Rebuilding Together works in more places than just New Orleans, but there's definitely a focus here. Our director... Kristin, I think her name is? She's lived here for a long time and is very conscious of the architecture of the area. Our orientation included a very interesting lecture about the styles of housing and where they came from. She loves their use of space-- the shotgun double is a long, narrow house broken into two sides. Sometimes a family lives on either side of the house, and the fireplaces are built into the wall that divides it in two. Most don't have hallways because they were looked at as wasted space-- it's a series of square rooms that just run to the back of the house.
Rebuilding Together finds low income elderly or disabled citizens, and also first responders (firefighters, EMTs, policemen), and builds them houses. They take special steps to make them as green (in the environmental sense, not the color schemes) as they can-- bamboo flooring, things like that. The furniture in the houses is all donated from movie sets! Which I think is really cool.
There was recently a huge volunteer project sponsored by Starbucks-- they spent $31 million leveraging 10,000 volunteers for two days, gave them all outfits, water bottles, espresso, fed them, paid for their airfare and hotels to come to New Orleans, really went all-out... They got a lot done, I think a hundred houses? But most aren't all the way done. A lot of the volunteers wouldn't get on ladders, so our job is to get to high places, paint trim and touch-ups, oftentimes on rickety extension ladders 30 feet off the ground. We scrape excess paint off windows that weren't taped beforehand.
Last week I did a different job on a different house every day, never to completion: repair broken window panes, install fence-posts, paint eaves of a roof, work in the warehouse, install a curtainrod and arrange furniture and wipe down floors by hand. Sometimes it feels a little like busy work, and it can be unfulfilling feeling like you never get to see the end of things. Other times, it's unexpectedly fun.
Historical homes that are slated to be demolished are oftentimes salvaged for windows, doors, mantles, columns, and anything else we can get our hands on. These parts usually only need a bit of work and are sold to the public pretty cheap. They apparently did this to offset our cost of living for utilities and things. A popular thing to salvage is barge-board: the ships that would bring supplies down the Mississippi couldn't go back up the river, so they were disassembled and the wood was used for building. Some of our stuff is made from barge board here.
I have had an ear infection for two weeks and I finally went to the doctor today. I left the marathon I was working at to go because we didn't have any days off this week. I got an antibiotic, five days of Zithromax, that I hope kicks in soon, because the infection's gotten worse the past two days. Right now it sounds like my right ear is stuffed full of cotton, or like I'm listening from underwater-- sensible, because there's apparently fluid built up in it.
I leave on December 15 and return to Denver by December 18. I fly home for Christmas on December 22. I return to Denver on January 2 at noon and I just realized that my mother may have just inadvertently made life very difficult on me when she bought this ticket for me before I left if Kat's plane tickets home take her home after I leave, shit
Uh anyway
My address is in the title, if you would like to surprise me with a letter before then.
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