Sunday, March 12th

Okay, this post will be shorter because there are no pictures to explain. My camera ran out of batteries on Saturday, and I wasn't in the car with Sarah or Rachel this day, and they take pictures like nobody's business.

So on Sunday we woke up and packed up our vans and talked and prayed for a little bit before heading to New Orleans. But before we hit the road we went to Waffle House and ate some food (I had cereal...raisin bran?? I totally don't remember!!!! and grapefruit juice). Waffle houses, man. Houses just made of waffles!! It reminded me of when some of us at LT went to the Loveland Waffle House late at night and played cards there.

We switched the vans up a bit, I was in Seth and Ann's van with Jon Dordal and Adam. This was good because it gave me a chance to chat it up with people I really didn't know very well. We had some good fun racing to New Orleans, eating beef jerky, listening to theme songs, talking, etc.

As a digression, I'm not sure when I'd post this later, so I'm just going to right now: I was talking on the way home with Scott and Adam and Sarah and Jess about how great it was to get to know our church family better this week, and the best example I could think of is Ann. I got to talk to everybody and get to know everybody a lot better, but I was really appreciative specifically of the time I got to spend with her. I'm not sure I'd ever gotten the chance to talk to her before all this, so yeah, that was great - Ann you're just so aweshome!

And on I go: We decided last minute to meet Scott's van for lunch at this...mall. This mall was like another world. We were in another world. But I got a really good calzone for like nothing. Scott stopped in at this mall because he thought "Surely, a mall will have a Starbucks." Unfortunately malls in Louisiana are just not of this world.

We went back in the car and made our way to Slidell. Our van got to the church first (Ann, funny that when I got in your van we went from last place to first: Lee's van may make tons of stops, but your van goes like 90 miles per hour, and you just can't beat that, literally). We settled into our rooms there which were classrooms I think that they were letting people sleep in. When we first arrived the girls were a little surprised that we had to fit 15 people in a room not terribly bigger than the cubicle I'm sitting in right now. But then we found out we could go over to a bigger room - just had to move our stuff in the mornings so they could use it (except on Tuesday when we were able to keep them in there - woohoo!)

After everyone else arrived we went into New Orleans. It was really surreal driving into Slidell because everywhere we looked every business was either brand brand new or just completely destroyed (mostly the latter). Then as we were driving into the city it was pretty clear everywhere we looked how much had really been destroyed. Seems that people in this city now have to rely on Spraypaint to communicate. For example, "Went to Florida, call at [phone number], Love Jim and Kathy," or "You loot, we shoot." You could definitely tell, looking around, that this was probably a pretty cool city before the hurricane. There's so many little streams everywhere, houses just have docks in their backyard - you could take your boat to your neighbors house! It was honestly the closest thing to Venice I've ever seen, but horribly twisted and destructed. Just....surreal.

To go on with the narrative, when we got into the city we found this restaurant that Lee had eaten at before. We were there for awhile - the food was delicious. I sat at a table with Alyssa, Jim and Jordan. Laughter ensued!! What hilarious people! Jordan's new nickname is "Silver Dollar" and Jim's nickname has always been and will always be "Gold Bullion" so Alyssa and I had the honor of sitting with THE Silver Dollar and Gold Bullion. I kept making this noisy laugh that Gold Bullion seemed to like, and Silver Dollar kept describing it as like nails on a chalkboard. Then he exclaimed:

"People in China are like...'WHAT IS THAT NOISE?!?'"

Hahahahahahaha!!

After that though I got a bit of a baditude - something that God would address the next day during my quiet time. But definitely was a really good night anyway, baditude or no.

On a side note, didn't know where to place this in my story, but when we were parking we parked on this little street where tons of cars were parked but all the signs said "NO PARKING." Sure enough, we got a ticket - just 25 bucks...but definitely worth noting!!

And after that?? We went home and slept because we were POOPED! and we had a big Monday ahead of us!

Check in later for a recount of Monday!