"Le Bon Temps Roule"- Let The Good Times Roll!

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a brief post of pictures and videos to let all of you in on the fun and eventful things that have been going on here in New Orleans during the past week! ENJOY!

On Friday, February 5th, all of the girls on my team and I woke up at 4am to attend the filming of "Good Morning America" in the French Quarter. We drank TONS of coffee, saw a parade, caught beads, listened to live music, and got our banner on TV, all before we went to work at 8am! It was really fun. Below are some pictures!

All of the girls and our awesome banner that we made at work the day before :)

I love this picture -- Here we are catching beads from one of the floats!


Of course, there were lots of signs like this one. This particular man was wearing one of the those beer-helmets (you know, a hard-hat with two cans of beer strapped on either side with a long tube for a straw tied to the collar of his shirt!) at 6:30am. Oh New Orleans -- it's always party time here. There was also a GIANT "F*** the Colts" sign -- so classy. I tried to take a picture of it, but was unsuccessful. Modestly is also not part of NOLA, lol.

Switching gears, here's my teammates and I on SuperBowl Sunday. We all went to this bar called "Mr. B's" and met up with two other Fire Unit teams from Denver to watch the game. Everyone donned their black and gold, and we cheered "Who Dat!?" most of the day! It was really fun!

Here's Mary, Meg, and I in the bar. It was SO crowded -- I'm talking body-to-body. Luckily, most of the bodies were AmeriCorps from Denver, so at least I knew the people I was squished in with!

Here is my attempt to document the bar-scene after the final seconds ran out on the game. Also during this time, the bartenders started spraying the crowd with water. It was nuts -- Everyone ran outside and began sprinting to Bourbon Street. I, on the other hand, grabbed a couple of my teammates and our designated-driver Joel, and we sprinted to our van to go home! I was not interested in being a part of the craziness after the game, but it was fun to go out and watch them win in the bar.

When we got to work on Tuesday, our warehouse supervisor, Krista, was so excited about the Saints' win that she had Mary and I spend the whole day making this banner to carry at the championship parade that evening. Here's the banner we made!

Here's me adding some glitter -- We also put "AmeriCorps Fire 1 Loves the Saints!" on it. Unfortunately, there were so many people at the parade, we weren't able to unroll our sign without being pummeled! We were threatened several times about opening it, haha. We heard there were over 850,000 people at the parade!

Here are some of my teammates at the parade on Tuesday evening. We were body-to-body in Lee Circle waiting for hours. We got there at 4pm and the parade didn't even get to us until after 7pm. You can see all of the people in the background.

Here's a video of one of the floats passing by. All of the players were throwing beads, and the crowd was chanting "Who Dat!?" at them. Even though it was in the 30's and freezing, we had a lot of fun.

On Thursday and yesterday (Saturday), I got to work on a building site for the day and I helped frame a house! It was a lot of fun. I learned how to mark walls for 16'' studs, as well as how to "plum and rack" the walls to make sure they were level and square. It was really fun -- a little cold on Thursday, but beautiful and sunny yesterday! I wish I would have had my camera to take pictures!

Thursday night was also a lot of fun because Mary's sister was in town from Wisconsin and she took our whole team out for the night. She took us to an all-you-can-eat Mexican restaurant, and then she took us to an unlimited bumper cars, laser tag, and cosmic golf place. It was really fun, and we all really appreciated her generosity, as taking 10 people out for something like that is incredibly expensive!!!

Now it's Valentine's Day, and I am sitting in the coffee shop with some of my teammates, waiting to talk to Eric :) I got some beautiful roses sent to my house, along with an adorable letter! My teammates were all jealous, and really want to meet him. I am the only person with a significant other, so everyone was anxious to see what I would get for V-Day. After we leave here, some of us girls are going to go walk around the French market and then go out for sushi for dinner. I am excited, as it is a beautiful day to be out walking around.

Well, I just wanted to update quickly! I'm sure I will have lots more pictures soon after Mardi Gras on Tuesday! Take care!