According to the official report at around 1p, between 65-70% of the students enrolled at the college returned today. That is pretty good. I heard that 75% returned in a Mississippi college after Katrina. There were students of mine that lost everything. They were also glad to be back at school. It gave them a sense of normalcy. They said it also gave them a break from cleaning their houses.
I found out today that there was another BOI professor stayed on the island during the storm. What is it with these Born On the Island people? Are they all nuts?
Since Wednesday is my short day, I when home to eat, clean my bathrooms and cleaned up my upstairs balcony. It still had water and other crap there. I cleaned up most of it. I will let is dry before I clean the little bit that is left.
After that I wanted to see downtown. When I got down there I was able to drive down the streets. Everything is gone. All the stores and restaurants have all been cleaned out and the dry wall taken out. Just the wood beams remain. Places like Sky Bar and Saltwater Grill gone. The downtown I liked to go to is like a ghost town. I started tearing up. It was just sad.
I then went to my friend Ron's house to see if he was still there working on cleaning up. He was still there (he has been living in Houston since his house has no power or gas). He had already cleaned up all the mud and had already thrown out his fridge, hot water heater, couch and other stuff. He was lucky. His dry wall is still fine unlike other people's houses.
We then went to Papa's Pizza and Ron knows the owners of Papa's. They also own Mario's on the seawall (it was their 1st place they owned), Saltwater Griill, Sky Bar and Yagas. They said they are working on getting them all back up and running. Yay. The owner told us that he had just took a cup that had the reopening of Yagas after Rita out of a cubbard. (During Rita, their wall to that restarunt fell.) He said that it would have been a 2nd annaverery in November of the reopening and it did not even get there.
It is just sad for all those people and some how I was very lucky.
It is just sad.