During our last day at EC (nation) I did pretty much the same things I had been doing all week. Cooking, Distribution, etc. I took a shower, and said goodbye to all of the friends I made during my week at the camp, then I was off to the trailer.

The first thing I did when I arrived was plop down on the pullout bed and went straight to sleep. The heat was getting to me, as well as all of the work I have been doing. I slept for about an hour, and then there was a small knock on the door.

Mary Greco invited us to take a tour of the marina. The houses there were damaged pretty badly. You could see straight through them to the lake.

I got out of the car then to take a picture of the marina and kind of fell into a puddle of mud. So, Mary drove me to the boat landing and I went wadding ankle deep in Lake Pontchartrain, which caused so much destruction.

The funny thing is, after I cleaned myself off, my ankles felt kind of tingled, and they itched too. I'm just kidding, my ankles felt fine. Mary assured me that the lake was perfectly clean anyway. In fact, it’s cleaner than it has ever been before. All of the stuff that was whipped up during the hurricane settled and took the bad stuff with it. The fish have returned and there were lots of fisherman out of the rocks.

After our tour of the marina, the Greco family (Mary, Joe, and their son, Joseph) took us out to dinner at the Acme Oyster House. Joseph told me a little about his school, which was closed down for a while after the hurricane.

"You should have seen our campus before the storm, it was beautiful" Joseph told me. Joseph is a student at the Holy Cross School, just a 5 minute walk from a levy, where occasionally classes where held. There where giant oak trees, it was almost like a college campus.

Now, classes are held in trailers, the cafeteria is no more, the school population was cut in half, and worst of all, the beautiful oak trees were destroyed in the storm.

But, despite all of these hardships, the school is making a come back. Just like most of New Orleans, the towns are coming back, slowly, very slowly, but they are making a come back.

New Orleans can't make the come back alone, they still need tons of help. You don't need to fly down there like me to help. You can send money, food donations, anything that you think can be used to help people. My mom already said where to send it, so you can look there for the information.

There is a happily-ever-after part of the story, well for me at least. When we flew back into New York we spent 2 nights with a family in New Jersey. They were fostering a golden retriever, cocker spaniel mix called Coco. She rescued from a kill shelter in Georgia. And, after much begging and convincing, Coco became our dog.

The End

P.S. Thanks for reading our blog, this is it. My last entry.
Good-bye! Good-bye! Over and Out

Melanie (and Coco)