"Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party."
Hey everybody, I'm back from New Orleans.
I have to tell you, I want to live down there. At the very least, I'm going to have to consider colleges in New Orleans, because that place is the shit. The weather was beatiful (tho not in a few months, lol) and the streets are gorgeous, or at least in the French Quarter. Everywhere else, evidence of Katrina was clearly seen, even four years later. But I'm telling you, the music in the streets, the friendly atmosphere, the parks next to the river...I want to be there. I would never run out of things to do outside down there. Not to mention that it's the birthplace of jazz, and music is everywhere, all the time. You think that's an exaggeration, but it's not, there is always some live music somewhere, and it's always so good.
But anyway, more on the trip itself...
The bus ride was not as good as I wanted it to be. I got put on a different bus from all my friends, so I had sixteen hours there of no fun, and sixteen hours back of no fun. Meh, shit happens.
We got there, and we jumped right into volunteer work. One group went to a food bank, and gave out meals to over 12,000 familys in need. Cool. My group went to a school in a rough neighborhood, where we painted various parts of the school. A few people, however, were requested to go into class and help tutor some elemetary kids. That was the coolest thing in the world. I really can't describe something like that, being able to do that for children. Later, we read them stories, and halfway through that we were all just running and jumping around the room. It was great.
As you might recall, I said that I had bought a shiny new 2gig memory card for my camera, so I'm going to let that talk for a while. By the way, combined time for these two movies is about twenty minutes, so don't watch unless you REALLY WANT to. Don't worry, it's gonna be great.
Part 1
Part 2
There's a lot of stuff I'm probably leaving out...like the performances, competition, and the Preservation Jazz Hall (one of the best parts of the trip) but it was all really really great. If you guys have any questions, please ask! I love talking about New Orleans. It makes me excited to go there again.
Hope you all had a fun time on the O without me >:D
(No picture, videos are enough.)
-Ryu
