Day 3

How many Methodists does it take???

What do you do when you finish one house and it's ready to be re-occupied by its family? Of course, what you do is start another project. While our first house was only ten minutes from the Epworth Center where we're staying, our second house is 20 miles away on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain in the city of East New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins). We spent the morning taking supplies to this new project house, taking stock of what work needs to be done, making a list of the things we then realized we still needed, and developing a plan. With that serious and hard work accomplished, we spent the rest of the day exploring the French Quarter of Nawlins.

Visiting Nawlins means two things – food and music!



No, that's not the Magic Kingdom, it's Saint Louis Cathederal.

Our first stop was Cafe du Monde where we enjoyed their famous coffee and beignet (a donut kind of thing with lots of powdered sugar – mmmm good!). Then we headed to the old U.S. Mint building, which is now part of the Louisiana State Museum, to hear a talented local jazz pianist play a concert (also mmmm good!). For lunch, we went to a local favorite, the Gumbo Shop, where we enjoyed crab cakes, po-boys, chicken and andouille (with alligator sausage), and other goodies (again, mmmm good!).

Tour guide Frank leads the team on it's walk.

After listening to some street musicians and admiring the architecture, we returned to the Epworth Center for dinner (yes, dinner – this time crawfish spaghetti – one more time, mmmm, good!), we found that we were being joined by a group of 28 students from Western University (London, Ontario) who came to Slidell to work on Habitat homes but had to change accommodations. There's plenty of room for them here and they will be eating their meals with the nine of us.

Now it's time to get a good night's rest so that we can paint, paint, and paint some more tomorrow.