Green light!

New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival! Dave Matthews Band!
We exchanged her light bulbs, and she showed us her amazing bead collection.
Home sweet home on Napoleon!
The trolley.
Emily taking off on the bike
Fionna, Lance, Mary: before riding our bikes around the neighborhood to exchange lightbulbs! My end is feeling it, let me tell ya.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs.

NOLA - Green Light New Orleans

Hello!
Since I just posted the old news, I thought maybe it was time to update on some new news. ;o)

We have now been in New Orleans for about a week, and I think all of us are quite pleased with the area so far. :o)
Our house is located in a good area of town. We aren't far from the streetcar line and major streets. We have 3 bedrooms in the house, a kitchen, dining room, sitting room (complete with a coat of armor) and a front and back porch. Basically, we've got some good digs. ;o) The rooming situation is working out pretty well. Some people (not myself) are lucky enough to be on beds. Some of us have cots, kind of like the good ole days back in Boise (but far less squeaky). All in all, it seems to be going well!

Our work with Green Light New Orleans has gone really well over the last week. We really enjoy working with the other people in the office, and going into people's homes has been really interesting. Our typical work day in the field looks a little bit like this:

• 7:30am Team muster and get ready to go to office
• 8:00am Arrive at office. Load up the van with CFLs and get assignments for where to go for the day.
• 9:00am On the road! Off to the first house. We usually drive. The houses are all in the same zip code so we aren't driving all over the city every day. Each house tends to have around 30 light bulbs to be replaced.
  
• 12:00pm After doing 3-4 houses in the morning, we find a nice park to stop for our sack lunches.
• 1:00pm Back on the road! Usually finishing with 4-5 houses in the afternoon.
• 4:00pm Arrive back at the office. Drop off and sort out our recycling from the day and dispose of the old incandescent light bulbs. Assist the people in the office as needed. Make sure that all the CFLs for the next day are separated out into groups.
• 5:00pm Back to the house! Time for PT, dinner, and various other meetings and fun Blue 4 lovin'. :o)

We've had 1-2 team members stay back in the office to do the calling for the next day. For that, we pull up all the applicants in a particular area and call them to see if they are available for CFL installation the next day. There are other volunteer groups with Green Light New Orleans, so we set appointments for those groups in addition to our own AmeriCorps NCCC set of appointments. It works pretty well, because we rotate the people who work in the office. That way, the people who are calling on the phone are also the people who work in the field the next day, and are able to install the bulbs for the people they called. It's working really well, and everyone seems to be happy.

It seems like we aren't often going into areas that are still outwardly showing the effect of the recent hurricanes. There are some areas that are most noticeable than others. This is my first time to NOLA, so I have no conception of what the area was before the hurricane, nor right after it. This will be the New Orleans I remember, and this is a strong New Orleans. The people are friendly, and it's not that I see signs of devastation, but rather signs of improvement. This appears to be a strong community, one that is growing and rebuilding and making itself better. I am excited to get to spend two more weeks here, and I hope to continue to learn about the area.

Peace,
Emily

Some old news, but good news

Hey!!! :o)
I posted this on my own blog a little ways back, and I thought that maybe I would re-post it here for everyone else to read as well. Enjoy!

