Winter living, Summer dreaming

I can't express how right it feels for me to be in New Orleans. The sights of steam boats and barges floating diligently down the bayou, the smell of cedar wood in old houses, the sound of drills and hammers and WWOZ jazz on the radio, the feel of the cool breeze on a perfectly warm New Orleans winter day...I feel completely filled here. My life in New Orleans feels like a refreshing deep breath after many years of more complicated living in Charlottesville. For the most part, my life here is simple, happy, and refreshing.

But...there's always another chapter after this one. So of course, with my restless heart, I've been thinking about my next chapter. New dreams, new ideas, new goals for my life. I love NOLA and you can tell by the way I never update my blog that I am busy doing things that I think are amazing and fun. Blame it on the engineer in me, but I can't help but think ahead. And I know I'm only 24 but it's almost like I have this fear that I won't get the most out of life. So, I've gone ahead and opened the next chapter in my life: Detroit!

My friend Jen and I will be spending the summer together in Detroit. She'll be researching public health at a clinic in the inner city, and I'll be doing something I'm not sure yet...! But, I am hoping to get involved in prisoner rehabilitation and urban farming. My goal for the summer is so serve my little heart out, and get to know the city I have been dreaming about for years. It's funny how I followed my dream to NOLA after many years and now I am following my dream to Detroit. I live a very blessed life!

As far as life updates go: I moved Uptown to Magazine Street. Now I can get a bike and use it for transport, I can walk to Whole Foods just like in Charlottesville, I can garden in a raised bed and grill out on a patio, and I live with a really sweet coworker and a really crafty pastry chef. Could it get better?

I am posting some pictures of my life over the past few weeks rather than typing out all the cool, exciting things I've done (and there have been a-plenty of cool, exciting things!).Highlights? My Dad getting married (no pics yet!), my best friend getting engaged, and exotic animal races at the NOLA Fairgrounds. My life is so bougie. Oh yea Mardi Gras happened too but who cares about that after Beyonce's halftime show.

My view of my boys from the box suite

Homemade vegan donuts

Mardi Gras craziness

Engagement PUNCH!

French Quarter Fest fireworks on the Big Muddy

Electricians huddling around heater during cold winter weeks

Getting to work at 6 in New Orleans East has it's benefits

Annual Crawfish Boil

Need I even say it? BEYONCE

Horse races at fairgrounds!

Santa in Philly on Xmas eve

Bonfire on the bayou

Long Island diner, thank you Lord

First Crawfish boil of the season with coworkers and friends!

Sunset on the River. Notice the tightrope walkers

NOLA style shot-fun gingerbread house

St. Patty's Day cabbage catching!

St. Patty's in NOLA - kind of a big deal

Family :)

Food in Da Parish it literally can't get better

New Orleans for the Holidays

I am loving every moment of New Orleans! I have done so much in the past few weeks so rather than write it all out I'll just post pictures. 

Last weekend was the Po Boy festival in Uptown. There were sooo many people there so after waiting in line for 45min for a 3" Po Boy I was ready to call it a day. The Po Boy was from Zea and it basically changed my world. Asian sesame fried oyster Po Boy. Oysters are now officially my favorite food here. 

Servin' up the deliciousness at Po Boy Fest

The random guy did a terrible job taking our picture

Raw Oysters after work!

So we got off work early on Friday and decided to go out to lunch at Parkway, a famous Po Boy shop in Bayou St. John. We took our Po Boys to go and sat on the canal. I got the Thanksgiving Po Boy: 8" hoagie with turkey, stuffing, and cranberries. Whoa. I devoured that deliciousness! I meant to take a picture of it before I ate it but I was so hungry I just inhaled it. I didn't mean to eat the whole thing because as a recovering vegan I didn't want stomach issues after eating a large amount of turkey for the first time in 15 years, but I literally couldn't put it down. That's when I knew I was more "recovering" than "vegan".

View from my tree perch in City Park

Urban Outfitters for Black Friday!!

Some friends and I went to City Park Friday after Thanksgiving for Celebration in the Oaks - a festival of lights. It was absolutely lovely! They had Christmas lights up in all the beautiful trees, we got to walk through the botanical gardens and see some sculptures in the sculpture gardens, but the best part was the cajun version of the Night Before Christmas, read aloud with lights to depict. 

