This does NOT feel like a volunteer trip... we're sat with our laptops in the warm breeze of the courtyard of the W hotel, enjoying the free wi-fi, ordering dinner... we just wandered through the french quarter to and from our meeting with relief spark, which was at another hotel nearby.

It is, however, a volunteer trip, and we'll be up around 6.30 tomorrow morning to go and help gut a house somewhere, probably in the lower 9th ward. That should be really interesting, although we did hear from some volunteers who'd been today who said that it was a pretty difficult experience.

Something that only came up today that I'm really excited about is an opportunity that we get on Tuesday. The first part of theday will be salvaging and cleaning objects, in a community center I think, but specifically not in the houses themselves. The reason for that is that we need to stay clean - because we'll then be spending the end of the day with primary school children in St Bernard's Parish, possibly the worst Katrina-affected area, joining in with their after school acitivities.

I feel really great right now - incredibly relieved that our road trip is over (26 hours!), glad at how it well it went - everyone was an absolute superstar - and really looking forward to the week ahead.