Our work at the San Joaquin River Parkway & Conservation Trust has concluded, and the tents have been taken down, packed up, (taken to Sacramento), put back up, hosed down, aired out, taken down, packed up, and finally put away. I don’t need to see them again any time soon. :o) But I did survive. My second project went well. Supposedly, our team removed milk thistle, the nasty evil lettuce invasive species, from 4 acres of restored land. We laid over 8,000 feet of irrigation line. We pulled over 70 T-posts out of hard ground. I was a parking attendant, supervising the parking of over 200 cars (I think) at two separate events at the River Center.
Our team was invited fully into the Fresno community over four weeks. We met a lovely couple at the laundrymat whose daughter had served in NCCC the year prior, and they invited us to their home for a spaghetti dinner. We assisted with a large event on our first day of work, and the board member in charge of that event invited the team over to a barbeque at her house. (She and her husband were absolutely awesome – so my role models of old age living. They went traveling together, spending several weeks visiting different countries, renting a car and just driving around wherever they pleased, stopping when they were tired to find a hotel. Awesome.) We were also invited for a work day and barbecue at the house of the chairman --- why, if she is the first chairperson of the board, is she called a chairman? I don't get it. Anyway, that was also very nice, with delicious veggie dogs and burgers. ;o) One of the big events which we helped with (and I attended to the cars) was called The Big Read, and was in conjunction with the county libraries. As a thanks to us for helping, and probably because we were in there every week, sometimes multiple times a week, they hosted a large dinner for us. They also gave us a box of books, several of which are advanced copies. So, while I was certainly ready to get out of the tent, it was wonderful to get to be a part of the community, even for a short time.
Now, while I may have complained, tent life wasn’t horrible. I won’t be doing it again soon (I hope), but it wasn’t bad. I think the area made the sleepless nights a bit more bearable. ;o) The Millerton Lake State Recreation Area is absolutely beautiful. If you have a roomy camper, I would really suggest the Fort Miller camping loop on the North Shore. The view is breathtaking. A couple of times we acted like real dirty hippies, and did yoga as our PT on a grassy hillside, barefoot and hairy, not having showered for several days. It was a very good experience. :o) And my teeth (or rather, holes from where my teeth were) seem to be healing just fine.

On Tuesday, I will be leaving for my next projects, which will be absolutely amazing – I am very excited for them. We will drive (yes, drive) to New Orleans. :o) There, we will be working with Green Light New Orleans, a non-profit organization started by a rocker that installs energy efficient light bulbs into fixed and low-income housing. We will be there for 3 weeks, staying in a house near downtown. The sponsor would like us to install 100 light bulbs a week, and we will get to ride bicycles around the city to do so. :o) Some days when we aren’t cycling around, we will be working in the office. I think we’ll be working on an energy-efficiency checklist for individual homes. This is going to be a great project, with a good cause behind it that will hopefully help me to learn cost-saving measures to apply later in life.
Our next project, after New Orleans, will be working with Camp Victor in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. We will be working with the camp, leading volunteer groups at different sites on home rebuilding and restoration. A couple of team members are going to stay behind at Camp Victor as needed, and assist with the operation of the camp there – building maintenance, cooking, cleaning, etc. From what I understand, AmeriCorps will have our own room, but we’ll share the 5 showers with the other 200 or so volunteers at the camp. Good thing we learned to get by on showers every other day. ;o)
This project also sounds amazing, and I am very excited to get to work here. We will be here through the end of May. I think our team has been very fortunate in the projects that we’ve gotten. I am grateful to have these opportunities in the Gulf – to get to be a part of bettering the community, rebuilding in a positive way, assisting in looking out at the big picture by installing new light bulbs. Then, we’ll also get the chance to actually get in there, and be a part of the rebuilding, and help make a difference in the devastation that has still not been fully addressed. I am eager to go to the Gulf, ready to get some service hands.

I’ve been trying to do more reading lately, and I’ve read a couple of good ones, I must say. I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a couple of hours ago, which was utterly fantastic. I’ve recently read Black Boy by Richard Wright, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and finally, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I don’t know what’s next --- I’ll need something for the long van ride, but can’t really get a library book at this point. I’ll see what I can dredge up from the ‘library’ in the campus lounge. But please, let me know if you have any recommendations. :o)

Peace.
Emily

P.S. At the very beginning of this, I mentioned pulling over 70 T-posts out of hard ground. I did an ISP (independent service project) on Friday. There, we had to take down fencing, which including pulling up T-posts. Are you aware that there is a device specifically made for this purpose?!? Pulls them out in one, two, maybe three pushes on a lever, and BAM, the T-post is extracted. I did not know this. Neither, I believe, did our last project sponsor. We took a picture and will be sending it to him, shortly. (grrrrr…)