As far as work goes, it's been awesome! I am getting closer to my team and learning and getting experience every day. This a picture of one of my favorite days at work so far. Sarah and I were sent a house to pull up a temporary pole used for temporary electrical service, but the pole was 20' and after 30min of struggling we realized we could never pull it out ourselves. So we got some 12AWG wire out of the van, tied one end to the top of the pole and I took the other end. Sarah took the saws-all and we lumberjacked it. Here's the aftermath. 

OK, now on to the holidays! Traditional New Orleans Thanksgiving dinner: WOW!! It was so different from my family's normal Thanksgiving but it was so incredible! One of the families in my church was loving enough to invite me over for dinner. All the food was home made! Turkey, carrot souffle  home made rolls, seafood gumbo with rice and potato salad (potato salad in gumbo is kinda weird to me but apparently it's normal at least for Thanksgiving), and then the best part: oyster dressing. Oysters, ground pork, chicken liver, and stuffing. Whew, changed my life. I think I might need to be in New Orleans for every Thanksgiving from now on!

After dinner at the family's I went with to an Americorp person's house for my second Thanksgiving. They had a lot of good food, and the Turkey was a garbage can turkey (cooked in a garbage can?). 

So basically I've eaten more nonvegan than vegan the past few days and guess what? My stomach is intact with no apparent damage. I'm a pro at recovering. 

The Most Jolly Tornado

So I have been getting along in NOLA. This city is definitely not my home yet. I am literally a foreigner: I don't speak this language, I don't know where anything is and the amount of times I fill up my car with gas is evidence of how lost I get, I don't know what this food is, and the way I stand around awkwardly while other people do their crazy, loud greetings shows that socially I just don't fit in. Here are some examples:

Language
NOLA has different words or phrases than we use up north.

The itis = food comma
Smart in the mouth =  smart mouth
Stay down = don't get on the high way

Also, I usually don't understand about 20% of what native New Orleanians say. For example, I picked up my friend Ebonee (born and raised New Orleans) so we could meet our friend who lives off Carrollton. I was asking Ebonee the quickest way to get to Carrollton, but it turns out I was pronouncing the street like Carl-ton, when really it is pronounced Care-olton. Small difference but apparently big enough so that native New Orleanians might think you're talking about a person and not a street if you say it incorrectly.

Greetings
My normal greeting for a friend is a hug and a "how are you!?". Not here. When people from New Orleans greet each other it is one of the loudest, jolliest occurances you'll see. It's like the most jolly tornado erupts once a friend walks through the door: a loud "HEYYY GIRL!!!!", a big ole hug, some joking around, some picking fun, asking about the family, everything loud. I usually stand there extremely awkwardly because even if I tried to fit in, I just can't. I'm not even joking, it's like I could say or do the same thing they do to each other to one of them and they would have no idea what I was saying or doing. I just don't have the New Orleans tornado within me.

Food
I don't really know what the menus mean. Also, even though I'm not vegan any more, I don't want to pay $10 for andouille sausage when realistically I'd only eat like $3-$5 worth. New Orleanians also really love pickled things. I'm not trying to knock it, but it kinda looks really gross. and I probably won't ever try it.

ew pickled everything GROSS

Also of note, look at how they spell ketchup. Weirdos.

So basically I have been hanging out a lot with Americorp people and exploring the Marigny and Bywater area, and it's really fun! For Halloween  Marta had a potluck and then we went out to Frenchman St which was overwhelming. This past weekend was super fun! Friday we went to Frenchman St again and ate a burrito, and then Saturday we went dancing at Maison and it was SO FUN!! I love dancing!! Then we got late night food (like 3am late night) at a place called 13 also on Frenchman and they had Tachos (tater tots with nacho fixin's) which made me homesick for Fardowner's Tachos in Crozet. I miss my home sometimes.  

I also FINALLY saw Rebirth Brass Band at the Howling Wolf (so perfect for me, right??). It was great. But considering I get up at 5am every morning and go to bed at about 9:30pm, my tendency is to be socially useless after about 10pm because I'm so sleepy, so I've had to learn to break out of that. 

Otherwise, work is going well. I'm still getting beat up with cuts and bruises everywhere. I also got shocked this week! 240V baby, I aint playing. We did a lot of trim out this week which was fun - putting on cover plates, installing lights and appliances. Sometimes I can't believe I have 10 months of this. 

And now for some miscellaneous stuff. 

Vanilla spice cupcakes with pumpkin pudding on top! Tis the season!

