Today was another great day of service and touring a new part of New Orleans. We started out the morning eating breakfast then heading to Grow Dat Youth Farm to learn about sustainable urban gardening. We spent the morning harvesting collard greens and kale along with transplanting young cucumber plants into the ground. Grow Dat was placed right in the middle of City Park and had a beautiful setting with trees, a lake, and the fields. After leaving the farm we had lunch at the sculpture park and had time to walk around and look at all the unique sculptures. It was a neat experience to have before going to the World War II Museum. I was really looking forward to this part of the trip and it did not disappoint!
So far this trip has been more of an adventure than I originally imagined it would be. Although we haven’t been here long, spending time with people that I barely knew two days ago has been such a fun time. Our relationships and conversations have become more genuine and seeing how New Orleans has impacted everyone in a different way are so moving. People like Burnell and Jeanette who run the organizations we’ve been working with have such inspirational stories about how hurricane Katrina affected their lives but decided to grow from it and help people in the lower 9th ward is so inspiring. They’re constantly driven to change other people’s lives even though they’ve faced hardship themselves and that’s what motivates me to do the same. I’m so excited to see how we all grow individually and as a team throughout the rest of the week.