Whoa

I've finished my first week in the Gulf and holy cow am I sore and tired. Monday and Tuesday I worked in a community center/park cleaning up yard debris and painting a playground. I couldn't tell you how many hundreds of pounds of branches, dirt and other natural junk I moved from a pile into another pile that would be picked up a disposed of by FEMA people. Wednesday I cleaned the Operation Blessing facilities and that was a very long and boring day. Then on Thursday and Friday I gutted a house. It is such hard, strenuous work! Yes, it's fun to smash walls with sledge hammers and crowbars, but you could not imagine all the debris that comes out of a 100+ year old house. I am so ridiculously sore from hauling plaster, planks and tile out of the house into the ever-growing house debris pile. And I have six more months of this! I'm going to have big man muscles after I'm done with this. Hopefully we can finish this house by Tuesday.
The house that we working on is right in New Orleans. I can see the Superdome from the street. I cannot believe what I see around me. It looks like the houses have not been touched and the people have not been back there since the hurricanes. It's almost like a ghost town. One of the saddest things I've seen is in the house we are working on. Above the fireplace was a calendar turned to August 2005 and all the days are X-ed out up until the 29th. The people who lived here haven't been in their own home 19 months. This area still needs so much help it's scary. Scary because it seems like a lot of America has already forgotten about the devistation and destruction that happened in the Gulf. There are groups of college kids who come here for their spring break and work, but after the spring breaks are over, the volunteer force goes way, way down.
I try to look on the bright side and think that I am making a small difference, but it all seems so overwhelming. I don't know what else to say about this.