Spring Break
New Orleans: That's where I want to go for spring break
Nicole Ryan
Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: Ed-Op
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The sky is bright blue and beautiful and its sun beams down on my pale Philadelphian skin. Surrounded by friends, the warm breeze sends tingles down my spine as sand crosses my path. Sounds like the typical spring break, right? Wrong, it's the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Those who came with me on Drexel's Alternative Spring Break were mostly strangers before our 20-hour bus ride down. It's not your typical trip spent on some tropical beach with strawberry daiquiri in hand. It's one spent with hammers and paintbrushes in our hands.
"N'Awlins," as the locals call it, is a place of spirit-unbreakable, underadvertised, and underlying. It does not lie only in the vitality and craziness on Bourbon Street, but within every local person who lost a home, a loved one, or a way of life.
After watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the news 19 months ago, it seemed like some far away place full of heartache and nightmares. When Asbury Protestant Ministries gave me the opportunity to help rebuild, I jumped at the chance. I didn't know what to expect, since the place faded from the news a few months after the disaster.
When we first arrived in the city, still groggy from sleep, I honestly thought I was still dreaming. Kelly Pillard, a student volunteer described what we saw, "It was incredible-in a depressing way. It's hard to believe that it's still like that down there."
I shared the same disbelief, thinking about how it had been 19 months since the hurricane hit, and so much of the community was still in shambles. The city ranged from what looked like war zones to third world counties to ghost towns. We looked at boarded up buildings barely standing, trying to decipher what they used to be.
As our group of 27 students and two faculty members entered our work area, the place seemed like a ghost town. "I didn't realize before I went on the trip that such a small portion of the population had returned," Dustin Houck, another student volunteer explained, "apparently I had no idea the magnitude of the damage was so extensive."
Those who came with me on Drexel's Alternative Spring Break were mostly strangers before our 20-hour bus ride down. It's not your typical trip spent on some tropical beach with strawberry daiquiri in hand. It's one spent with hammers and paintbrushes in our hands.
"N'Awlins," as the locals call it, is a place of spirit-unbreakable, underadvertised, and underlying. It does not lie only in the vitality and craziness on Bourbon Street, but within every local person who lost a home, a loved one, or a way of life.
After watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the news 19 months ago, it seemed like some far away place full of heartache and nightmares. When Asbury Protestant Ministries gave me the opportunity to help rebuild, I jumped at the chance. I didn't know what to expect, since the place faded from the news a few months after the disaster.
When we first arrived in the city, still groggy from sleep, I honestly thought I was still dreaming. Kelly Pillard, a student volunteer described what we saw, "It was incredible-in a depressing way. It's hard to believe that it's still like that down there."
I shared the same disbelief, thinking about how it had been 19 months since the hurricane hit, and so much of the community was still in shambles. The city ranged from what looked like war zones to third world counties to ghost towns. We looked at boarded up buildings barely standing, trying to decipher what they used to be.
As our group of 27 students and two faculty members entered our work area, the place seemed like a ghost town. "I didn't realize before I went on the trip that such a small portion of the population had returned," Dustin Houck, another student volunteer explained, "apparently I had no idea the magnitude of the damage was so extensive."
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