City life at last!

Gaux Tigers! That’s right, greetings from Louisiana State University’s campus! Before arriving in Baton Rouge we had all been told that we were living near LSU but it wasn’t until we got here that we realized that literally, our back yard is LSU frat houses and the LSU library, along with other university buildings, is just a three minute walk! We’re all already enjoying the ease and excitement of city life, we arrived Thursday around lunch time and in just 4 and a half days here’s the exciting list of “Things I’ve done in Baton Rouge I never could have done in Pearlington”!

-explored LSU’s library, all 5 floors of it.

-eaten sushi and gone out for ice cream, all within 3 miles of each other

-WALKED to a pizza place and coffee shop (that sells vegan cookies)

-gone to Chelsea’s, a fantastic bar/restaurant/music venue that books fantastic Indie bands like The Weakerthans

-bought tickets to see Red Jumpsuit Apparatus at The Varsity, which is three blocks from our housing (the show is Wednesday!)

-attended a free lecture on Astronomy at the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society’s observatory

-viewed Orion’s Nebulus, a “stellar nursery” through Baton Rouge’s largest telescope

-been to Louisiana’s largest shopping mall

-run on paths around “the lakes” aka, two beautiful lakes right across the street from our housing

-worked on a Women’s Build house (when completed it will have been constructed solely by female volunteers and staff)

-gotten free coffee from Common Grounds, the coffee shop across the street run by a local church that doesn’t charge anything for coffee!

As you can see, I’ve had quite an eventful time in Baton Rouge so far, and we’re already feeling as though we’re going to run out of time before we can do everything we want! Don’t let the title of my list confuse you though! I loved my time in Mississippi and miss our staff at Habitat BW so much. It is just nice being able to feel as though we have some semblance of real lives, sleeping in real beds and walking to coffee shops rather than sleeping in shacks and walking to the port-a-potties. We arrived at our housing on Thursday after eating lunch at Reginelli’s and getting coffee at The Highland. We met with Mary Michael, the woman in charge of showing us the ins and outs of our housing as well as Patti Snyder, the pastor at the church we’re staying at. We live in dormitory rooms behind the sanctuary at the University Presbyterian Church. During the week the building (which includes our two rooms and two Sunday school rooms as well as a tiny kithen and living area as well as bathrooms and the Sanctuary) is basically ours. We have certain days when we have to stay clear of the large living area and on Sundays we have to be cleared out of the Sunday school rooms but we’re all very excited about being here. The girls have a beautiful yellow room with windows that look out to the lake and all of us have quilts on our beds that were made by a church in North Dakota and donated to this church. During hurricane season UPC is a shelter for women and babies, something we’re reminded of by the large amount of diapers in the pantry and the sign above the kitchen sink proclaiming, “Please only bathe babies in bathroom sinks”.

Our first day with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton rouge was Friday and we were to begin with an orientation presentation at the Habitat officer to get us acclimated to the new affiliate. Everything got off to a great start, we all prepared breakfast in a kitchen the size of one of our bunks, no one was missing any vital uniform pieces, our team leader deftly navigated the strange street names (we live on Dalrymple…) and then all ten of us got to the office and piled into the elevator which was to take us up to the 4^th floor. Note to future teams staying in Baton Rouge: the elevator at the Hancock Bank building where the habitat office is located was “brought over by Christopher Columbus” and does not handle ten NCCC members very well. Once we got the elevator to move from its limbo position between the 3^rd and 4^th floors and take us back to the ground level we split into two groups and successfully made it to our destination. Once in the office we were greeted by Katie, the vegetarian, environmentalist who is the volunteer coordinator at Habitat GBR. She gave us t-shirts and a presentation on our new affiliate.

It is interesting the differences between Habitat Bay-Waveland and Habitat GBR as the affiliate in Mississippi is still classified as a disaster relief affiliate where as the one here in Baton Rouge is combating poverty which isn’t necessarily linked to any of the most recent storms. For example, all Habitat homeowners are required to put in sweat equity hours in which they work in the office or on the construction site for a set number of hours in order to pay for some of their house. In Bay St. Louis a single homeowner was required to do 100 hours and here in Baton Rouge a single homeowner is required to do almost 300! The staff organization is a bit different here too and therefore, the tasks that we’re asked to help out with will be a bit different. It’s been fun picking up differences and learning to do tasks in a new way. People’s stories here are also so different, our construction manager, Frank, told us that during Katrina his home lost power for a grand total of one hour, however, during Gustav last September he lost power for a littler more than a week. In Bay St. Louis one of our supervisors grew up in the Bay and during Katrina he lost everything and his story wasn’t at all unique.

I’m excited for the new experiences we’re going to have here in Louisiana. It’s already looking like our whole time here will be the complete opposite from our time in Mississippi and I’m quite glad for that. I’m also getting, somewhat prematurely, excited for our projects in region, I can’t wait to be back in the Pacific region! We’re here until the end of March, however, so I’ve got a ways to go but I’m sure that it will fly!

With lots of love and free coffee,

--Walker