Beautiful flowers are a site I was working at in NOLA East. They changed color every day!

Found this website. I'm still in love with Detroit.

Flat tire - womp womp

My final thoughts on the past two weeks are this: at first I was feeling super lonely because I feel geographically (because of where I live) and socially isolated from the people who I can share this "new" experience with - the other Americorp people who I started St. Bernard Project with. I get along great with my room mate and my other friends from church, but they are all settled in their lives here - I can't share all the feelings of being overwhelmed and confused and excited about being in a new city with them. But once I started hanging out with Americorp people more, I feel like I have peers to go through this with, and it makes me feel like I have a home base and that I'm starting to build my New Orleans family. Overall, I feel like the most loved girl in New Orleans between all the support and encouragement and protection and consideration I get from all my friends. New Orleans is looking up and I feel really happy here. 

I have arrived, all in one long post

NOLA is awesome, as I guessed before I moved here!

My dad and i drove the 13ish hours from Va to NOLA on Sunday the 6th and Monday the 7th. The drive was pretty uneventful. We stopped in Birmingham on Monday because the only impression my Dad and I have of the city is from the Freedom Riders, and we wanted to get the full story. The city was reallly boring and empty! We could see the old town with old abandoned factories and the new town with new buildings where everyone was working probably. They had a little park with a Freedom Walk where they had statues and memoirs documenting the heavy discrimination in Birmingham but we were accosted by people asking for money so we left.

My dad and my drive down!

When we arrived in the city we obvoiusly went right to the Royal House were Aryn and I went during Jazzfest. We got crawfish etouffee, chicken and sausage gumbo, and shrimp - very tastey! My Dad was here for about a week and we explored the city and he helped me take care of some business (buying a car and all that entails, groceries, clothes, directions). It's awesome having an awesome Dad! It was fun exploring with him but I am happy now I feel like I can make NOLA my town with my traditions and rituals and friends and hot spots. I feel impatient for roots and relationships to grow here but I need to learn how to enjoy this in between time where I am on my own.

The view from East Bank (near Cafe Du Monde in French Quarter) across the Mississippi River to Algiers, where I live

The view from East Bank of the Central Business District

Swamp Adventures!!

Work with St. Bernard Project started on Monday, and it was mostly boring orientation stuff but we got to learn a lot about Katrina, disaster relief, contractor fraud, the levee system, home owners, St Bernard Project, flood damage, and everything in between. I could write at length (and I mean, length!) about everything I am learning. I feel like every piece of info I get just fills a part of my heart that was yearning for years to be here in NOLA doing this exact work and living and learning these exact things. It is so fulfilling and so awesome I can't really explain it which is why I would write at length about it! Wed we gutted a house in Plaquemines Parish Southeast of Orleans Parish (where the city of New Orleans is) which got flooded not during Katrina but during Isaac after the government redid the levee system in 2006. Isaac hit in late August and we gutted in mid October so you can imagine the stench and the mold that permeated everything in the house that hadn't been touched since the hurricane. On Thursday we put up insulation in another house in Orleans Parish and on Friday we framed out some windows in yet another house in Orleans Parish. I was nervous how I would do with manual labor after having a desk job for 2 years but I am loving it! No food coma after lunch!

Besides all that, I have a few immediate and random observations and thoughts:

1. The trees are sooo beautiful here. It's like they were engineered to provide the most beautiful canopy and refreshing shade. The stretch over the streets so it's a very old and rustic feel in the middle of a bustling city.

2. The ants here don't play. I accidently stepped on a pile of ants outside my house and got about 10 bites on my foot. 30min later it's still stinging, a week and a half later they are swollen and itching. I learned my lesson - don't confuse dirt with ants.

3. I'm probably the rudest person in NOLA. I don't let you cross the street if I'm driving, I don't stop and wave you on in a parking lot, and I probably won't smile at you if we're crossing paths. Sorry deep South, you gotta let me warm up a little bit.

4. So far my impression of the drivers is that they are appropriately aggressive. I feel at home. My Philly driver within can finally express itself.but I can change lanes way easier.

Yummy stuffed eggplant that tasted like Thanksgiving at a small restaurant in Lefitte, a city just outside NO

My small small kitchen that I still managed to bake chai spiced muffins in

Seafood stuffed pastry from a stand at New Orleans Seafood Festival. It was so heavy I couldn't finish it!