I'm Adi Cornish, and this is the assignment.

And I usually don't talk about what it was like covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

because inevitably people assume or ask about the storm itself.

But I wasn't there for that.

I was there for the after, the November when people had to flag a Red Cross truck in the mud for Thanksgiving dinner.

One church group and Red Cross volunteers prepared that many meals for families in New Orleans.

NPR's Audie Cornish followed along and has this report.

You ready for Target?

Hundreds of volunteers have cooked and passed.

The first Mardi Gras minus the million people who had fled the city and left behind whole neighborhoods.

And one of the most frustrating things for Reverend Michael Zachary is that the neighborhood has become a destination for disaster tourism, but not much else.

The first day of school for kids in a school district that had almost collapsed.

Clark is coming off a year in Mansfield, Texas, and she's not too interested in starting over in New Orleans.

I want to go back to Texas because it's more fun or down there.

I barely have friends by my house.

I got friends in Texas.

Little Dahlia Clark is probably in her early 30s now, maybe even with her own kids.

And on anniversaries like this one, 20 years after the storm, I have wondered about the

generation raised by the people who lived through it.

My mom always says, like, it's what you make it.

The storm already happened and it was very catastrophic.

Now it's how you decide to move forward

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