I was completely excited to hear about winning in the Hope & Inspiration Photography contest. honestly I did not believe it at first, I thought their must be some mistake ? a mix up of some sort ? but as I read further and communicated with the people at Patrón, I knew this was indeed real and I was in for a wonderful experience.
We arrived a bit late coming in from Phoenix, and we made our way to our hotel, the personnel were more than helpful and the accommodations were very, very nice. I had checked out our hotel online prior to arriving in NO, and it was everything pictured and more. we enjoyed a nite-cap there at the hotel before calling it a nite in anticipation of our day of work w/ the St. Bernard project.
We arrived at the Offices of the St. Bernard Project on Friday morning and got a tour of the facilities and some background information on the origination of the Project from one of it's founders, Zac. We headed out to the project where we were met a project manager and received some orientation for what we were going to be doing that day (drywall), We met with the family whose home we were helping to re-build, they shared their story w/ us and after hearing some of what some folks had been going through, it made our work that day seem just a little bit easier. We were more than happy to help, and in fact looking at what was still to be done could not believe that "five' years after Katrina, that there was still so much to be done. It was unbelievable, a comment heard was 'how could this happen ? isn"t this the United states ?"I had been to NO before, but not to the affected areas of Katrina, not really knowing what to expect, it was truly an eye opening experience. We did get the opportunity to visit w/ a mother of two that had been victim to Katrina and was lucky enough to have her home rebuilt, hearing her story and the struggles she went thru, turning to 'survival mode' to care for her two daughters was very moving. I wished we had one more day to work there with the project, it seemed as soon as we got started , it was time to clean up for the day. We got allot done though, I felt good about what we had accomplished for the day.
On Saturday we headed over to the Jazz Fest, and it was incredible, the amount of people their all having a good time 50,000 people at least , and not one single event of dis-content among the crowd ..very dis-similar to other venues / events of this size that I've been to. a completely enjoyable experience. So much good music going on, it was difficult to pick which act we wanted to stay for ? We compromised splitting our time between Jeff Beck and Kenny Wayne Sheppard, got a good share of both and met some very good people.
We spent some of Saturday evening on bourbon street, and in the French Quarter ... relaxing for a little while sipping on some Patron - rocks .. discussing the last two days happenings and trying to plot our way back into the "Big Easy".
Thank you all so very much for the opportunity to be a part of this very deserving project and the good people of new Orleans.
