NYC Day 2

Today started out with a sprint to catch our tour bus and ended with better than expected seats for Phantom. Further explanation will hopefully come later.

 

 

 

 

This is for you, Uncle Don!

 

 

 

 

I Heart NY...our day in pictures

As requested(uncle don), here are a few pictures from my first day in NYC with Aunt Connie and Heather. They got here yesterday for thier spring break. We are going on a Tv/Movie tour tomorrow so check back later this week for more pictures. We are exhausted from walking all over Manhattan today and tomorrow is going to be even later so don't expect pictures tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow, Snow, and more Snow!

 

Yipee! We love snow and we love snow days even more!I think that we figured out we got about 10 inches. You don't see that in Alabama!

 

Who says all we do is study?

 

The Girls: Me, Sarah, Amy, Abby, and Katie

 

Now the fun is over, time to dig out the cars. It was rather humrous today. Almost everybody that lived on our street were outside digging thier cars out at the same time. Seoki, bless his heart, dug 6 cars out. This involved driving them out of the parking spot himself. Believe me, I am glad he did it and not me. I still haven't quite gotten used to the whole snow thing.

NOLA 1 1/2 Years after Katrina

This was Mrs. Roberta's house that we worked on all week. We put up dry wall, and lots of other little things around the house to help her move back in a little quicker. Mrs. Roberta has lived in this house for 64 years. Her husband built it and she raised her 10 children in the house.

Brittany and I helped ALOT!!!! Well, we tried our best anyway. We were much better at gutting a house than building it.

This house is across the street from the 17th street canal levee break. You can see the water line at the top of the windows. The girls worked on gutting this house one afternoon. The owners of this house just left it because they could not deal with the amount of loss they had suffered. A friend of the original owner bought it from them and is now working on it himself. It was very eye opening to see people's things still in the home. We could tell that it was once a very nice and warm home.

This was one of the most troubling things that I saw while I was there. This house is directly behind where the levee broke in the Lakeview District. The back of the house is completely gone. In this picture you can see the patio furniture and a mound of mud is now in the what was the living room. This house has not been touched since Katrina. All of thier furniture and appliances are still in the house. Thier spices and kitchen utensils are outside of the kitchen window. I have sooo many more pictures but this is just to give you a little idea of the amount of damage that is still there a year and a half later.

This is a house in the 9th ward. It was completely taken off of its foundation and floated next door. We even saw one house that landed on a car. Most of the 9th ward is completely demolished. Most houses have been completely torn down. Some are still holding on to them in the hopes that they can get something for them from the insurance companies or the government. They aren't having much luck with that.

Just a taste of Perth, Australia

  

We worked a little...but it didn't seem like work.

 
Tuesday we had the opportunity to cook dinner for the women and girls living in Esther House. Stacy, Jay, and I had the fun job of shopping for the dinner. We had a few things to learn, such as a bell pepper is called a capsicum.
 
Cooking was so much fun. The girls were soo helpful and appreciative. It was nice to get a chance to sit down and talk to them as we ate. After dinner we went to a worship service with them. Ingrid Davis, my prof's wife preached there. It was a wonderful serman and I think the girls were truly bless by it. I know that we were blessed by meeting the girls.
 
Barry, the community outread pastor gave us a tour of some of the ministries that Witford church (our host chruch) had going on in the community. We went to the Op shop(or thrift store)that is run by volunteers from the church. Our host family helps run the shop. It is a wonderful ministry. A few of us even came home with some goodies from there.
 
Hillary's Boat Harbor is the location of an annual New Age Festival. Witford Church sets up a tent there every year and Barry is friends with the man who organizes it. We prayerwalked the area and claimed it for Christ. We are excited to hear from Witford church about how the festival goes this year.
 

It wasn't all work

 
This was our entire group at Kings Park. Think the Perth version of Central Park. It was beautiful. It runs right along the Swan River. We got a good view of it on our river cruise.
 
Nithin and Jordan (my prof's son) certainly kept us entertained during the trip.
 
Sometimes Nithin's entertaining got to be a little too much. Chuck(my prof)had to keep him under control
 
The River cruise was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. It took us about 3 hours to go down the river and back up to Perth. We saw some spectacular scenery. Mostly big beautiful houses and sailboats! If you look closely you can see the Perth skyline behind me.