Preparations and Expectations

Oh the joys of pre-travel laundry!

Packing- my least favorite part of the trip (other than getting back and subsequently unpacking.) First the mountains of laundry, separated between clean and unclean. Determining what to bring based on weather forecasts, travel itineraries, and preconceived New Orleans culture. Next, figuring out how to fit the things I want to bring into the luggage I feel ready to carry with me. Usually being forced to sit on top of the suitcase, in order to zip it shut. It always gets stuck about half way without the weight of my body on top of the belongings.

Then preparing for the joys of New Orleans eating, shopping, and indulging... money. The preparations began by picking up over time hours at the nursing home. Sixty hour work weeks on Christmas break are necessary when budgeting for Christmas and a New Orleans trip. I work as a certified nursing assistant and working over time hours in a skilled long-term care facility is grueling work. Lifting, transfering, dressing, toileting, and feeding an entire hall of residents. Being accountable for the activities of daily living of eighteen to twenty-four residents over the age of eighty. The work is hard on the body, but rewarding for the mind and soul. The next step was to request money from all family members, as Christmas gifts. One sister even bought me a gift card to Cafe Du Monde, an eatery in the French Quarter, to spend on the trip.

Christmas gifts= New Orleans spending cash

Research for the trip was temporarily halted by the unsatisfactory preparation of getting over this week-long-upper-respiratory-nuisance-of-a-cold. Although previous research involved googling the hotel, surrounding cafes, and listed itinerary course trips. One of the course assignments before the train departs is to create an E-Travel Guide about the population of New Orleans, and my research for this assignment has grown my knowledge of the city's roots and the diversity of its people. I even borrowed a book from the professor about New Orleans and have been reading it, along with texts in the course material, to better understand the mysterious and progressive city of NOLA prior to arrival. The travel guide is a group project, created by the people you will room with in the hotel on the trip. My group had a coffee lunch date at Panera in North Peoria, Illinois, prior to the Christmas holidays, in order to assure the travel guide was well under way. During this meeting, we also mentally prepared for the train ride and discussed amongst ourselves what types of clothing, items, and cash amount we planned to bring. It was decided everyone should probably bring a pillow, blanket, headphones, and Benadryl, in order to sleep for the majority of the fifteen-hour train ride down to our destination. Our research also discovered that we should pack a bathing suit, as the hotel does have a lovely hot tub to relax our sore piggies after miles of site-seeing each day. The continental breakfast is apparently full of fresh hot foods, and things you can bring to-go, and the hotel room contains a mini-fridge. I can already imagine myself leaving breakfast with arms full of bananas, yogurt, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, and bottled waters, to stock the fridge for lunch and snack time. Arrangements for life away from life were not terribly complicated, as my copious amounts of jobs are hours that I choose and plan around school. I think my boyfriend was more problematic, as he claims he will miss my face.

Details of our hotel :))))


A link to my group's E-Travel Guide

No one wants to travel sick, so medications to resolve the infection were taken seriously.

I have a concise feeling of hesitation that lags slightly behind my joyous excitement to wander another city. Hesitant to explore a city without family; hesitant to travel with a class of people that I only know through school, on a trip where each activity is planned. I can imagine the trip will be full of new experiences and it will be more organized than any other trip I have taken. I will accomplish more in this city in a week than I do in most cities in a month. I think a jam-packed day of site-seeing will be enthralling, but simultaneously stressful. I am not worried about the writing, as I think I will enjoy sharing my travel experiences with others, but staying with classmates and trying to make new friends could pose greater difficulties.

I am earning a minor in humanities and this travel course to New Orleans is the final course I need to complete it. I decided to travel instead of taking a typical college course, because I believe far more knowledge is gained from experience and reflection than it is from classroom lecture. Being immersed in the culture of New Orleans and witnessing it firsthand will teach me far more about the city than reading about it for years. Writing is also a lifelong passion of mine, and I could not imagine a more enjoyable course than one where my only homework combines traveling and writing. Once I realized it was a trip I could afford, I was all in. I hope to become exposed to New Orleans culture, to the point of vulnerability to the art and lifestyle of NOLA natives. I hope to be changed by the bustle of the city and history found. Looking forward to the music and obvious life of the streets, the art galleries, the food, and the possibility of new camaraderie. Through all of this, I desire to learn the most about myself. To learn about myself as a traveler, a writer, an artist.

