Baton Rouge so far has been an excellent adventure. Sure I was still on crutches and in boot when we got here, but after laying of my feet for a week it was a rapid recovery and i am not even limping any more. The first couple days of work, however, were sub par office work. I spent 8 hours entering volunteer hours into the computer the first day. the second day i dared venture to the worksite in boot but crutch free only to be denied entry with an open toed shoe...damn boot. so i sat in the van to do clerical work for gold 2. Bliss. That evening I forced a shoe onto my foot, it was very snug even though it was loosened as much as i could without the laces falling out. fortunately the weekend provided ample time for R&R and I was able to easily get my steel toe over the wrapped ankle and venture to the work site where ironically i had to take my shoes off to enter the house and put on the finishing touches before handing the house over to the owners. by the way, did I mention that we are working with habitat for humanity of greater baton rouge, and that is what i am referencing when talking about work.
So yeah, it has been fairly cold and rainy, so we had some tool orientation and inside work, but next week we start working on more building, with hammers and nails. In fact, i had a dream the other night that someone was about to shoot the nail gun but was unaware that I was standing in their targeted range, so in my sleep i was yelling "wait! wait! wait! i gotta move! gotta move! oh, god!" fortunately andre and ciara were awake to witness this little episode, and it has not yet been forgotten about.
Our living situation is WONDERFUL! we have free range of an entire church. there is a very open common area with sofas and chairs and we can project movies onto the walls. there are a couple of class rooms that we can go into and read or play games (they have scattegories, pictionary, scrabble, and a bunch more), and what has been the most fun is playing murder, a hide and seek type of game where we turn all the lights off and someone draws a card to be murderer, and no one knows who it is, but we have to walk around and try to stay alive in the dark...i know that explanation is not adequate, but the game is tons of fun! especially with so much open space to wander through. instead of cramming six girls into one small bedroom, we now have sufficient space to let our things sprawl across the floor and it doesnt even seem that messy. the boys room is still a little cramped, but there is enough common area that complaints about space are rare. We only have an oven once a week, but we make do with a microwave and a wok the rest of the week.
it is now time for me to head down the street and cheer for the beloved underdog in the superbowl. stay tuned for stories from mardi gras coming up!!
