NOLA Habitat for Humanity, Week 2

Alright, another week down, and it was another busy one.  We'll start with a pretty picture:

Work these last few weeks has been great.  We’re working with Habitat for Humanity, building houses for low income families.  For anybody who doesn’t know what Habitat does (like Amish maybe?  Or mermaids?), they build houses with volunteer labor and sell them (for the cost of materials) to families who qualify.  The families are also given no-interest loans, so all in all, it’s a pretty cheap way to get into a new house.  We’ve been working outside, which is a great, and it’s really cool to see tangible change each day when we leave.

It really is amazing to see how fast the houses go up.  From start to finish, it takes three months to finish a Habitat house, but in the first two weeks we’ve been here, we’ve seen one house go from a 2 X 4 skeleton:

…to a full on house, with a roof, siding, windows and doors:

We’ve also gone out four or five days to make repairs on existing houses.  We replaced a lot of window trim. We also spent one day removing insulation, which meant rolling around in cat piss and itchy fiberglass under a house for three hours.  The best part of doing repairs has been seeing different parts of the city.  We got to see St Bernard parish, the West Bank, and, closer to home, Musicians Village:

The city commissioned Habitat to build forty or so houses all next to each other, and sold them to musicians. The houses are all new since 2005 and account for every building for a quarter mile in the Upper Ninth Ward. It’s only a few blocks from our house, and I had no idea it was there until earlier this week.  It is a really neat little community and a positive reminder of what we’re here working for. 

Habitat work is exhausting.  I go to bed at 9:00 PM sharp now, but we have made time on the weekends to go downtown.  There is so much in New Orleans to rave about, with the live music, the po-boy sandwiches, the bars, the street performers, getting to wear a t-shirt in January, more live music, etc. etc.

There’s like infinity fun things here! Maybe twofinity!

Last week we fixed window trim for a guy named Chip in Musician’s Village who plays a lot downtown. On Saturday, a few of us went to the French Quarter to watch him play.  His set was really fun, and he gave us some CDs after, which was really nice of him. Then we got some to-go beers.  This city rules. 

Lagniappe (a little something extra):

I’ll end with a brief mention of something very childish: Code Blue.  What is Code Blue you ask? Nathan told me about it.  It’s part holiday (supposedly, its Jan 29 every year), part “Avatar” homage (get those 3D glasses ready for some blue crap!), and all synchronized BM.  There are four steps to a successful Code Blue Day:

1: Tell your friends

2: For the next six days, eat as much blue food coloring as you can handle

3: On Code Blue day (January 29) take a blue poop in a public toilet. 

4: Don’t flush and enjoy knowing that you confused the hell out of someone.  (You BLUE their mind! Get it? HaHa! Somebody hi-five me!)

Happy Holiday!