Brian Calls the Marines

The Marines are everywhere..including our apartment!
This is a photo of the helicopters that were flying over continually before and after the storm in both Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Soooo..... we are adapting to all the stress of our first full-on schedule of classes, attempting to balance this with cleaning, moving in, and getting to work. I have gotten lost 3 times on my bike going to and from school, as the roads here are not on a grid system and one road can lead you in the completely wrong direction. I actually had to call Brian to come pick me up in the car on Monday because I'd kept biking in two different directions in the 90 degree heat.

I am very happy because we've both met a lot of cool people and our neighborhood rocks. I also just found out I will be doing work study with Save the Children....this is awesome because they are an international organization, as well as all over the U.S. and are difficult to get a job with. They don't offer internships for people trying to get a job, so therefore, my working with them for five hours a week for the next year and a half could really help out with connections and networking. Next semester, I will be starting my field placement, which will be an internship at another organization. All the hands-on experience has gotten me really excited, but both Bri and I are struggling with the amount of reading we have to do in a day.

Brian has an assistanceship at his university. He will be making a website for a neighborhood that has not taken off since Katrina. His website will be a model for the revitalization of all of the New Orleans neighborhoods. Hopefully after this, he will be working in conjunction with a professor about bike-way initiatives in New Orleans. For all of you who know Bri, this is right up his alley.

Now, the whole point of this e-mail. While we are adapting to all of the newness here in New Orleans, we are still trying to remember when and how to set our apartments security alarm. This morning, at 8:00, Brian decided to open the backdoor to check out the clouds going by for Hurricane Ike. The alarm goes screaming off, the community-wide alarm and I rushed up to turn it off. Ten minutes later, we are sitting in our kitchen, and I'm still in my pj's. Four marines walk directly by our kitchen window, meaning they hopped the fence to our backyard. Brian was like-what the heck? I told him it was because of the alarm and he kept saying, "No, no...but how did they get back there?" He went to the front of the house and sure enough, the Marines were securing our neighborhood because they'd heard an alarm go off.

The result: Post-It notes on both doors for Bri to remember, and I guess happiness that we live in a secure neighborhood. What a way to start the day!