So I have arrived in the "Big Easy" at last! My team and I arrived on Monday around 4:30 or so. The last day of driving was ruff because we were all ready to get out of the car after driving for the last three days. When we pulled up to our house I had to chuckle to myself about the color and thought only in New Orleans could someone get away with painting a house lime green with purple doors and windows. Yes these are the colors of the house we are staying in. The house is on the property of the Rebuilding Together warehouse and salvage store, which means we have a very short drive to work if we are working here. There are three bedrooms but one is smaller and just our TL sleeps in it. The other two have five people each. The room I am staying in i has two bunk beds and one cot. The other has two bunk beds and one bed. When we first arrived we sound out that the house was one bed short so I volunteered to sleep on the couch for the first two days until we got the bed situation shorted out. The couch wasn't bad at all and was surprisingly conferable. The only hard thing was not having any real place to keep my clothes and such. The situation has been sorted out and I am now sleeping in a really bed. The beds in the room I am in now were moved around to make room for a cot. One of the guys on my team, Pat, graciously gave up his bed so that I might have a chance to sleep in a bed. Because there is very little space left over after the beds are in the rooms each person gets there own drawer under the bunk beds and a shelf to put there personal effects in. 
The house has two bathrooms with tubs and showers which is a major plus with so many people living under one roof. In the kitchen there is a microwave, coffee maker, fridge, and stove. Not all of the burners work that great but the oven does and on Wednesday Ellen made corn bread to go with Chile, mum good! The one thing I wish we had is a toaster. I have only had toast twice since i have been here and that was in both hotels on the way to New Orleans. I miss not being able to eat it in the morning. Shopping and cooking for eleven people has been very interesting and is defiantly a learning curve that we will have to work on as a team. For example we went shopping for food on Monday night and bought food that is to last us through the week until we go shopping again next Monday, but we are out of milk and almost out of cereal. Cooking is very different than what I am used to. It was my turn to cook last night and because my cooking mate was sick Ellen and Mel helped me. I made veges, rice, chicken, and tofu. It was good and people said they liked, but I thought the rice was a bit over cooked. It will also take a while for me to get the timing of cooking down. I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer in the morning so we had to thaw it out enough so Ellen could cut it in order to fry it up. But over time I will get better and will come home and be able to cook decent food on a tight budget.
As I said in an earlier post Rebuilding Together (RT) renovates homes for the elderly, disabled and low income families. Right now our team is split in two different groups with each group working on a different house. I am working with four other of my team mates on a house for a older woman and her granddaughter, who is in a wheel chair. RT is outfitting her house to be wheel chair accessible. The five of us have been painting the outside of the house for the last three days. the color of the house is a sea green with white trim and dark green accents around the windows and doors. We have been using extremely tall ladders and scaffolding to get the top of the house. At the training we had on Tuesday, I learned how to use extension ladders and put up scaffolding. After the first time of going up on the scaffolding I was more comfortable and it was even fun to be up off the ground. I like painting but am very messy and get it all over me. Today I came home with paint all over my legs, hands and arms.
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