Day One

Today was a good day. We arrived at both Chicago and New Orleans safely, which is always a good thing.

The biggest surprise of the day was when we got our luggage in NOLA and went outside to catch our vans. Spence Paschal, who graduated from Susquehanna last year, was loading our bags into the van. He'd gone on two HRT trips with Susquehanna, and he ended up getting a job with Katrina Corps, the nonprofit that we worked with.

The ride from the airport to St. Vincent's, which is where we stayed, was strange to me. We couldn't see a whole lot because it was starting to get dark, but what we did drive by was very commercialized and built up. It didn't really seem too damaged, but that was obviously just the car ride.

So we got back to St. Vincent's, which used to be an orphanage. It's a really cool building - basically a square with a courtyard in the center. We did typical orientation stuff there in the evening before going to dinner. We ate at
Voodoo BBQ, which was voted best barbecue in the city. It was quite delicious.

It looks like we're going to be split into two groups for our first day of work tomorrow (Saturday), and my group is going to be building a playground. I'm pretty excited. The other group is going to the Lower Ninth Ward to work on a community center. I would like to go there to see what it's like, but I'm sure that I'll be there sometime this week.