Final Work Day

On friday our final day of working, our first job, by now it was just marilee and me, don’t know where John went, but we figured he might have been tired of chain links (or us!!) but Andrew had us filling wheel barrow with sand and filling under the houses and raking it. I had a hard time with wheel barrow, but Mare did it easily, so she would fill and I was crawling under houses with only a 14inch distance between blanks and raking the sand. The last hour of that I was on my butt doing it. We finally said “uncle” on that and asked Andrew for another job..so we spent a bit of time, hammering nails under houses where the netting had come loose, but then got to spend the rest of the day doing what turned out to be the easiest thing..painting, even on the high ladders..so while we were in awe in the beginning of the week at the people on high ladders painting, we soon realized that was a breeze after the work we had been doing. We did white trim on one house and a great bright yellow on another...we were smiling by this point. We also found most of the work we did all week was not near the bulk of the group, but at the end of the street..and actually that was fine with us..we could gripe or laugh or whatever..though towards the end of the week, people were coming to see what we were doing etc. We cleaned up our tools, said good bye to Andrew and got on the bus at 2pm..back to hotel, shower and clean up and at 3:30 headed on bus back to French quarter..we were supposed to go to the Imax to see movie Hurricane on the Bayou, but wires got crossed and it was not playing at that time. Those that stayed thru Sat got to see it. We used the time to walk the waterfront, and go to the Mardi Gras museum and the Cabildo. We were given vouchers for all these events so that was good. We were to be at the New Orleans School of Cooking at 6:15 so we killed alittle time in a local bar with 2 others from our group. The class at the school of cooking was fantastic. It was given by the same lady that did our first night talk (the comedienne) she was fantastic. they had the mirrors so we could see it all.

She made before our eyes and then we ate the following wonderful food..Gumbo; Crawfish Etouffee; Bananas Foster; and Pralines..She gave the origins of all these recipes also..just great. At the end of that the bus was taking everyone back to the hotel, the 32 people got on but Marilee and I did not..We wanted to go to Preservation Hall for the nightly jazz concerts. Although neither mare nor I are great jazz enthusiast this was stupendous. A dark, typical place, the 5 musicians and an older black woman singer just what you expect in New Orleans jazz.. really awesome. We then walked more around the quarter and a last run into harrahs, marilee had some tokens left. Got on the last bus at 10pm back to hotel. We threw our clothes in suitcase and dropped into bed, tired!