My First Day!

Today was the first on our week long adventure in New Orleans. Megan stayed over last night in order for us to have a ride to the airport. I woke up at 2:45AM to get ready, we left the apt at 3:15AM. On the ride to the airport I had butterflies in my stomach I was so excited! Also we didn't look up directions we just figured we would drive down by the mall and find it from there well we ended up not taking the exit to the mall but taking the one after it, and found ourselves heading down a restricted road for authorized personnel only. So we had to turn around and get off at the mall exited. That's when our instinctive compasses kicked in and we found the airport. When we arrived there were only a few others waiting. Both our teachers ended up being 20min. late. The group checked in without them. When we got on the plane I found myself sitting next to a rather large man who ended up elbowing me the whole plane ride to Dallas. But to my left was Bethany, she was nervous about the flight but we talked for a while and I think that may have distracted her some. Once we were in the air I found myself not feeling well. I had a headache and felt like throwing up. Landing in Dallas made me feel very lightheaded. Once we landed we had to find our gate. We found the sky train and hopped on. It felt like we were in the Jefferson’s because the train car was small and went really fast. The airport felt really futuristic. Once we arrived at our gate we had an hour and a half to kill so we wandered around and took some photos. I also gave my parents a call to let them know I had landed. While we were sitting waiting Caitlin was playing " Are you Smarter than a 5th grader?" on her DS and some of the questions seemed really hard even to hard for a 5th grader. When we were boarding the plane I started to feel sick again. As we go up into the air I felt fine again. As we were landing in New Orleans I was watching out the window and could see a ton of damage. When we got off the plane and were walking to get our checked luggage. I realized that this is the airport that was shown in the documentary by Spike Lee and when we walked into the large room right before our checked luggage I was just thinking of the images of the bodies spread out wall to wall trying to leave and it hit me that I was in New Orleans. It became very real to me. We rented a van and a SUV type vehicle. We could hardly fit all of the luggage in and we were packed. On the car ride to the hotel I felt like throwing up again I was trying as hard as I could to hold it back because I didn’t want to be known as the girl who threw up the first day! Luckily I was able to hold it back and make it to the hotel. I've never before in my life felt as sick as I have on this trip. Well we arrived at the Country Inn and the architecture of the building is beautiful inside and out. After checking into the hotel we were able to unpack a little and then get something to eat before we went on the tour. We ate at Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. I had chicken Parmesan it was delicious yet a little spicy. After lunch we met up back at the hotel for our tour of the damaged areas. At first we saw downtown and I took a few photos then, then we moved onto the lower 9th ward and Jefferson Parish, these areas shocked me I couldn't believe how little they have done to fix the areas up. Some parts looked like they hadn't even been touched. I thought it would be bad down here but I didn’t realize it was this bad. They need so much help to get this city back to pre Katrina it will take so a long time. As we were driving we were noticing the markings on the outside of the houses from the rescue teams and at first it was kind of cool because we were seeing zeros that meant no one was found dead inside but then we can across a house with a one and it hit me once again that this is very real and these people have been through so much. After a while I felt guilty taking pictures because we were paying this tour company and they were making money off of others suffering. I didn’t like that feeling. After the tour we had a couple of hours to do whatever so Brian and I sat by the pool for a while and then went back to his room to hang out and download images from the day. Most of my images didn’t turn out because I was taking them from a bus and my camera was filthy the cage didn’t clean them before we came down here! For dinner we ended up going to this Nacho place it was really good I had two chicken tacos that were delicious! As we were sitting there I happened to look up at the telephone wires and saw a ton of beads hanging and I realized that pretty much anywhere you go in New Orleans you will find beads. After dinner we waited for the bus for 45 min and I was freezing because I didn’t really bring the warmest of clothes. After riding the New Orleans public bus I realized that our buses in Minneapolis are like luxury the buses down here are very worn out and rickety. They seem like they could fall apart at any moment and they have graffiti all over and they are dirty. All in all my first day in New Orleans has been an eye opener and I'm looking forward to learning more about this city and it's culture over the next week!