seconds per shower. I kid you not. No exaggeration. 60 second power showers. But the water was freezing, so who wants to spend longer than that anyhow? Not I, said the fly. Not I.

So the showers this year and clean and warm and even though the water pressure is incredibly low, I don't give a hot damn. It's a WARM SHOWER YO! Nothing worse at the end of a long work day than a cold ass shower. It's enough to turn a girl to god. Not me, but maybe some other girl. Who's less of a heathen.

Tomorrow is our first day working with Habitat and I am so ready to build. I want to climb a roof. And pound some nails. Or chop something up. I feel like I did as a little girl when my boy friends didn't want to play with me because I was a girl. But I just wanted to play with the monster trucks too! Why couldn't I do the boy things? Well, down here, they don't care that I'm a girl. I can climb and pull and carry and pound as much as I want. The way life should be.

Hopefully we're going out to eat tomorrow or Wednesday (because I want to some good cajun eats!) so I'll try and post again sometime later this week.