My name is April Martin and by the summer of 2005, New Orleans had been my home for nine years and some months. Before the storm, my partner, Jeremy Justice and I lived at 5535 South Tonti Street in Broadmoor. Of course, Katrina changed all that. When I awoke to go to work on Saturday, August 27, everything seemed pretty normal. I did not realize I was about to get some shocking news. At the time, I was the manager of the Rue de la Course coffeehouse on Magazine Street and when I arrived at 6:30a.m., okay it was probably more like 6:45, the guy I worked with, Noel, who is usually half asleep, was running around like a maniac and told me the storm was coming and there would be a mandatory evacuation. I do not often watch the news and had no idea but because we have always had hurricanes, I thought that he must be overreacting. Once we opened the coffeeshop and people started to come in, I realized that if he was being overdramatic then everyone else was as well. The incoming hurricane was the only topic of the morning. Everyone seemed to be in a state of panic. By the time I left work, there were long lines at every gas station between Magazine and my house. Naturally, I could not bring myself to wait in those lines-I honestly thought I would stay just like for every other hurricane. I decided to take a nap.\r\nWhen Jeremy got home, he immediately began barricading our house; he covered the windows and brought my car to the warehouse of his parents’ business in Jefferson Parish where it would be safe from flooding. As the warnings began to get more serious, we decided that we would evacuate and began preparing to leave. We did laundry, packed and watched Cleopatra, with Elizabeth Taylor, on television. We planned to leave the next morning by 8 o’clock. The next morning, I helped to secure the coffeeshop and we left for my sister’s house in Bryan, TX with our dog and cat. Normally an eight-hour drive, it took us eighteen hours to get to Bryan. I don’t think there was ever a moment that we exceeded 30mph. Like everyone else, we endured I-10 at a snail’s pace. It was 3 o’clock in the morning when we finally arrived at my sister’s to find our friends, Joey and Bert (and their dog and three cats), having also evacuated to Bryan, watching CNN and waiting for us. By the time we all awoke the next morning, Monday, August 29, the levees had broken and New Orleans was flooded.\r\nOur cell phones were useless, it would be four days before I knew that my family in Mississippi was alive. For the next two weeks, we watched CNN endlessly, obsessively and listened to the WWL broadcast on the Internet. It was impossible to do anything else, I would try to go outside and smoke cigarettes but I was afraid I would miss a new development and would run back inside to the news. Through CNN and WWL we witnessed the flooding, the fires, the looting and the madness in our city. Anderson Cooper and Paula Zahn became personal friends of ours, they told us what we needed to know. I must admit that when Anderson Cooper yelled at Mary Landrieu that the political back-patting going on between Bush, Blanco, and herself was unnecessary and undeserved, we all cheered. Nagin seemed to share Cooper’s sentiments. Nothing was being done and the city was falling to more and more chaos and desperation. The situations at the Superdome and the Convention Center were devastating, unbelievably horrible. For those two weeks, we stared, like zombies, at the hurricane coverage and tried to cheer our selves up with games of Trivial Pursuit, as ironic as that is, and too much food. Through satellite photos on the Internet, we were able to see that our house had flooded. When the water was finally pumped out, business owners in Jefferson parish were allowed to come back temporarily to pack their necessities and check the safety of their businesses. Jeremy got a copy of the business pass from his parents and we decided to sneak over to our house in Orleans to check the damages and pack up our house. The news footage did not compare to the reality we came home to.\r\nThe smell was putrid, the grass was brown, billboards were folded in half and everything was destroyed. We drove into the city from Metairie, it was unbelievable. I had decided to film our drive to our house but it smelled so bad that the video is shaking from me holding my nose and trying not to breathe. We had stopped in Lafayette where Goodwill was giving away free clothes to evacuees and got pants and long-sleeved shirts to cover ourselves. Jeremy’s parents gave us respirator masks as well. When we arrived at our house, it was apparent that it had soaked in seven feet of Katrina stew. Our apartment was upstairs so all of our things were not ruined, but our downstairs neighbors were not so lucky. We kicked the door open, and avoiding the black mold, went upstairs. As we began to pack, I realized that everything in the house was just stuff. It smelled so bad and I had seen so much damage that I realized how unimportant my possessions were. We packed up books, vinyl records, cds and some other random things and brought them to the warehouse. After two trips, neither Jeremy nor I could handle anymore. Everything else would have to fend for itself. We went to his parent’s house in Metairie, took really hot showers, slept and went back to Bryan. We were homeless, our city was destroyed. We decided it was the perfect opportunity for an adventure.\r\nBeing a student at UNO with a full time job leaves little time for travel. Jeremy also worked all the time as a tattoo artist, which provided us the opportunity to make some lemonade, as they say. FEMA gave us each $2000 to spend and thanks to the Red Cross and friends around the country, we had places to stay. Our adventure lasted three months; we visited Dallas, Oklahoma, KCMO, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, LA, San Francisco, Central Point, OR, Portland and Seattle. Jeremy was able to work in most of the places and I explored as much as I could. It really was a grand adventure. Like the Grapes of Wrath, we headed west in search of opportunity. Unlike Grapes, our grandfather did not die on top of our jalopy. I’m sorry, that wasn’t funny. We returned after Thanksgiving and stayed with our friends Joey and Bert on Carrollton Avenue until March. As I am sure everyone is aware, finding permanent housing was next to impossible, but eventually we found an apartment by the fairgrounds that had not flooded and did not have astronomical rent. \r\nLife is much different in New Orleans post-Katrina. At this point we are waiting to see what the 2006 hurricane season will be like. Ten months after the storm, I feel like the Katrina smell is burned into my brain. I will never forget that smell; sometimes I think I still smell it.