Looking back on the fall of 2005, my first memory is always of the Welcome Back Luau held at UNO every year. I was there with some friends the Friday before Katrina hit. We had such a great time and little did I know, it would be the last normal time I would have for a while. Later that night, my sister and I looked on the internet to see the latest news about the hurricane we thought we just going to hit Florida then fizzle away. My family had always been the type that believed that we would always dodge the bullet and we were one of the many families that had hurricane parties. But when I saw New Orleans in the center of the projected path the hurricane would travel, I finally got scared. \r\n\r\nBy Sunday morning, my parents got us ready to evacuate for a 7 hour trip. I packed my brother\'s car with a good amount of clothes, two large bins filled with pictures, yearbooks, and other precious memories of mine. Our destination: Opelousas, Louisiana. It\'s a smaller town right outside of Lafayette and my aunt had a house there. It had been her previous home, but due to her job at a hospital, she had to move closer into the city. So this house had been for sale for a few months. It was absolutely gorgeous. I could spot it a block away while we were still driving on the service road. Trees towered over the front and back of the house. The front yard was huge, the lawn was perfectly mowed, and the garden was exotic and beautiful. The back yard was one acre in size and had Oak trees lined down the back side of it. There was a pool house outside, 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and a beautiful kitchen/living room with cobble stone flooring. The house seemed to be perfect.\r\n\r\nBut while the materialistic side of me was excited to be in this house, reality set in and I realized how miserable we were going to be. The house was empty. Just being there gave me the creepiest feeling. We didn\'t even have a television - only a radio. Living in an empty mansion in the middle of nowhere for 2 weeks, while also having limited communication to the condition of New Orleans was one of the most lonely and scared feelings we had ever experienced. By Monday morning, my family sat gathered around a radio just waiting for any information. We listened to the people on the radio talk about the damage and you could hear the fear in their voices. I will never forget that feeling that wouldn\'t leave the pit of my stomach for days.\r\n\r\nAfter a week and a half, my dad got a permit to get into the city. He owned an Outback Steakhouse in Marerro so he was allowed to go check on his business. This was our way back in. We packed up everything and went back to Kenner, my home town. That was the longest car ride of my life. Once in Kenner, I saw that some areas were completely destroyed and others had no damage at all. I live in an area that is considered to be a no flood zone, but after seeing all the different phases of destruction, I was really scared. Upon reaching our house, we saw that we had barely any damage. Our lamp post in the front yard fell over, along with the tree that my older brother planted when he was 2 years old. My car was flooded and we needed a new roof , but our house only got one inch of water, due to a clogged drain on the side of my house. Other than that, we were very fortunate. It was nothing that a new roof and new carpet coudln\'t fix.\r\n\r\nWe were the first family back on my street, so we cleaned up the neighborhood a little so our neighbors would have less to face. We didn\'t have air conditioning or electricity for a couple days, considering we were back less than two weeks after the hurricane. But that was okay. I would have chosen being in my small and smelly house cleaning up ruins than back at the mansion in Opelousas any day. We were home again and that was all that mattered.\r\n