A Blog Post For You to Read from Simon Brown.

Hello everyone!

This is Simon, just to update you on our time in New Orleans. In a word, hot. But more than just that, very humid. We've only been here two days so far and it's already getting to me. Luckily, the dorms room we're in are air conditioned and VERY comfortable. New Orleans has a different culture than St. Paul that is for sure, anywhere you go there are street performers, and voodoo shops, although it is very fascinating and nice, I cannot see myself living here. Tomorrow is our first day at work, I am on the B Team which is therefore clearly the coolest team, we are doing some sort of construction work, I'm not sure exactly what, but it should be fun. It is an early wake up call though, 5:30! Which is undoubtedly the earliest I've woken up in a long time; even for school I only had to wake up at 6:30. What is nice though is that we have free time from 1-6 every single day, where we can go running, or swim, or whatever it be. So far to pass my time I have been reading Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders which although is very interesting (Did you know that Charles Manson is only 5'2"??), has a very contradictory tone of what our objective here is. LILY! We walked into a room at the church which is hosting us, and what do we see? Rock service once again. Some of the same songs too! It's kinda traumatic. But in contrast to the previous mission trip, the showers are wonderful; warm, high water-pressure, and no fish smell. CAROLINE! We visited your previous work-sites today and the house is done, and looks fantastic! Since I am the only one with a sibling that worked on it, Paul took a picture of me in front of it for you to see, which should be uploaded to the blog sometime soon. It was great, on the trip down here, we watched Slumdog Millionaire, School of Rock (Which although I hate Jack Black was quite entertaining the second time around), and or course my personal favorite, The Dark Knight. The explosions were loud at 1 A.M but still very fun. Walking around the French Quarter, Paul and I recognize scenery from one of our favorite video games which is kinda cool. Since the last time I had been here was a long time ago, it was really cool going around it for a second time. I am bunking with Jimmy and Danny, which although has it's perks can get bad pretty quickly.The food at the church is really great. Tonight we had some good old fashion beans and rice, which was very good. In addition to the environment of New Orleans, Tulane University has a very beautiful campus, but I cannot see myself going to school here. I'm definitely missing my computer and friends at home, but it's good to get away from that kind of a lifestyle for awhile. I'll probably blog again later this week, but for now I should go.


Talk to you again later,
Love, Simon.