Goodbye NOLA

Tuesday March 2nd was our last day of work. Tomm and I were back with Brian on Painter Street with Christina when she wasn't running errands. There was a new group of volunteers there that day from Julliard. They were an interesting group. All the ones I talked to seemed either really ditsy or really nerdy. I was assigned to just cut all day again. I don't really remember anything special happening that morning until right before lunchtime. Christina got a phone call that panicked her and she wouldn't tell Tomm and I what had happened. We started walking home because the Painter house is only a few blocks from ours and the van was at another work site. The rest of the team came home for lunch at right around the time we got there, and Christina still wouldn't tell us what happened. Christina left in the van, and there was nothing for the rest of us to do but just eat our lunch. We found out later that one of the other Team Leaders in New Orleans had been having hard time with her team and that day was especially bad for some reason, but obviously Christina wouldn't tell exactly what had happened. Whatever it was, it meant Christina couldn't run the errands she needed to do in the afternoon so she assigned TK and Becky, the Assistant Team Leaders, to do them. She also needed the cargo van, which was at Dani's team's work site (we were sharing a cargo van with them, which is a whole other story). Team Leaders can drive the vans alone, but Corps Members need to have at least one other person with them to drive. The plan was for TK and Becky to drive Lindsey and myself to Dani's work site so we could pick up the cargo, drive it back to our house, then walk back to Painter Street to finish the day with Brian. Well first it took forever to get to Dani's site because of traffic. Then when we got there, some of her team had just left with the cargo to make a delivery or something. We waited a while then decided to go ahead and get gas in our van, which we really needed. We came back and the cargo still wasn't there. We waited another fairly long while then called Christina to tell her why it was taking so long. She told us not to worry about it and for TK and Becky to just come back and drop Lindsey and me off at work. By the time we got back to Painter, about two hours had been wasted. Also, Brian didn't have enough work for all of the Julliard kids and most of my team, so we had to track down somewhere else to work. We called Scott, the manager guy for Habitat, and he said a few people could go do something at the house on Mandolin (the house we worked on with Dan and Forrest when we first got here). So TK and Becky then had to drive Rob and Marquis over there before doing their errands. There really wasn't much for us to do on Painter. We filled in some missing nails on the plywood that had been put up on the wall frames, but that was it. We walked home at the end of the day.

We had some PT (Physical Training) scheduled for that day. We were going to play soccer with a team from the Fire Unit, who we had done PT with before. Even after this ridiculous day, and horrible freezing damp weather, and everyone but TK and Heather hating soccer, we still had to do it. Luckily it was a short game because the other team had to leave for ISP or something. It ended up being more fun than I thought it would be, but it was just really cold. Becky and I had a pretty good strategy. We stayed kind of over on the side of the field (out of the way) and just ran up and down the field in whatever direction the ball was moving. We even both managed to kick the ball a few times. The other team totally won because none of us really cared, but I think we all had a fairly good time. TK, Heather, and I even still went to the YMCA that night.

We didn't work on Wednesday because we had a lot to do to get ready to leave on Thursday. Everyone started cleaning and packing Wednesday morning. Becky, Heather, Tomm, Christina, and I all did a little excursioning also. We went to the Habitat office to get the last bit of mail, to the post office for Heather to mail a package and for me to buy stamps for letter and postcard writing in Big Bend, and to Walgreens. Then we went home and picked up everyone else, and went to Target. We had a lot of money left over from our food budget so we all got to get $10 worth of snacks for the three-day van ride back to Denver. It was pretty nice.

That evening, TK and Heather had a soccer game. Dan had told them about a 6 on 6 soccer league he plays on and invited them to play. They've had soccer games every Wednesday for almost the whole time we were there, but none of us ever went to watch. People would be too tired, or it would be cold, etc. Becky, Michala, Lindsey, Christina, and I all wanted to watch this last game. We picked up Carl from Dani's team who also played, and headed over there. It was really fun to watch. I sat by Becky and we just talked about all the various players the whole time. TK and Heather had said that there was another Habitat staffer who played on their team named Andrew, so Becky and I spent a good portion of the game trying to decide which player we thought was Andrew. We settled on the tall, slightly gawky guy who was wearing an orange hat, so he became known as Maybe Andrew. Another guy was Probably Not Andrew. There was a blond guy who we thought could have been Andrew if Maybe Andrew was not in fact Andrew. He was known alternately as Blond Guy and Maybe Andrew. (We needed names for people for when we cheered quietly for them.) The only girl on the team besides Heather had blond hair. I had a Phish song that TK frequently plays in the van called Susie (or maybe it's Susie Greenberg - I'm not sure) stuck in my head, and the blond girl looked like she might be a Susie, so that obviously became her name. The last player on their team looked like Michael Ian Black (an actor), so that of course became his name. The only player on the other team we got around to naming was wearing bright yellow shorts, so he was just Mr. Yellow Shorts. We enjoyed quietly cheering for Maybe Andrew, Probably Not Andrew, and Michael Ian Black. It was a pretty fun game, especially after three goals by Carl and a pretty decisive victory for our team. Christina even let us all get dinner from our food budget at Felipe's, a pretty good taco place we went to on the day of Mardi Gras.

That night, since we had already packed everything in the cargo besides our overnight bags that we could keep in the van, including our cots, we slept on the floor. (We had also kept our sleeping bags out of the cargo for the night.) No cots and no stuff made for pretty empty bedrooms, so Becky and Michala came to Heather, Lindsey, Jess, and my room for a sleepover. It would have been more fun, but we went to bed much later than we usually do and everyone was tired. It was a nice last night though.

