Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi gulf coast and New Orleans, we've been feeling some of the effects up here in the Mississippi Delta. Here's some of what's happening up here in Greenville, MS.

School Transplant

The night after the hurricane, which I had off, I got a call from my assistant principal letting me know that we would have school the following day, but that we didn't have power in the building. School would therefore be held at another elementary school ... with two classes per classroom.

After flipping out, I went next door to tell Brianna about it and it sounded so outlandish that she refused to believe me. So the following day I made the students pack their books, got some things together quickly, and we headed over to the other school. I was sure to bring along my little white board, which I set up to teach from.

For as crazy as the day sounded it would be, it wasn't terrible. I luckily got stationed in the library and we just did some reading on the floor. It was like I was like I was back in Houston teaching kindergartners. The day went off without much trouble, though I didn't get a ton done, as one might understand.

Refugee Influx -- To My Classroom

Greenville is playing host to many of the victims of the hurricane. People are staying here at the convention center and with relatives. Last Friday we started having students enroll in school and by today we were up to 11 new students from New Orleans. One of them landed in my class. Through it all he seems to be getting along pretty well.

Satellite Images

Yesterday I started looking at some of the satellite imagery that's available. You can see huge images of New Orleans here or use a special version of Google Maps here.

I looked at two things in particular. First, I wanted to see what happened to Katerina's dorm, which I stayed at twice. Take a look at the difference:

Then I needed to know what happened to the lakefront Joe's Crab Shack. It doesn't seem like it's in great shape:

It looks like it took some damage to each side of it and the parking lot is flooded.