This is the best day of my life. And one of the reasons is that my pictures are finally loading!!!! WOOHOO! Now you can all see at least some of what we’re doing here. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do.

Also, today was the biggest volunteer event ever in New Orleans (or at least it felt that way). Hands On partnered with a few other organizations and Timberland to put on a huge event in Central City, which is a neighborhood here in New Orleans. There were literally hundreds of volunteers from multiple organizations working together. It was incredible. We did everything from playground cleanup to gutting more houses to building soccer fields and goals to soil remediation. I worked on the soil remediation project, which was really cool. There’s a big problem with lead in soil here, and Central City is a neighborhood that is especially contaminated. I don’t know the science of it all, but pretty exposure to lead in young children causes a drop in IQ. Which is really really bad. So we are planting mustard seed and sunflowers to extract the lead from the soil, therefore making it safe for kids to play. Its so amazing, and it was so much fun. And at lunch the Soul Rebels played…you should look them up if you don’t know them. They are an amazing New Orleans jazz group, they’re so talented I can’t even believe it. At the closing ceremony, they played again and this beat poet (I can’t remember his name exaclt.y…Hollywood something I think) performed an incredible poem he’d written about New Orleans. It was gorgeous. I can’t describe to you how empowering it was to be there with all those people and to see and hear and feel the passion of this city. So I won’t describe it…I’ll put up pictures! Here they are….enjoy!