Thursday, we woke up bright and early so we could leave the house by 7:45. We had to drop the cargo off at Dani's house so they could pack their stuff in it, then we wanted to go say goodbye to Dan and Forrest. They had a new work site they've been on, I guess since the Mandolin house was finished. It was pretty sad, but most of us hadn't seen Dan in a while. He wasn't at the soccer game the previous night like he usually is. He said that we were a really great team, and that he's had NCCC teams before and hasn't really been impressed. He was very complimentary about how hard we work and how fun we were to have around.

Thus, we bid adieu to the great city of New Orleans (New Orleans, LA - NOLA. Get it? I didn't know people called it that until like three months ago). The only noteworthy part of the trip home was the yellow car game. Pretty soon after we got to New Orleans, Heather told us about a game she plays on road trips. It's pretty simple: just spot a yellow car and yell "yellow car!" before anyone else. Whoever finds the most yellow cars wins. Taxis, trucks, and buses don't count. It's only personal vehicles. They can be parked, but not at a car dealership. The whole time we were there was practice, just to get used to looking for yellow cars and calling them. The road trip back to Denver was the real game. Becky made a sheet to keep track of how many everyone had. You could only call yellow cars when you were driving or when you were ATD (assistant to the driver, in the passenger seat) because it would be too crazy with a van full of people calling yellow cars. The game mostly came down to the area you were going through when it was your turn to play. I got 45 by the end, which I think put me in like 3rd or 4th place. I think that was pretty respectable considering the fact that every time I drove was through the middle of nowhere where we barely ever saw any cars, let alone any yellow ones. The game was pretty close until Heather and Tomm were driver and ATD for the last leg of the trip, coming into Denver. Heather was by FAR the winner of the yellow car game. She stopped counting when she hit a total for all three days of 99. And now, for at least the next few decades, I'm pretty sure I'll think of AmeriCorps pretty much every time I see a yellow car.

On Sunday, a lot of people went downtown to the Tattered Cover Bookstore. They have a lot of used books there, but unfortunately I didn't find any I wanted. I got a crossword puzzle book and a sudoku book, as well as a small journal thing and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I've been wanting to read for a while now. Also, when we were almost ready to leave, I spotted Nature, and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson for $3.50 and decided it would be a really good book to read in the desert.

Monday the 8th was the beginning of the always-thrilling transition week that we always have between projects. On Monday pretty much all we did was get ready for our project debrief and have a unit meeting. Exciting exciting stuff.

Yesterday, Tuesday, my team had our project debrief. It went well, and we were done by 9am. We then had nothing to do until 1:15, when we had to check in all the tools and supplies that we had checked out. After that, we got put into our shuffle teams for the first time. The team that I will be spending seven weeks in the desert with is Scott, the Team Leader; Lindsey from my regular team; Elena, Tabitha, Ryan, and Marc from Julie's regular team; Marie, Erin, and Davis from Dani's team; and Amy and Churchill from Scott's regular team. I don't know all of these people very well, but I think it'll be a pretty good group. We also found out a tiny bit more information about the project. We already knew that the schedule was nine days of work then five days off. And we knew that at least one of those nine-day periods would be a trip up into the mountains with mules. Scott said that for the first nine days we would be working near our base camp, so we can stay there where we have showers, toilets, and a sink. All the rest of the nine-day work weeks will be the taking-mules-into-the-mountains kind. Should be interesting!

Today was Life After AmeriCorps Day. After a community meeting in the morning, we had workshops all day. There were five choices of workshops both before and after lunch and we had to choose one for each time period. In the morning, I went to Creating a Strong Financial Future. It wasn't bad. The speaker runs a non-profit community credit counseling place. He was a really good speaker, very smart and funny, but he was going REALLY fast. It wasn't his fault though. The community meeting had run way too long due to a guy who was NOT a good speaker, so we were all about half an hour late to the workshops. Our guy was just trying to get through everything in the shortened time. Some of it didn't apply to us much. He talked about buying a house a bit too much considering our current situation, but there was a lot of useful information. In the afternoon, I went to International Service and Study Abroad Panel. It was ok. They talked a lot about the Peace Corps, which I've already looked into a bit. They gave us a couple good websites for finding various programs, but that was mostly all I got out of it.

After the workshops, everyone had to go on a site visit. There were 11 to choose from, but there were only two vans going to each place. We had to sign up for one on our way to lunch. Because I stayed behind in the financial workshop to ask the guy a couple questions, I was a little late to lunch. By the time I got there, the only vans that weren't full were going to the University of Denver and the Red Cross. Julie's team's project last round was with the Red Cross, and I've heard enough stories about how much they hated it to make me want to go to the university. Jess came in to sign up when I did, so we signed up together. It actually ended up being kind of fun. We had a guided tour of the college, which I haven't done in about five years. I was suddenly regressing to being 18. Our tour guide was hilarious though. He was a senior and really didn't care about tours anymore. And since the school is on a quarter schedule, they're in the middle of finals week right now. Our guide, Troy, looked and acted like he had just woken up from a nap and said he hadn't gotten much sleep the last few days and apologized for being incoherent (which he really wasn't). Jess and I both thought he looked and acted like a 4-year-older version of Tomm. The school was actually really nice, but I would have been fairly annoyed at the waste of time if it weren't for Troy's hilariousness.

And...now I'm caught up again! Woo!