building. salvaging. bed bugs!

i am in new orleans. i am totally enthralled by it's culture and beauty. i adore walking around it's streets. it's a big city, but small buildings. i can tell it's old & jam packed with history.

we live right near the french quarter, but it's still a pretty bad part of town. the salvage store is literally our backyard which is why there is the big freaky looking fence in from of our housing.
we can't go out without another person, because of the area.. but a lot of the crime is gang and drug related. also a lot of the people there know that we're there to rebuild their city for them, so they respect us. Americorps is pretty well known in this city.

today we actually had an all Corps service day. it was "a day on, not a day off" but we met up at a local camp with 4 other NCCC campuses. there's gotta be about 200 Corps members here in this city. i think it means a lot for people to see young adults care about them. it means a lot to let them know we care.

a goal of mine is to listen to stories. i want everyone i talk to to know that i genuinely care about them as a person, and i want them to feel the healing that happens to share burdens.

these are pictures from work. i love my team. we definitely work hard and play hard. living together has brought us much closer together. also living together we have come across some interesting things... dead mouse on the bottom of the couch... and here's the kicker. bed bugs!
my poor teammate meghan discovered some pretty annoying bites on her about three days ago and went in to get the bites looked at... sure enough. bed bugs. we found them!!! nasty, right?
we dumped the mattreses and got new ones and washed everything. i'll let you know who wins this battle
















love you!

abigail- in process.