I can't get enough of these Southern Blues....

BEFORE


AFTER
WOW, a lot has happened in the past few days...let's see if I can re-cap it all. To start out, Friday my team finished the 100th home of our Hope Has a Face Project! Oliver, the son of the 80 year old lady who lives there treated four members of our team sub lunches Friday..the other half of our team was working on another house with Sun 7 since there was not as much to be done on our house toward the end and their construction manager treated them to burger lunches. I had some time to talk to Oliver a bit during the day about the history of his house and family and the number of times they've had to re-build it. Katrina being the most damage to the house so far. I can't tell you the number of times people come up to us on a regular basis and thank us for what we are doing down here. And the fact that we finished a house in 2 weeks! Our sponsors and site supervisors have said to us a bunch of times how our work is better than professionals they've worked with and paid in the past! For example, we didn't have to popcorn the ceiling because it was done so well! So Friday all four Americorps teams were asked to show up at our house at the end of the day. All of our sponsors and Oliver showed up to give us a talk about how we did such an amazing job and that we would be moving to Camp Hope (New Orleans) Monday to start the next project NOVA 100! Yaay! So, for the next 10 days before my second round transition begins in Jackson, MS, we will be turning a community center in the lower 9th Ward into housing for future NCCC members working with Hope Has a Face. Part of the reason we are also moving to New Orleans now is because there just isn't enough work left in Pascagoula for all four teams. I am super excited because we will be able to scope out the area 2 weeks before we return for our second spike.
The day we finished the 100th home with Ben. Roll Reversal! I was TL for a day while Ben had to fix the cargo van.
The Cupid Shuffle...of course
Friday night we had a girls night and went out for Italian

A lot of us are a little sad because we will be leaving our Ameri-dog that we have become so close to the past couple months...Duke. I have not told you about Duke yet, have I? Duke is an "outdoor" dog that belongs to the owners of the first house that I worked on with Sun 7. He is a friendly, flee and tick infested dog, but we are his best friends. There are days when he is waiting at the doorstep for our arrival. He even sits by our van and chases us everyday when we leave. It is quite cute, really..now although I never pet the dog because...he can be kind of nasty..Andrea was nice enough to give Duke a bath last week. Quite amusing really...but he was so cooperative about it!

Our friend Mr. Turtle..Andy found him in the back yard earlier this week! He's hiding!

Yesterday I went to a nearby children's museum to do ISP with some NCCC kids. The museum was really fun and it was a nice change up to get to play with kids for a change. Some NCCC members, you could tell though, had never worked with kids before, so it was funny to watch them interact with them. At the same time, a blue-grass festival was taking place outside the museum. After the museum closed, we helped set up for the show that happened later that night. A Grammy winning Cajun band BeauSoleil . See her for more information: http://www.rosebudus.com/beausoleil/

They were awesome! I really have gotten to see a lot of live music since being in the South and I am loving it! Julia found out that this was her dad's favorite band and got a free signed CD as well as a t-shirt from the guy that talked the ladies working with the museum into us staying to see the concert for free!

Tomorrow is Julia's 20th birthday and I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but it is mostly a traveling day to Camp Hope and we only have to work a half day on Tuesday. So, maybe we'll get to go into the city....and as soon as Kat is finished with tax season, I will probably be visiting and staying with them a lot over the next couple months.

My full slab of ribs I ate last weekend at the Shed