Week 1 Project
569 words by wjarnold
The Friday before Katrina I distinctively remember waking up and seeing that the storm was suppose to curve around and make a second landfall in Florida, but when I came home at 1pm that day things had changed. Instead of the storm moving northwest it was moving south-southwest and when I came home from school again at 6pm instead of the projected path having Katrina hitting Florida it had it hitting New Orleans. After searching for hours my family found a hotel in Houston. On Saturday after packing up our belongings and boarding up the house we left our house and arrived in Houston at 10pm that night. On Monday August 29, we watched CNN as Katrina hit with what was thought to be catagory four winds and hoped optimistically that the damage would be minimal. Later that afternoon the storm had past and the levees still remained intact. The levees were then reported breached the next day and we began seeing the flooded streets of New Orleans. As thousands of New Orleanians saw the damage and knew there house was gone things were different for our family. Our family lives in Algiers which is on the other side of the Mississippi River which meant that our home could possibly be unflooded and undamaged. We called our dad who had stayed nearby our home and he confirmed that there was no flooding on the westbank. Suddenly there was a renewed confidence in our family that perhaps everything would be alright. About three weeks later we were finally allowed to go back home but when we got there our optimism quickly faded. Our house was unflooded but the roof had fell in most of the house. For the next three months we lived in our aunt’s house and began the slow process of moving what could be saved to storage. After having our hopes of living in our house smashed we looked to find the bright side of the situation. We would be able to completely remodel the house and perhaps even add on to the house, but then more bad news struck when we couldn’t find anybody to fix the house for a resonable price. We finally found a relative and with the help of our dad was able to begin construction on our house. Around Christmas we were finally allowed to live in our FEMA trailer, some of the best news since the storm. Finally in May the house was finished enough to where we could live in our house again. The reason I am taking Biblical Studiers is because I am required to take two theology classes in order to graduate and since this was one of the only 1000 level Theology classes available it was the obvious choice. I am Baptist and I go to church pretty regularly but I know that I can expand my knowledge of the bible. My prediction of what Biblical Studies would be like before I took a class was that we would go through each book of the bible and have tests on what happened. I am a junior hear at Xavier and my major is Music Performance, one day I hope to play the trombone in an orchestra or wind symphony. I do not see what the Bible or Theology has to do with playing the Trombone but I guess all things we learn will come in handy somehow.