Wednesday, Jan 16

Hello world! This is Leo, it is my turn to renew our blog today. It’s our sixth days in New Orleans. For the past days, we did a lot of community services, and we had one day break to explore the splendid culture of this city. However, that also reminds me I only have three days left to live and work with my amazing teammates. Soooooo sad about it.

Today, we (except Tom, Terrence, and I. Excuse us, but we were really sleepy since we did not sleep well last night due to some well-known reasons) got up around 7:30 as usual, and then we had a breakfast at Common ground.  As common, I made a peanut-butter-turkey sandwich for myself, although everyone regarded me as an alien because of so. After breakfast, at 8:30 am, we started our construction work at the church, which located just across from where we live.  We worked there yesterday, but today, we did a different work, which I believe most of us haven’t done before: MUDDING.  Denise, a staff at common ground, taught us how to do mudding step by step.  The progress of mudding was quite complicated, in a word; we were required to use light-yellow tape to cover the cracks between drywalls.  Although it was a really challenge for us, everyone was pleasant to welcome the challenge. But that is not the case after nearly four-hour’s work.  Since we have to keep the same gesture while we were mudding, arms and back were really sour after a long time work. In the light of living a simple life, we had a simple lunch: just some sandwiches and red-bean rice left from yesterday’s dinner. After lunch, the whole afternoon, from 1:30pm to 4:30pm, we continued working on mudding. Finally, we finished mudding all the cracks on the roof.

There are two things that really need to be mentioned today. One is saying goodbye to some unpopular people, which means we could look forward to a good sleep tonight. The other is the dinner we had. Ashley, Sarah, and Wu Jin prepared Jambalaya for us, which was pretty delicious! BTW, Jambalaya is one of the most famous food in New Orleans. Anyway, we had an awesome dinner and that made my day. After dinner, Smitty, the lawyer gave us a speech about racism several days before, came back to common ground and told us his personal experience with Katrina. Smitty is a humorous person who has his own unique perspective as well. He told us what he saw, what he heard, what he did, and what he did before, during, and after hurricane Katrina. In addition, he shared some personal standpoints about the New Orleans’s reconstruction progress. One thing that impressed me most was his viewpoint about the relationship between volunteers and New Orleans citizens. He proposed that New Orleans citizens should think about what they can offer to volunteers while they are serving in New Orleans. Since in his eyes, the relationship between volunteers and residents is like the relationship between donors and “donees”. Although volunteers came to New Orleans and helped people out of trouble out of their humanity, citizens in New Orleans still need to think about something that they could give back to those volunteers. These could be New Orleans’s unique culture, New Orleans people’s kindness, or even its delicious food.

Today’s reflection started with highs and lows as usual.  After that, we developed a discussion on Smitty’s speech. Some people agreed with his views, but still many of us considered that some of opinions are out of date. From my perspective, nobody can ensure that his or her viewpoint is perfect; our opinions are easy to be influenced or limited by the environment we grew up, people we met, the age we live, and so forth.  For this very reason, reflections make everyone think from different aspects and benefit from different thoughts. In the end, we had a group game named Privilege Exercise together. Our team leaders: Jen and Tom gave out several questions, and the ones who thought the question fit for them would take one step forward. After this game, we had a discussion about this game. We thought this game not only tested our reactions toward discrimination or privilege, but also make us know each other more deeply.

All in all, it was a great day with work, with yummy food, with games, and with reflections. I cherished the days with all my dear teammates, and will cherish for the next a few days.