register |  login
› BOULDER
Loading Ad
Visit Other Hubs:
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Tower
Blog
Blog Entry 1 of 5 A CU Student's Perspective
I'm Lisa Doan, a student at the University of Colorado - Boulder. For spring break, I traveled to New Orleans with the Alternative Breaks volunteer group, and I'll initially be blogging about the experiences I had down there.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~LDoan

Spring Break in New Orleans

Contributed by: Lisa Doan   on 4/6/2006

CU's spring break was the last week of March, and many of my friends spent the week at exotic locales working on their tans. Some went to Cancun and lounged around on the beaches. Others went on cruises through the Caribbean.

Several went to the mountains to get in a few good days of skiing. Still others journeyed into the desert and tested their luck in Vegas. And, of course, countless others simply stayed home and relaxed.

What did I do? I spent 48 hours in a 15-passenger van with 12 other CU women. I spent 2 days in houses completely covered in mud and mold. I slept on the floor for 4 nights with cockroaches and rats. I was bitten an innumerable number of times by bugs of all sorts and got a second-degree burn on my arm.

Did I mention that I voluntarily paid $250 to endure all of that?

If I had the chance to go back in time and redo my "break", I wouldn't change a single thing. It was intense, tragic, physically demanding, emotionally exhausting, and frustrating. But I wouldn't change a thing.

So, what possessed me to spend money to go down to New Orleans and help during my spring break?

It's still hard for me to verbalize my reasons, but I felt a need to go and see the destruction with my own eyes. Watching the news and reading the paper in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I felt so far removed from the suffering I saw. Of course, that's always how it is: I see pictures of the suffering in Sudan and Iraq, and I feel disconnected from the people there, too.

I understand that they're enduring unbelievable circumstances that they have no control over, and I feel for them. But, the situation in New Orleans is different because it is taking place in our own nation, and that just doesn't seem fair to me.

How is it possible that I can spend my week lazing about and sleeping for hours on end while there are thousands Americans who have been suffering for 7 months and have no relief in sight? I guess I just felt a duty to go down there and do what I could.

Many of the other students (14 women in all) in my Alternative Breaks group expressed similar motivations. One spoke about how she was worried that when we all came back to CU, all of our friends would say, "Oh, wow, good for you! Great job! You're such a good person!"

And while the compliments are appreciated, that certainly isn't why any of us volunteered. We didn't want recognition for ourselves. Instead, we wanted to spread the stories we had seen and heard while we were in New Orleans, and we want people to understand that the situation in New Orleans is still very dire.

Though there aren't very many stories in the nightly news about New Orleans anymore, the city is still struggling to recuperate. A telling indicator is that many of the pictures I took over spring break look the exact same as many of the pictures that were published 6 months ago, a month after the storm hit and the flood waters had finally receded.

A quick overview of our week:

Driving to New Orleans is no small feat, and we only had 3 certified drivers among the lot of us. Our group departed on Friday after all of us had gotten out of classes.

We spent 24 hours in the car, stopping only for gas and wondering what awaited us in Louisiana. When we finally reached New Orleans, we stayed at what had been a domestic abuse shelter before Katrina and was now used to house volunteers. The first full day was spent exploring the city and taking a tour of the devastated areas.

We spent two days of the week gutting houses, one day helping rebuild a house that was split in two by a pine tree felled by a tornado that Katrina had spawned, and another day renovating the place we stayed at and moving it closer to re-opening as a shelter.

The last day was spent packing, cleaning up, and boosting the local economy by exploring the French Quarter. Finally, we spent another 24 hours bonding in the car before leaving each other to sleep in our own beds and prepare to go back to classes.

I am known for taking ridiculous amounts of pictures at any event, mundane or not. Over the 9 days of the trip, I took 655 pictures and endlessly harassed my car/housemates.

But even 655 pictures cannot capture all of the experiences and memories of our spring break. I intend to post several more blogs about some of the emotions, highlights, and reflections we had while we were in the Crescent City.


SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above blog



Current Rating
Based on 5 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the blog

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

Showing 1 of 1 comments
Submitted By: Seth Davis
posted on 4/7/2006 @ 10:16:07 AM
Rated Blog Entry
I haven't really heard too much lately about how the rebuilding is going, so it is nice to learn about it from someone who has been there in person.
[Report as objectionable]
Showing 1 of 1 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Lisa Doan

Longmont , CO

Lisa Doan has posted 5 blog entries and 0 comments since joining on 4/5/2006. Lisa Doan 's average blog rating is 5.
SAVE AND SHARE THIS BLOG ENTRY
BLOG ENTRY RSS FEEDS
BLOG LIST
WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?
Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is  register,  then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyonewhat events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

Loading Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

This YourHub.com community is produced by The Denver Newspaper Agency
Web Development and Channel Analytics provided by Indigio

terms of use //  privacy policy
the staff //  advertise //  help & faq
buy photos