Until Hurricane Katrina hit the metro New Orleans area, August 2005 was the beginning of what I hoped to be a promising time in my life - a new chapter. I made the decision to go back to school at the University of New Orleans to earn my CPA certification, and just weeks before, had quit my long-time full-time job. The Fall semester had just begun on August 22, 2005. As a returning student out of college for 20 years, I was solely focused on trying to develop a comfortable rhythm for this transition. I was taking Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, and I remember on the night of Friday, August 26, 2005, after my first week of being a student again, going out drinking with my husband and friends and someone saying something about whether or not they should evacuate for the hurricane. I had been so wrapped up in school, that I had had no time for anything else, and had not been following the news about the path of Hurricane Katrina and had no idea that there was even a storm in the Gulf! In hindsight, and from remembering the looks of incredulity and disbelief on my friends\' faces, I must have sounded really stupid when I asked \"what hurricane\".\r\nThe next morning, while my husband was at work, I was doing accounting homework, and my mother called me to ask me what my plans were. When she learned of my ignorance of the situation, she urged me to turn on my television. I did so just in time to see Jefferson Parish President, Aaron Broussard issuing a mandatory evacuation for all of Jefferson Parish, which was currently underway in the lower part of the parish. Of course, I immediately grasped the seriousness of the situation and contacted my husband and urged him to come home. As usual, my husband thought I was overreacting to the situation and did not come home until he was ready to do so, about 3 hours later. In the meantime, I had to figure out where we were going to go, deal with my making arrangements to take my 90 year old mother-in-law, who was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer\'s Disease, and of course, my 5 dogs! I decided we would evacuate to Memphis with my mother, stepfather, grandmother, sister and nephew. However, throughout the course of the day, our plans changed to that we would go to my husband\'s brother\'s house in Houston. We made the grueling 21-hour drive to Houston and finally got there about 4:00 AM, just hours before Katrina made landfall. \r\nI will never forget the impact of the media coverage over the next 4-5 days. I just knew I had better get out a map and decide upon a city and state in which to start over. I thought my beloved New Orleans was history and would never be livable again. However, one aspect in which I found solace, was that WWL-TV, Channel 4 in New Orleans had moved their staff to a broadcasting facility in Baton Rouge at LSU. Because of this, from Houston, we were able to pick up local media personnel whom we were used to and trusted, but above all, had the same anxieties about the situation as we had. We were not restricted to have to watch the media coverage on cable stations. I did, however, watch some of those broadcasts, but their reporters had neither the \"personal\" connection to, nor what seemed to be a genuine concern for New Orleans, as did the people relaying the events through WWL\'s broadcasts. \r\nThanks to a website on the Internet, we were able to see a satellite picture our house, and learned there was extensive damage and exposure.\r\nThe weekend following landfall, I, my husband, my brother-in-law, and my next door neighbor with whom I was able to keep in touch with through text messages, and who was also in Houston, armed ourselves with an ice chest of ice, another of water, drinks, and food for the trip, tarps, plastic drop cloths, gas cans filled with gasoline for the return trip, and personal protection, and trekked back to New Orleans to check on our homes. We had a fairly uneventful trip until we got to the Laplace area on Interstate 10 where we discovered the interstate was under water. We continued our journey down Airline Highway, until we were stopped by the National Guard somewhere between Laplace and the New Orleans International Airport. When we explained what we were trying to do, he told us he could not allow us to pass. However, we must have looked like we were not a threat, because he told us he could not stop what he did not see, and turned his back to have a smoke, while we (thankfully) drove past his post.\r\nUpon reaching the suburbs of New Orleans, it was the eeriest thing I had ever seen. There was nothing but pitch blackness and darkness everywhere, and not a soul in sight. Everywhere we went the streets were dark and deserted, with the exception of the occasional National Guard vehicle. We had to be careful and take back streets to avoid being stopped again.\r\nWhen we finally pulled into our driveway, our head lights shone to the back of our house, where we at once could see where an Oak tree had fallen on the port cochere. Upon getting out of our vehicle, we were greeted with the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked, and a strange voice telling us not to move and then asking what we were doing there. We identified ourselves and discovered we had been approached by someone who lived down the street, who had not evacuated and had been there for the past week. She informed us that because of the looting in the area, she and some other neighbors who had stayed were patrolling the area to protect what was theirs and even what belonged to those, like us, who were not there. After further investigating the tree damage, we could see that this oak tree came from my other neighbor\'s yard, through the fence, through the port cochere, my back porch, a half-bath off of my utility room, my master bedroom, and out of the other side of my house into the garage of the neighbor that was with me. All I could think of was that I was so lucky because the massive trunk of this tree lay on my side of the bed!\r\nSince it was dark, and still a few hours to daylight, we decided to break curfew, and drive to check out some of our other friends\' and family\'s houses. Much to our surprise, when we reached my mother-in-law\'s house - she had electricity! She lives in Metairie, and her house is on the same grid as the emergency generator system for East Jefferson General Hospital. We napped there for a few hours, went back to me and my neighbor\'s houses to secure them as best we could to prevent further damage or possible looting, shut off the water, gas, and electricity, and then proceeded to clean the refrigerators. Once done, we returned to Houston, only to stay there for another 2 weeks, before we had to evacuate Houston because of Hurricane Rita. We left Houston, drove 24 hours straight only to reach Baton Rouge, at which point due to exhaustion, and it being the middle of the night, we called my niece, and rode out Rita there with her and her husband. After 3 weeks of sleeping on sofas and recliners, and most recently the kitchen floor of a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 700-square foot house with no electricity or air conditioning, 8 dogs, and up to 10 people at times, my husband and I decided the hell with hurricanes - we were going back home and would start to try to rebuild our home, as well as our lives.\r\nIt was not until March of 2007, almost 2 years later, after what seemed like endless fighting with adjuster after adjuster from our insurance company, FEMA, contractors - you name it - that all of the damage was restored and our house was once again as it was before that fateful weekend in August 2005. It was another 5 months before I went back to the University of New Orleans and picked up where I left off 2 years before, and I am proud to say that I will finally have my CPA certification and plan to sit for the CPA exam before this year (2010) is out.\r\nEven though our house was restored, Hurricane Katrina left her mark on us, as well as our community, and for good or bad, it is one that won\'t be forgotten for a very long time to come.\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n