First Day of Volunteer work!!

So this morning started at 5:40am when I woke up and decided to try and beat everyone else for a morning shower. After expecting to wait for my turn (since there are over 100 volunteers and only 14 indoor showers) I found that there was no one even awake at that time so I was lucky enough to have the place to myself! Breakfast was at 7am sharp and we had a truly Southern breakfast!! We were served grits, eggs, sausage, sausage gravy, and biscuits. For those of us that are not too adventerous with trying new foods, there was also cereal and banana's.

Following a brief orientation from the directors, we drove off to our site for day one of our volunteer work. We were sent to help out at the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast New Orleans. This building was rebuilt in 2006 after the Hurricane had devastated the area. The neat thing about this place was that the NFL team of New Orleans (the Saints....for those of us who are not football fans) partnered with the boys and girls club so that the facility could be properly built. They also donated three widescreen HD TV's for the "Saints Game Room" in which children can play Wii games as a new interactive exercise program to help enforce staying active for kids.

I was assigned to help clean the kitchen out while others were assigned to a variety of different tasks (some being landscaping outdoors, cleaning bathrooms, and cleaning/organizing different rooms in the facility). At first the kitchen didn't seem too bad, but once we started we found that there were some problems that needed to be dealt with right away. After taking everything out of the room and cleaning everything down, we rearranged furniture and made the space more practical for its many uses. We discovered that this space was not only used as a kitchen but also as a study lounge and sometimes it was used as the music room in which the children learned music theory. Cleaning the room proved to be a daunting task because we had to wash the floor three times before it was actually clean!

In the end of the day, all of our tasks had been completed and the facility seemed to have a HUGE improvement from when we had arrived to when we left. I am looking forward to returning back there tomorrow at which time we will help with major landscaping issues outside the facility. Tomorrow we will also be staying later in the day so that we can help with the children when they arrive after school....we also promised them a game of Kickball, which they claimed they would win (we will see about that!!). I am having a great time here and cannot wait to help out some more!!