Urban Expectations

A City Street

City life is exhilarating- a bustling crowd, on a faster pace and seemingly following an entirely different clock. In the city, everything is now. Availability of most necessities and desires are found around any and every corner. As the clock ticks faster, the people rush by, hardly noting the discrepancies within the crowd. The people are different, as diversity is common and minds are widened to the point that they hardly notice; the high-fashioned businesswoman too distracted by her cellphone call and five minutes behind schedule-does not look up to see the homeless man she passes on the corner of Sixth and Western. The buildings are taller and usually older, with an occasional massive new edition, and the streets wider, with three lanes and an intersection with six streets, instead of the usual two. Transportation is expected to come quickly, whether by personal car, bus, taxi, or bike. The sounds of the traffic never die down, like you expect in your small hometown by ten at night. People loudly buzzing at a similar pace, at all hours of the night. Advertisements and storefronts at each glance.

City life quickly contrasts and integrates the rich and the poor

I imagine New Orleans is similar to this rapid lifestyle of any city, but that the sounds are even more diverse. Music fills the streets and people dance outside of bars. I think the people of NOLA may be more friendly and welcoming than that of an average city, brought together by their common interests of music and night life, or of the fine and spicy dining of Cajun cuisine. The art of New Orleans and historic buildings are likely of a unique brand, as city streets were created and lived in by a diverse group of people from the very beginning. The city was formed by a group of outliers that thrived on art and deviance, and the city itself speaks volumes to this. The passion of people may seem to outflow from all street corners of graffiti mixed with historical structure and each store front of diverse items for sale.

Color and soul of New Orleans streets, from graffiti to street performers.

My city experiences are mostly developed from my extensive amount of time spent in Chicago. I have done the tourist kind of Chicago things- eat foot long hot dogs, visit the bean in Millennium Park, and ride on the Ferris wheel of Navy Pier, but I have also seen the night life. The jazz music beaming from the Heart of Blues and the beggar with a cardboard sign on an adjacent street corner. I enjoy photography, as I can remember through pictures and show others my point of view. A prime example being the pigeon featured below. I was fascinated by the fat pigeons found everywhere in Chicago and I recall feeling amused by their portly meandering through the streets.

A photo I took of "the Bean" in Chicago, showing off the city skyline.

Why did the pigeon cross the road? The world may never know.

Thoughts of how a city can bustle and jive in the moment are true experiences, but also expectations and hopes of a city that I have not yet visited. I have heard stories and seen pictures and videos of New Orleans from my sister Melissa and my parents, who have both traveled here. The bodies dancing in the street to musicians posted on a city corner are reflections of a video my sister had sent me of herself dancing with people considered strangers mere minutes before. I imagine the city to be a friendlier version due to my sister's ability to travel there alone and create new friends at every stop.

I realize my assumptions can only be as accurate as the lens of a camera, from picture or video- that is through another's point of view. I am nervously awaiting to either confirm or deny my assumptions of city people that are surprisingly friendly and artistic passion that explodes my senses. I have read about New Orleans enough to understand the foundation of the city, but not necessarily its current state of being. I also correlate New Orleans to the scenes and pictures of a Mardi Gras, with bright colors and crowds of intoxicated people in masks and costumes, dancing to the beat of street orchestras. All I can say is I hope the passion I envision this city to withhold does not disappoint. My excitement of traveling to a new place is paired with the moderate anxieties of leaving the comforts of home. I think my assumptions of this city will be a vast understatement of the true experience, and I look forward to the places I will see and people I will meet along the way.

New Orleans Mardi Gras Street Festival, cheesy costumes and all.