Well well well, I am finally in the good 'ol city of New Orleans! What a whirlwind of activities and emotions these past few days have brought. I'm currently staying at The Bourbon House Hostel in the Lower Garden District with thirty-one other world travelers and working on acclimating myself to doing actual schoolwork again. I arrived in Nola on Saturday and had the pleasure of nomming on some delicious po' boys and beer while tromping around Bourbon Street with my friend Emily. Boy oh boy is Bourbon St. overwhelming. Perhaps I have been living under a rock these past few months, or perhaps I am utterly disillusioned to what the real world brings, but drunken tomfoolery, gentleman's clubs, and jazzy tunes are all things that I have not been exposed to in quite a while. But I digress.
Sunday morning Emily and I made a delicious breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning talking me down from a cliff as I tried to delay my arrival to the hostel for as long as possible. Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly enthusiastic about this opportunity that's ahead of me and I love meeting new people, but I finally feel as if I have found my place at Wooster and my place at home again, only to have it turned upside down in this new environment. But thankfully, everyone on my program is incredibly nice! It's amazing the diversity of majors, personalities, and interests that this group represents. There are Anthropology majors from Davidson, Literature majors from Harvard, The Growth and Structure of Cities majors from Bryn Mawr, Real Estate majors from Penn, and Applied Mathematics majors from Brown. Like insane diversity. And everyone seems incredibly passionate about the subject of Cities regardless of their implementation. I wish I was better at articulating how incredibly amazed I am by all these people and how they are weaving their interest in urbanization with their unique passions.
We have had a bunch of your typical run of the mill orientation activities at Kingsley House, which is located a few blocks away from our hostel on Magazine St. Kingsley is this beautiful community center that holds Headstart courses, Senior Activities, Bingo nights, etc. for the community. Talks on "how drunk is too drunk", what is expected of us academically, and relationship policy for the program are interspersed with walks around the city, delicious beignets, and streetcar rides. Since we all are still working on getting to know each other I haven't been spending as much time as I would like exploring the city. But we are here until the 31st so there is plenty 'o time for that. Sorry this is probably the lamest and least articulate blog post ever but I am running on fumes and am feeling the pressure since literally everyone on my program is blogging away. More to come soon!
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