shim shimminy

This past weekend the team went to New Orleans because Anna had to fly out Saturday afternoon to North Dakota, and Joe flew out Sunday morning. Erin had some points of some kind and was able to get a free room at the Sheraton, so we split the cost of another room and stayed there, which was pretty nice. The only thing that wasn't nice, was almost getting trapped in an elevator that would go up a few inches, then slam...then go up a few inches, then slam. So when we finally got the doors open we had to step down about 6 inches to the floor. I was very close to living one of my worst fears...being stuck in a small elevator with 9 other people. We spent Saturday walking around the French quarter, the French Market, and Frenchman street....all things French. We went to dinner on Frenchman, met up with some other Americorps people who are working in New Orleans, and went up to Bourbon street, where we drank a lot of alcohol and ran around collecting beads and doing other crazy things. On Sunday we spent the morning in Audobon (sp?) park eating a picnic breakfast and listening to the extremely loud and annoying songs blaring from the "celebration of the young child" festival happening there...songs about how safety is fun and so is cleaning. Yeah! After that we explored Magazine Street, then called it a day. When we got back from New Orleans, we saw one of our windows was off the frame, and thought someone had broken in. We ran in to check if our laptops were there, and everything was accounted for. I noticed also that the freezer door was open, which I thought was weird, but thought maybe one of us hadn't closed it all the way when we left. Later that evening, one of the girls in the neighborhood told us that some kids had broken into our house and stolen lollipops and eaten all of our ice cream. The lollipops and most of the ice cream were indeed gone, which accounts for the freezer being open. This is the second time we've been broken into; the time before this a kid was steeling granola bars. Weird.

On Monday, Erin and I went with Lyh, one of the Habitat Americorps guys, to Galliano to work on a house there. Lyh's dad is in town, who is a very cute older Chinese man with a great sense of humor, so he came along too. We spent the day installing cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom. To install a cabinet, you first have to center it wherever it's going, then put shims under it until it's level, then cut out holes in the back for any piping that needs to go through it (if it's a sink cabinet), then screw it in. Whenever we were putting shims under the cabinets, Erin and I couldn't stop ourselves from singing "shim shimminy shim shimminy shim shim sharoo". On the way home from Galliano, I saw an alligator! I couldn't believe it. It was one of my goals for this project : ) We got home around 4:30 and played basketball 3v3 for PT. Then I made dinner, we ate it, and now here I am!

That's all I've got for now. More adventures on the bayou to come...