Tomorrow we go back home (uncorrected text)
(Out of chronological order - written on the day before our return.)
A year, maybe even 6 months ago, I might have been appalled that the Café du Monde and a dive bar like Marie Laveau’s has wireless internet - now I just wish I’d discovered it sooner.
There’s only so much work you can do sitting in your hotel room, before the Quarter starts to call. And as a teacher down here with 13 college students, each of whom are supposed to be journalling throughout the day, then blogging and inputting their best entries by night. They also have daily reading to do. One of them said, "But now we have to go off and work, and you don’t. That doesn’t seem fair."
If they only knew. But I didn’t come down here to blog about the administrative tasks of a teacher cum tour guide & travel agent.
Nothing prepares you for New Orleans, and nothing prepares you for the wildly divergent, highly-passionate, and amazingly-judgmental reactions of 13 students, who range in age from 18 to 40+, who study fiction, journalism, photography, theater, music, graphic design, and American Sign Language. Who are Black, White, Irish, Jewish, Greek. Who come with the jades views of a New Yawker, and the wide-eyed innocence of small town girls. Who have been reading tarot since they were thirteen, practice the Yoruba faith, and attend Catholic Mass. Who took drugs in their pre-teens, who have recently had a death in their close family, who are in the throws of a major relationship break-up, who have recently or chronically suffered from depression, who have to make nightly phone calls to tuck in their children back home. Who can’t relate to Katrina, can’t understand why N'awlineans don’t just stop whining and fix things, who worked as a reporter in the area during Katrina and Rita, and who have volunteered the last 2 summers to come down and help rebuild houses in the devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans.
They are the perfect mix, the perfect group, to bring to this amazing city of dichotomies and contradictions, a multi-faceted jewel who by turns can delight and appall you depending on your eye, the light, and the emotion of the moment.
They are at once fragile and resilient, passionate and cold. I only hope that as this trip winds down, as they cram in their last ghost tour, buy their last T-shirts and beads, search for that last assigned food they haven’t yet worked up the nerve to eat, do their last batch of laundry so they have something to wear to the going-away party/fish fry, that if they can’t yet love the city in all its conflicting, extreme aspects, that they will at least have gone away having loved some little bit and learned something of this amazing city that more and more feels like mine.
A year, maybe even 6 months ago, I might have been appalled that the Café du Monde and a dive bar like Marie Laveau’s has wireless internet - now I just wish I’d discovered it sooner.
There’s only so much work you can do sitting in your hotel room, before the Quarter starts to call. And as a teacher down here with 13 college students, each of whom are supposed to be journalling throughout the day, then blogging and inputting their best entries by night. They also have daily reading to do. One of them said, "But now we have to go off and work, and you don’t. That doesn’t seem fair."
If they only knew. But I didn’t come down here to blog about the administrative tasks of a teacher cum tour guide & travel agent.
Nothing prepares you for New Orleans, and nothing prepares you for the wildly divergent, highly-passionate, and amazingly-judgmental reactions of 13 students, who range in age from 18 to 40+, who study fiction, journalism, photography, theater, music, graphic design, and American Sign Language. Who are Black, White, Irish, Jewish, Greek. Who come with the jades views of a New Yawker, and the wide-eyed innocence of small town girls. Who have been reading tarot since they were thirteen, practice the Yoruba faith, and attend Catholic Mass. Who took drugs in their pre-teens, who have recently had a death in their close family, who are in the throws of a major relationship break-up, who have recently or chronically suffered from depression, who have to make nightly phone calls to tuck in their children back home. Who can’t relate to Katrina, can’t understand why N'awlineans don’t just stop whining and fix things, who worked as a reporter in the area during Katrina and Rita, and who have volunteered the last 2 summers to come down and help rebuild houses in the devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans.
They are the perfect mix, the perfect group, to bring to this amazing city of dichotomies and contradictions, a multi-faceted jewel who by turns can delight and appall you depending on your eye, the light, and the emotion of the moment.
They are at once fragile and resilient, passionate and cold. I only hope that as this trip winds down, as they cram in their last ghost tour, buy their last T-shirts and beads, search for that last assigned food they haven’t yet worked up the nerve to eat, do their last batch of laundry so they have something to wear to the going-away party/fish fry, that if they can’t yet love the city in all its conflicting, extreme aspects, that they will at least have gone away having loved some little bit and learned something of this amazing city that more and more feels like mine.