New Orleans!

So today, my team and I went to the French Quarter in New Orleans, which was lots of fun. There is a big flea market and a lot of shops and cafes along the roads. We have been visiting a lot of places around the city and also looking at the damage still present from Hurricane Katrina. It is very sad to see all of the houses that are still boarded up and uninhabitable even three years after the hurricane.
So on a happier note, our cooking is not going unnoticed by the volunteers and locals who eat at Camp Hope. Everyone is saying that our food is amazing and that we are the best AmeriCorps
team who has come to cook for them. So far, some of what we have made is chili, meat loaf or rice, beans and cheese for the vegetarians, and every Friday is pizza day. It is fun to cook for everyone, just the cleanup part is not so much fun! But we have a schedule down so that everybody gets their fair share of the fun part, which is serving the food instead of dishes!
There is one local who likes to take people on ghost tours of nearby buildings! He claims that the buildings are haunted and that if you take pictures, sometimes you can get ghosts to show up in your pictures. However, I have now been on the tour three times, and nobody has found anything strange in any of the pictures or even heard or seen a ghost! Hopefully by the time we leave, there will be at least one story because I am sure we will go looking again soon!

Halloween

And finally, Halloween! There was a party the night before Halloween, which was fun. I was Hannah Montana because a girl in Walmart while we were here saw me and said, "Mommy look! It's Hannah Montana!" That was the first week, but ever since then, my plan was to be her for Halloween.

My friend Julia was Little Red Riding Hood.

On the way here, there was not much along the road. Most of the highway in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas looked pretty much like fields with no trees whatsoever. When we got into Louisiana, there were some trees.

Louisiana



Also, I just had to take pictures of the price of gas in Kansas and Oklahoma. I felt as if I were going back in time!


Oklahoma


Kansas

My team!

My team is pretty much amazing! We went to a park one of the first days as a permanent team for some bonding time. We really had lots of fun and were already psyched for our spike!




In this picture, you can actually see everyone. In the back, from left to right, there is Jack, Kimmy and me. In the middle, there is Kari, KC, Lauren and Sierra and in the front row, there is Becky and Stephen. Kari, KC, Kimmy and Sierra are in the morning crew and the rest of us work in the afternoon shift. The one bad thing about having two different crews is that we do not spend a lot of time with the morning crew, except for the weekends.

More!!

Also on the hike there were lots of cute animals.



This chipmunk got a little snack!! He was so cute I had to get a picture of him!

YAY!!!

So I am finally uploading pictures from forever ago. We are now in New Orleans, which is pretty awesome. We started work in the kitchen today- my shift is noon to 8:00- however, I feel that when we get the hang of the kitchen, we will be out of there before 8 because dinner is served from 5:30 to 6:30. We learned all about the kitchen and also that we will be getting to make anything we want starting this Monday for dinner! The breakfast crew has to get up at 4:30, so they are all asleep in the room now, getting ready for an early morning tomorrow! There are some pretty sad and intense stories people have here who lived in New Orleans during the storm. However, everyone has done a really good job of fixing it up and Saint Bernard Parish, which is the town we are in is looking pretty good now. Today, the dinner crew and I went on a run/walk to the state park nearby. We spent about 2 hours running and looking around at the park, which was pretty fun.


So first, I have pictures of hiking in the Rocky Mountains. It was so pretty and even though the day was really warm, there was snow on the ground. The sky was bright blue and the views were amazing.