Pre New Orleans thoughts - 

I'll be honest, I hadn't really given this trip much thought before it crept up on me towards the end of winter break. I knew that I found the idea being given the tools to help build a house daunting, and that New Orleans needed all the help that it could get after Katrina left it destroyed in 2005, but that was it. I knew nothing about the hurricane other than the flurry of facts that had been sporadically thrown to the freshman bonners during our first semester, and the slivers of knowledge that I carried with me from years of hearing about the destruction the hurricane caused. Still, I was, and still am, virtually clueless. As much as I look at pictures on google at the destroyed houses and the vast inundation, I'll never actually know what it's like to stand on the roof of my house because the water level has risen so high, the roof is the only safe place to be without risking drowning. I'll never know what its like to witness the destruction of the neighborhood that I've grown up in my entire life, and feel utterly helpless and incapable of stopping the obliteration. I'll never know what it feels like to rally with my entire city, crying out to the entire country for water, food, and rescue, feeling completely abandoned by the institutions that were in place to protect me, 

Or at least I hope that I never know.

  

Still, as much solace as I can take from knowing that I have a house to come home to and the safety of a stable roof over my head, I have to be aware that there are people who went to sleep on August 28th, 2005 with a home and a life and a love for the city that they knew, and woke up to what must have seemed like the apocalypse - the total extermination of everything around them. It's important to remember these people and their grief, to remind ourselves that often times there are others who have faced and continue to face issues and obstacles greater than the daily ones we fuss over, to put our own lives into perspective. We should remember that if we are lucky enough to lead lives of comfort and have the capacity to build and mend. our talents are better served helping people that truly need it than sitting on a couch for eight hours a day clicking away at a remote. And frankly, I'm not a hands-on person. You'll never catch me willingly hammering in a nail or drilling with a power tool for fun. The idea of working eight hours for five days on a home that someone is eventually going to live in, seems both terrifying and exhausting to me. 

However, even though I'm not afraid to admit that I approach this service with some apprehension, (seriously. it's never a good idea to put tools in my hand), I recognize that some opportunities are bigger than me. It's worth being scared of trying something new, to be able to do something that means something. To be able to create something of comfort and safety, out of wreckage and ruin. To go to a city that's spent ten years rebuilding and refused to be drowned even after seeing itself 80% underwater, and raise it up even higher, And I may never be the master of the power drill, but this city is worth all that I can give.